CLLAS Symposium - Justice Across Borders: Gender, Race, and Migration in the Americas

The Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS) presents, “Justice Across Borders: Gender, Race, and Migration in the Americas.” Our thematic line of inquiry this year, America, Bridge Between Oceans, poses the following questions: What happens when we put the Atlantic world in conversation with the Pacific? What kind of art and cultural production emerges? Which stories of struggles for racial, economic, gender and environmental justice arise? How does looking at Latinx and Latin American Studies from within the Pacific Rim region open up innovative and necessary methodological and analytical horizons? These questions also inspire our symposium Justice Across Borders: Race, Gender, and Migration in the Americas.

Fostering conversations about race, ethnicity, diasporas, gender, sexuality, migration, environmental justice, and culture that bridge the Atlantic and Pacific world, the symposium, Justice Across Borders: Race, Gender, and Migration in the Americas, explores what kind of new knowledges, art, social transformations, and activism we can create together in the face of increasing inequalities and social violence across the continent. We meditate on what contributions emerge from Pacific Rim-based research, art, advocacy work, and political movements when we put ourselves in conversation with scholars, artists, and activists based in the Atlantic coast.  We will discuss the increasing visibility of Caribbean migrants in the Pacific Northwest, environmental justice issues in Mexico, the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Southern Cone, archipelagic studies that encompass Caribbean and Pacific islands, gender politics within Latin American and Latinx communities in Oregon, experiences of Latin Americans alongside Pacific Islanders in the Pacific Rim region, queer Latina and AfroLatin@ art, indigeneity, blackness and Jewish diasporas in Latin America, challenges faced by a variety of Latinx communities in the U.S., etc. From a Latinx and Latin American Studies perspective, we engage comparative and relational dialogues with fields such as Pacific Islander Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Native American Studies, among others, hoping to bring new light into the epistemic possibilities of our fields and the meaning of Justice for all of us.

Symposium organizer: Alai Reyes-Santos

9:00 – 9:15 AM (Browsing Room)
Welcome from UO administration officials, CLLAS director, symposium coordinator.

9:20-10:30 AM (Browsing Room)
Race, Ethnicity and Diasporas
Rocio Zambrana, Claudia Holguín, Lanie Millar, Monique Balbuena, Roberto Arroyo
Chair: Marta Maldonado

10:40-11:50 AM (Browsing Room)
Women and Gender in Latin America and U.S. Latinx communities
Vicky Falcon, Michelle McKinley, Kristin Yarris, Lynn Stephen, Gabriela Martinez
Chair: Vicky Falcon

12:00- 1:00 PM (Gerlinger Alumni Lounge)
Keynote Speaker/Lunch
“New Directions in Latinx and Latin American Studies: Archipelagos Across the Caribbean and the Pacific”
Guest: Yolanda Martinez-San Miguel
Chair: Rocio Zambrana and Lanie Millar

2:00-3:00 PM (Browsing Room)
Environmental Justice in the Americas 
David Vazquez and Judith Vega, Sarah Wald, Analisa Taylor, Pedro Garcia-Caro
Chair: David Vazquez

3:10 – 4:30 PM Roundtable (Browsing Room)
“Art, Migration, and Political Activism: Caribbean and Pacific Islander Migrants in the Pacific”
(SPONSORS: Department of Ethnic Studies and Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics)
Panelists:  Judith Sierra-Rivera, JoAnna Poblete, Philipp Carrasco, Ileana Rodriguez Silva, Joyce Pualani Warren
Chair: Alai Reyes-Santos

4:40PM – 5:40 PM  Plenary Session (Browsing Room)
“Latinx Communities: Questions, Challenges, and Transformations”
Monica Rojas, Laura Pulido, Ramona Hernández, Edwin Melendez
Chair: Gerardo Sandoval

6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (Gerlinger Alumni Lounge)
Riffiando: Dominican Artists in the House! A Talk/Reading/Performance
Josefina Baez, Ana-Maurine Lara, and Ernesto Lara
Coordinator: Ana-Maurine Lara

Light Dinner/Reception

Sponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies (CLLAS); Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics; UO College of Arts and Sciences; The Office of the Provost; Center for the Study of Women in Society; Latin American Studies program; Department of English; Department of Romance Languages; Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of Anthropology; Department of Ethnic Studies; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; School of Journalism and Communications; Department of Philosophy; and the Global Studies Institute.