Latina/o Symposium

PROGRAM	PANELISTS	CONTACT INFORMATION & DIRECTIONS
- Panelists -

		Cristina Beltrán is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Haverford College where she specializes in modern and contemporary political theory, Latina/o politics, democratic theory, feminist theory, and American political thought. She is currently completing a book entitled Performing Unity: Latino Politics and the Pursuit of Visibility. Recent publications include “Patrolling Borders: Hybrids, Hierarchies and the Challenge of Mestizaje” in Political Research Quarterly (December 2004) and “From El Lector to the Nuyorican Poets Café: Walt Whitman and the Latino Poetic Tradition,” in Democratic Vistas Today: Walt Whitman and Political Theory, edited by John Seery (University Press of Kentucky, forthcoming).
		Arlene Dávila is Professor of cultural anthropology at New York University. She is particularly interested in popular culture, media, cities, and urban culture and is the author of many books including Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City (University of California Press, 2004), Latinos Inc.: Marketing and the Making of a People (University of California Press, 2001), Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, co-edited with Agustin Lao (Columbia University Press, 2001), and Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico (Temple University Press, 1997).
		Miguel Díaz-Barriga is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Swarthmore College. He has published widely on Mexican and Mexican American culture. His current research is on the U.S. Mexico border analyzes Mexican-American perceptions of the U.S. immigration debate.
		Margaret E. Dorsey is an anthropologist who studies the growing convergence of politics and marketing as it manifests through grassroots political practices, cultural practices, and race relations along the Texas-Mexican border. In her book, Pachangas: Borderlands Music, U.S. Politics, and Transnational Marketing (University of Texas Press 2006), Dorsey focuses on how national marketers and political parties incorporate Texas Mexican cultural practices into their marketing strategies. In addition, Dorsey studied Tex-Mex music as a vehicle of political and national level marketing campaigns. In her article in Latin American Music Review, Dorsey's attention to music focuses on sexuality and nation formation. Her article in Political Legal Anthropology Review explores the political economy of music and its role in constituting public culture. Currently, Dorsey is developing two research projects. One study--which includes an ethnographic film--explores the contributions of Tejana diva Linda Escobar, focusing on the challenges a female performer faces in a patriarchal industry. Dorsey's other project--developed with Miguel Díaz-Barriga--A Nation Divided: Immigration and Citizenship on the Border, analyzes underlying notions of citizenship that inform the current U.S. immigration debate. Their recent article in Journal of Black Studies explores Senator Obama's perspective on immigration reform. They base the larger research project on ethnographic case study of Mexican Americans on the Texas-Mexican border during the 2008 election. Dorsey earned her dual Ph.D. in Anthropology and Communication & Culture with an outside minor in Ethnomusicology & Folklore from Indiana University-Bloomington. Dorsey is Visiting Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.
		Astrid M. Fellner is Associate Professor of American Studies in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include Chicano/a literature, early American literature, feminist theory, Queer theory and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Articulating Selves: Contemporary Chicana Self-Representation (2002) and several articles in the fields of U.S. Latino/a literature, Gender Studies, and American Cultural Studies. Her book Bodily Sensations: The Female Body in Late-Eighteenth-Century American Culture will be published next year. She is the editor of Body Signs: The Body in Latino/a Cultural Production (2007). She is also the co-editor of (Anti-)Americanisms (2005). Currently, she is acting Vice-President of the Austrian Association for American Studies.
		Tamarinda Figueroa was raised with an appreciation for spoken word, as she was held under the wing of her poet father, Jose Angel Figueroa. As one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, he was able to expose her to a world most literary artists dream of. In 2003, she was invited to perform during Poets' Night, Grassroots Poetry Series, in New York City. Since then, she has not stopped writing. Tamarinda is the founder of Pulso Latino, the tri-co's Latin dance troupe, and is an executive board member for Mujeres.
		Lázaro Lima is Associate professor of Spanish and Latina/o Studies in the Department of Spanish at Bryn Mawr College. His research and teaching are grounded in Latina/o and Chicana/o studies, with particular emphasis in gender studies and critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and comparative ethnic studies. He is the author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American literary and Cultural Memory (New York University Press, 2007), and a forthcoming annotated anthology of contemporary Queer Latina/o writing he is co-editing with Violet Quill co-founder Felice Picano (Berkeley: Floricanto Press, 2008). He is currently working on a book that analyzes how the discourses of independence, colonialism, science, and feminism clashed in Puerto Rico after the contraceptive pill trials that were conducted on the island in the 1950s. His website can be found at www.lazarolima.com.
		Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Assistant Professor of American Cultures and Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan where he specializes in Latina/o studies; Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean studies; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; lesbian, gay, and Queer studies; and theater and performance. He was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and received his A.B. from Harvard College (1991) and MA and Ph.D. from Columbia University (1999). He is the author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and of Uñas Pintadas De Azul/Blue Fingernails (forthcoming, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2007). He was one of the co-editors of a special issue of CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies on Puerto Rican Queer Sexualities (19, no. 1 [Spring 2007]).
		Nicole López is a spoken-word poet and the President of Zami, an organization for Bryn Mawr's Queer Students of Color and their Allies.
		Heather Love is the M. Mark and Esther K. Watkins Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her A.B. from Harvard University in Literature and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in English. Her areas of interest include gender studies, the literature and culture of modernity, film, psychoanalysis, race and ethnicity, and critical theory. She is the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Harvard, 2007) and the co-editor of a special issue of New Literary History ("Is There Life after Identity Politics?"). She has recently published essays in GLQ, Grey Room, and Bad Modernisms (Duke), and she has essays forthcoming in New Formations, Gay Shame (Chicago), and Rethinking Tragedy (Johns Hopkins).
		Ricardo L. Ortíz is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University where he specializes in U.S. Latino/a Literatures and Cultures. He is also interested in teaching and research in "Américas" Studies; critical and cultural theory; cultural studies; intellectual history; gender and queer theory; popular culture. Most recently, he is the author of Cultural Erotics in Cuban America (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
		Sharon Ullman, Associate Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College, specializes in 20th-century America with an emphasis on popular culture and gender. She is the author of Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America (University of California Press, 1998). Her courses include such topics as the history of sexuality, the culture of the cold war, and film and national identity. She is currently researching the subject of brainwashing in cold war popular culture.

Bryn Mawr College . 101 N. Merion Avenue . Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899

by Oliva Cardona