Panel Discussion: Looking Out for the Queer

Date: 

Saturday, April 7, 2018, 9:30am to 1:30pm

Location: 

CGIS South, S030, 1730 Cambridge Street

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Keynote Speaker: Sylvia Molloy. 

This panel discussion is part of Looking Out for the Queer in Latin American Film and Video Art, a series organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Art Program (ARTS@DRCLAS) during the academic year 2017-2018. The initiative as a whole responds to interest in the study of non-normative sexualities in the Latin American region, the experiences of its LGBTQ inhabitants, and the social movements there that focus on gender and sexuality. Co-curated by Sergio Delgado Moya, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Joaquin S. Terrones, Lecturer in Literature and Women's and Gender Studies at MIT.

In addition to the panel discussion, the Looking out for the Queer series includes a video art exhibition and a film series. Using both the video art exhibition and the film series as starting points, the speakers will discuss the representation of queer bodies and subjectivities in contemporary Latin American visual art and film. In particular, participants will consider the interplay between Latin American visuality and queer visibility, surveillance and spectacle, artistic production and activism.


9:30 am Welcome Coffee
9:50-10:00am Opening Remarks by DRCLAS - Professor Sergio Delgado Moya and Joaquin S. Terrones
10.00-10:45am Keynote Lecture by Sylvia Molloy: Translation as Queer Practice; A Personal Story 
10:45-10:55am Q&A
10:55-11:05am Special Poetry Reading by Harvard Undergraduate student, Ming Li Wu: "Lengua" and "To Artist from Poet"
11:05-12:35pm Panel Discussion on Film and Video Art
Moderated roundtable with co-curators and guest speakers: Gabriela Rangel (Americas Society, NY), Carl Fischer (Fordham University, NY), Jose Gatti (Centro Universitário Senac and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil)
12:35-1:00pm Closing Remarks and Q&A
1:00 pm Lunch Reception


Sylvia Molloy is an Argentine writer and critic who has taught at Princeton, Yale and NYU, from where she retired in 2011. At NYU she held the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities. She is the author of two novels: En común olvido (2002). She has also written two short prose pieces, Varia imaginación (2003) and Desarticulaciones (2010). Her critical work includes La Diffusion de la littérature hispano-américaine en France au XXe siècle (1972), Las letras de Borges (1979), At Face Value: Autobiographical Writing in Spanish America (1991), Poses de fin de siglo. Desbordes del género en la modernidad(2013), and edited volumes such as Hispanisms and Homosexualities (1998) and Poéticas de la distancia. Adentro y afuera de la literatura argentina (2006). She has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She has served as President of the Modern Language Association of America and of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana and holds an honorary degree in humane letters from Tulane University.


Gabriela Rangel is a Venezuelan curator, critic and writer based in New York. Rangel holds an M.A. in curatorial studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, an M.A. in media and communications studies from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, and a B.A. in film studies from the International Film School at San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. She is the Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions on the work of Silvia Gruner, Marta Minujín, Gego, Gordon Matta Clark, Xul Solar, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Juan Downey, and Dias & Riedweg, among others. Rangel also contributed to exhibition catalogues and periodicals on topics related to the critical revision of modernisms in Latin America such as ParkettArt in America, Trans, and Art Nexus.
Carl Fischer is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Fordham Univesity's Modern Languages and Literatures Department.  He is also affiliated with Fordham's Latin American and Latino Studies Institute (LALSI). His research focuses on how Chile’s rhetoric of economic exceptionalism relates to how models of gender identity and performance are constructed and disputed in the country’s literature and visual arts. His monograph, Queering the "Chilean Way": Cultures of Exceptionalism and Sexual Dissidence was published in 2016. Other research interests include popular culture, translation studies, queer studies, and critical theories of politics and economics. Before studying for his PhD, he spent several years working as a translator for the Chilean government. He has published articles on Andrés Neuman, Patricio Guzmán, Roberto Bolaño, Pedro Lemebel, and José Donoso.
Jose Gatti teaches at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. He holds a PhD in Cinema Sutdies from New York University and has published books and articles on the politics of representation in audiovisual media. He was one of the founders and president of Socine — Brazilian Society for Cinema and Audiovisual Studies.
Ming Li Wu is a queer Chinese-Puerto Rican poet from Huntsville, Alabama, by way of Reno, Nevada. They are currently a first-year undergraduate at Harvard College. Ming Li’s poetry covers a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on intersectional identities and the visceral physicality of identity-driven tension. In the past, they’ve performed at events such as the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, the National YoungArts Foundation New York Regional Program, and TEDxUniversityofNevada. Earlier this year, several of their pieces were displayed in video form in Marca X, a related exhibit of Boston-area LGBTQIA Latinx artists. 

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