SSGA/Philosophy and Memory/RSA Symposium

Since the month of April is fast approaching, I wanted to make an early announcement about the first international conference on the work and life of Chicana rhetor, theorist, and escritora Gloria E. Anzaldua. The conference will be hosted at the University of Texas at San Antonio on May 14-17, 2009 by the Society for the Study of Gloria E. Anzaldua. The profile for SSGA can be found both on Facebook and MySpace. This will surely be an important event!

Also, I wanted to feature the homepage of John Sutton, a researcher on memory who has compiled a good set of links for any researcher on memoria. Sutton is a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney and author of Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionsim--which is also featured on his homepage. His webpage also features some other good links about the interdisciplinary study on memory, which I think are worthy of attention. 

Next week, I will be presenting a part of the second chapter of my dissertation at the RSA Symposium at UTEP. In particular, I will talk about the trajectory of memoria throughout the history of Western rhetoric and also include a discussion about the use of memory among ethnic rhetors such as Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua. If I feel comfortable, I may post some pictures of the event here. I will definitely include a summary of the event, so stay tuned.

First International Conference on Gloria E. Anzaldua

The SSGA (Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua) is currently seeking proposals for papers, panels of 3-4 papers, roundtables, workshops, or performances for its First International Conference on the work and life of Gloria E. Anzaldúa on the fifth anniversary of her passing.

We welcome proposals involving all facets of Anzaldúa's life and work. The following tracks are merely suggested conceptual groupings for panel and performance presentations:

· BORDERS—explorations of border theory, borderlands ethos and other concepts of Anzaldúan thought focused on this key concept of her work
· QUEER STUDIES—el mundo zurdo and the atravesados, key to Anzaldúa's thinking and application of her philosophical work
· EDUCATION—pedagogical concerns surrounding her literary and philosophical works. Some questions that may arise: what are some challenges of teaching Anzaldúa? How does Anzaldúa's thought apply to teaching?
· INTERNATIONAL AND TRANSFRONTERA—The effects of globalization and market economies on culture. What is the status of Anzaldúa studies at the international level?
· SPIRITUALITY—Explorations of Anzaldúa's spiritual teachings. How can we heal the earth and ourselves?

Guidelines
Proposals must include the following:
· 250-word proposal narrative
· 100-word abstract suitable for publication in the conference program book
· Submissions for Panels must include proposals and abstracts for each paper and the name, address, phone number(s), e-mail address, and institutional affiliation of each participant
· Audio/visual needs
· Contact person's name, address, phone number(s), e-mail address, and institutional affiliation

All materials must be electronically date-stamped by February 15, 2009. Proposers will be notified of acceptance by March 15, 2009.

Questions about the submission process may be sent to:
gloria.anzaldua.society@gmail.com

Tribute: Gloria E. Anzaldua

"Anzaldua's discourse embodies a set of proofs that transcends dualisms by embracing multiple understandings." 

Lisa Ede, Cheryl Glenn, and Andrea Lunsford

Anzaldua List of Publications

For a long time, I have been wanting to post a strong list of publications by and about Gloria E. Anzaldua. Now, as my final selection, I have decided to post the list featured in "Voices from the Gaps". Check it out:

Books

Interviews/Entrevistas with AnaLouise Keating, ed. (2000)
La Prieta (1997)
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Prietita and the Ghost Woman / Prietita y La Llorona (1996)
Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del otra lado (1993)
Prietita Has a Friend / Prietita tiene un Amigo (1991)

• Anthologies
  • Lloronas, Women Who Howl: Autohistorias-Torias and the Production of Writing, Knowledge, and Identity. 1996.
  • with Moraga, Cherrie, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Massachussets: Persephone Press, 1981.
  • Making Face, Making Soul/Hacieno Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990.
  • Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Lore. London, Herdon, VA :Cassell Academic, 1998.

• Secondary Sources

• Alarcín, Norma. "Anzaldías Frontera: Inscribing Gynetics." Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader. Ed. Gabriela F. Arredondo, Aida Hurado, Norma Klahn, Olba Nijera-Ramirez, and Patricia Zavella. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003.
• Aldama, Arturo J. Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Native American Struggles for Self-Representation. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2001.
• Barnard, Ian. "Gloria Anzaldua's Queer Mestisaje." MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 22 (1997): 35-53.
• Blom, Gerdien. "Divine Individuals, Cultural Identities: Post-Identitarian Representations and Two Chicana/o Texts." Thamyris: Mythmaking from Past to Present 4 (1997): 295-324.
• Branche, Jerome. "Anzaldua: El ser y la nacion." Entorno 34 (1995): 39-44.
• Concannon, Kevin. "The Contemporary Space of the Border: Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands and William Gibson's Neuromancer." Textual Practice 12 (1998): 429-42.
• Dizon, Terrell. "Forum on Literatures of the Environment." PMLA 114 (1999): 1903-4.
• Fowlkes, Diane. "Moving from Feminist Identity Politics to Coalition Politics through a Feminist Materialist Standpoint of Intersubjectivity in Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza." Hypatia 12 (1997): 105-24.
• Gagnier, Regenia. "Review Essay: Feminist Autobiography in the 1980's." Feminist Studies 17 (1991): 135-139.
• Hall, Lynda. "Writing Selves Home at the Crossroads: Anzaldua and Chrystos (re) Configure Lesbian Bodies." Ariel 30 (1999): 99-117.
• Hedley, Jane. "Nepantilist Poetics: Narrative and Cultural Identity in the Mixed-Language Writings of Irena Klepfisz and Gloria Anzaldua." Narrative 4 (1996): 36-54.
• Ikas, Karin Rosa. Chicana Ways: Conversations with Ten Chicana Writers. Reno, NV: U of Nevada P, 2002.
• Kaup, Monika. "Constituting Hybridity as Hybrid: Métis Canadian and Mexican American Formations." Mixing Race, Mixing Culture: Inter-American Literary Dialogues. Ed. Monika Kaup and Debra J. Rosenthal. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 2002.
• Keating, AnaLouise. "Myth Smashers, Myth Makers: (Re) Visionary Techniques in the Works of Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua, and Audre Lorde." Critical Essays: Gay and Lesbian Writers of Color. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. New York: Haworth, 1993. 73-95.
• ---. "Writing Politics, and las Lesberadas: Platicando con Gloria Anzaldua." Frontiers 14 (1993): 105-129.
• ---. Women Reading Women Writing: Self-Invention in Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldua and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.
• ---, ed. Gloria E. Anzaldua: Interviews/Entrevistas. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000.
• Lomeli, Francisco and Carl Shirley, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Chicano Writers. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.
• Lopez, Iraida H. "Autobiographical Narratives in Latino America: A Hemispheric Context." Ciberletras 7 (2002).
• Lugones, Maria. "On Borderlands/La Frontera: An Interpretive Essay." Hypatia 7 (1992): 31-37.
• Murphy, Patrick. "Grandmother Borderland: Placing Identity and Ethnicity." Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 1 (1993): 35-41.
• Oliver Rotger, Ma Antonia. 'Sangre Fértil'/Fertile Blood: Migratory Crossings, War and Healing in Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera." Dressing Up for War: Transformations of Gender and Genre in the Discourse and Literature of War. Ed. Aranzazu Usandizaga and Andrew Monnickendam. Rodopi Perspectives on Modern Literature 24. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2001.
• Perles Rochel, Juan Antonio. "Revisiting the Borderlands: A Critical Reading of Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: Towards a New Mextiza." Evolving Origins, Transplanting Cultures: Literary Legacies of the New Americas. Ed. Laura P. Alonso Gallo and Antonia Dominguez Miguela. Hulva, Spain: Universidad de Huelva, 2002.
• Ramos, Juanita. "Gloria E. Anzaldua." Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States: a bio-bibliographical sourcebook. Eds. Sandra Pollack and Denise D. Knight. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. 19-25.
• Steele, Cassie Premo. We Heal from Witness: Sexton, Lourde, Anzaldua, and the Poetry of Witness. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
• Torres, Lourdes and Inmaculada Pertusa, eds. Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2003.
• Wright, Melissa. "Maquiladora Mestizas and a Feminist Border Politics: Revisiting Anzaldua." Hypatia 13 (1998): 114-131.
• Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. "Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: Cultural Studies, 'Difference,' and the Non-Unitary Subject." Cultural Critique. 28 (1994): 5-28.

Also, visit the following sites/articles/web pages which need to be part of your Gloria Anzaldua bookmarks!

Classicdykes.com features a tribute to Gloria E. Anzaldua (1942-2004)

Rest in Peace Gloria

Voices from the Gaps: Gloria E. Anzaldua

San Francisco Chronicle Article about Gloria E. Anzaldua

Gloria Anzaldua article on "Queering Diabetes"

Quote of the Day

“Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.”

Gloria E. Anzaldua (1942-2004)

Gloria Anzaldua on MySpace

Gloria E. Anzaldua has gone beyond the confines of academe and has been immortalized in cyberspace through a special tribute titled "Gloria Anzaldua Legacy Project," a MySpace web page that features photos of the late Chicana lesbiana author, poeta, theorist and activist. Also, the page features several of her publications as well as tributes held in her honor. Please take a moment to visit the page and provide comments or check out the beautiful photographs of a recent tribute to Anzaldua featuring Anzaldua's familia and a reading by Chicana poeta and activista Emmy Perez, whose blog--Ysleta Poeta--features some of the most beautiful photographs that inspire and motivate you to continue appreciating the gift of flowers, earth, sun, moon and air. I miss you Emmy.

Remembering Sin Fronteras/Without Borders

Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua are two rhetors whose rhetorical works will receive much attention in my dissertation on memory.

To date, Andrea Lunsford has provided scholars within our field an illuminating interview with Anzaldua wheareas Patricia Bizzell has written articles about the works of Frederick Douglass, as well as writing an introduction to the rhetorical works by Douglass and Anzaldua in The Rhetorical Tradition with Bruce Herzberg.

In talking about and remembering Gloria Anzaldua, I'm always searching for the ways in which scholars, activists, and writers remember her presence in their lives and the impression her work made on up and coming scholars in various fields/disciplines.

Shortly after the death of Anzaldua, Chicana historian Yolanda Chavez Leyva wrote a memorial tribute to Anzaldua as a way to remember someone who inspired Chavez Leyva to become an activist. Here, "activist" refers to the commitment to giving back to one's community instead of only thinking of the self in isolation.

There can be no doubt that this article further reinforced the argument that Anzaldua remains a critical figure in the Mexicana/Chicana rhetorical tradition, which has been eloquently advocated by rhetoric scholar Jessica Enoch in her article "Para La Mujer: Defining a Chicana Feminist Rhetoric at the Turn of the Century".

In remembering Anzaldua, Chavez Leyva writes:

"She loved words. She loved learning. She loved teaching. She became an avid reader as a child and a prolific writer as an adult. She worked with migrant farm worker children in the 1960s and university students from then on." (21)

There can be no doubt that Anzaldua gave back and, to date, continues to exemplify the term "activist" for the rest of us engaged in writing/escritura.

The aspects of Anzaldua's writing that I wish to explore at this point is how she used new age concepts and brought them to the act of writing. I am also interested in learning how she fused the spiritual with the act of using words in writing. I'm also drawn to the way that Anzaldua blended the spiritual and the political. All of these interests are driving my research and is the basis of a new collection of essays I am collecting on the impression that her work has had on my thinking as a citizen of El Mundo Zurdo.

(article above courtesy of "The Progressive")

Gloria E. Anzaldua & Frederick Douglass -- New Blog Coming Soon...

I've decided to create another blog with another provider in order to center my attention on the relation between rhetoric, history and memory within and through the works of Frederick Douglass and Gloria E. Anzaldua--two rhetors whose work I'm examining in my dissertation.

So stay tuned!

Douglass Photograph Info:

Samuel J. Miller (American; ?– 1888).Frederick Douglass, 1847/52. Daguerreotype; 14 x 10.6 cm(5 1/2 x 4 1/8 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Major

Douglass Photo Courtesy of: "Museum Studies, The Art Institute's Journal"

Anzaldua Photo Courtesy of: GEA Poster