By María Victoria Muñoz and Enrique Muñoz-Mantas
The symposium Latin America Writes Back 2.0: Political and Climate Crisis was the reprise, 15 years later, of 2005’s Latin American Writes Back, a symposium that brought together authors and scholars from Latin America and the United States to share their thoughts about political and environmental crises in science fiction. This year’s workshop also fostered several interactions between authors and audience that made the post-presentation discussions ever richer. We as graduate students enormously appreciate this opportunity, as we don’t usually have the chance to meet the human beings behind the texts we read in class. We thank the organization and especially our sterling professor, M. Elizabeth Ginway, for bringing together top-notch writers and scholars, such as David Dalton, J. Andrew Brown, Alfredo Suppia, Emily Maguire, Pablo Brescia, Gabriela Damián Miravete, Giovanna Rivero, and Edmundo Paz Soldán.
Listening to each presentation, and the ensuing Q&As, was an enriching experience that will help us expand our horizons as graduate students and as developing scholars. Congratulations to everyone involved in making this a fantastic event!
(Photos by María Victoria Muñoz)
Thursday, October 21, 2021
4 – 5:30 p.m.
Reading by Gabriela Damián Miravete, in Spanish and English translation. (Link to the story “Soñarán en el jardín,” in both Spanish and English, which won the 2019 Tiptree Award)
Moderator: Andrea Villa Ruiz (UF SPS)
Friday, October 22, 2021
8:30 – 10 a.m.
Opening remarks by M. Elizabeth Ginway (UF SPS) and Terry Harpold (UF English)
J. Andrew Brown, “Science Fiction in Latin America: The State of the Discipline Since 2005.” Moderator: Terry Harpold (UF English)
10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
NB: Virtual Presentations. Alfredo Suppia, “Ecodystopia and Climate Change in Brazilian Cinema”; Emily Maguire: “Imagining a Caribbean (Post)Apocalypse: The Case of Habana Underguater.”
2 – 3:30 p.m.
David Dalton, “The Cyborg Virgin and Childhood Cancer in Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints”
Pablo Brescia, “Dispatches from the Technological (Post)human: the TransAmerican Anxiety of Progress”
Moderator: Emily Hind (UF SPS)
4 – 5:30 p.m.
Roundtable on “Writing Climate Change and Political Crisis,” with Gabriela Damián Miravete, Giovanna Rivero, and Edmundo Paz Soldán
Moderator: Antonio Sajid López (UF SPS)
6 -7:30 p.m.
Closing Keynote Address: Edmundo Paz Soldán
Moderator: M. Elizabeth Ginway
Return to the Fall/Winter 2021 newsletter.