Event Details

Ariana E. Vigil is Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She specializes in contemporary Latinx literature and cultural production. She is the author of War Echoes: Gender and Militarization in U.S. Latina/o Cultural Production (2014), Understanding Francisco Goldman (2018) and Public Negotiations: Gender and Journalism in Latina/o Literature (2019).

This presentation highlights recent work in Chicanx/Latinx literature and literary studies that has sought to move beyond and outside existing constraints and boundaries pertaining to gender, nation, and ethnicity. The adoption of the “x” in lieu of either the masculine-gendered “o” (i.e. Latino, Chicano) or the inclusive but binaristic “a/o” (Latina/o, Chicana/o) reflects just one iteration of this movement.

The talk also introduces contemporary writers who are moving outside of traditional categories of race, nation, and ethnicity. Recent years have seen the publication of literary works by authors whose identity includes multiple nation-based categories as well as those who place themselves within alternative genealogies and diaspora.

Exploring and situating these works within the larger trajectory of Chicanx/Latinx literature and scholarship, this talk draws attention to these new iterations and explains their significance in relation to other intellectual, social, and political developments.