The Latino Literary Cultures Project/ Proyecto culturas literarias latinas
an initiative of the The Chicano/Latino Research Center presents a multimedia symposium
¿Qué hay de nuevo? New Latino Discourses
Friday, April 16, 2010
2 – 6 pm, Kresge Town Hall
Frank Espinosa, animator and cartoonist
Juan B. Gutiérrez, hypertext novelist
Daniel Hernandez, journalist & blogger
Dolores Inés Casillas, scholar of radio & sound
New forms of literacy and attention in the digital age have spurred artists to rethink the relationship of text to visual and sound media, as well as their relationship to audiences who are “reading” their work in ever-changing ways. The inventive language practices of many Latinas and Latinos who intermingle English and Spanish have further stretched the traditional boundaries of the literary. This event brings together four multimedia artists and scholars working across the realms of creative expression and technological innovation.
Program
2:00 Welcome, opening remarks: Kirsten Silva Gruesz (Literature, UCSC)
2:15-3:30 First panel, moderated by Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal (Literature, UCSC):
• Daniel Hernandez: “Bending Geographies: Blogging from Far and Near”
• D. Inés Casillas: “House Calls: US Spanish-language Radio and the Politics of Health”
3:30-3:45 Break
3:45-5:00 Second panel, moderated by Jennifer Gonzalez (History of Art & Visual Culture, UCSC)
• Juan B. Gutiérrez: “The Triumph of the Giant Deaf Ear: How New Media is Changing Literary Practice”
• Frank Espinosa: “Rocketo and Its Hidden Sea”
5:00-5:30 Roundtable discussion led by Juan Poblete (Literature, UCSC) & Catherine Ramírez (American Studies, UCSC)
5:30-6:00 Reception and book signing
Copies of both volumes of Rocketo: Journey to the Hidden Sea will be available for purchase and signing. Event parking permits available for purchase at the Kresge College lot.
Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by Kresge College, the Latinos in Global Context research cluster, and El Centro.
Frank Espinosa is author/illustrator of the award-winning fantasy comic series Rocketo (Image Comics), set on a post-apocalyptic earth in which new continents beg to be mapped. A Cuban-American raised in New York City, he has worked as an animator for Disney and Warner Bros. and designed the Looney Tunes postage stamps. He teaches character and world design at MIT.
Juan B. Gutiérrez is a systems architect and biomedical mathematician who wrote the first hypertext novels in Spanish, El primer vuelo de los Hermanos Wright (The First Flight of the Wright Brothers) and Condiciones extremas (Extreme Conditions), which received awards in his native Colombia. They are available in Spanish and English on the hypertext authoring platform he developed, Literatronic, which learns intelligently from readers’ choices to produce distinctive narratives.
Daniel Hernandez is a journalist with roots in San Diego/Tijuana, now based in Mexico City. His bilingual blog Intersections covers all forms of cultural production and “the intersections that exist between art, society, the sublime, and the streets.” Daniel has been an award-winning staff reporter at the LA Times and LA Weekly and has contributed commentaries to NPR, The Guardian in the U.K., and El País in Spain. He is completing a non-fiction book on Mexico City, The Lake of Fire.
Dolores Inés Casillas, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, studies Spanish-language radio in the US along with other radio and sound practices, as well as the cultural meanings of language diversity.
For more information, contact Kirsten Silva Gruesz.