On Monday, February 13th, Dr. Evelyn Soto will present a talk titled "What is Early Latinx Literature?”
Reception to follow
Abstract: Does Latinx literature begin in the 20th century? Or is a Latinx literary tradition made possible in 1848, when the U.S. acquired—by conquest of war and treaty—a swath of Mexican territory? This talk goes back even further in time, to the first attempts at Spanish American independence in 1806 and 1816, and to an early Latinx archive consisting of diplomatic letters and subversive rumors by creole and Haitian revolutionaries. In so doing, I aim to amplify the usual disciplinary limits of contemporary Latinx Studies and to theorize the textual forms of a Latinx political past. From a pre-twentieth-century vantage point, I argue that subversive efforts across the Americas—whether Caribbean or continental South American—appear in these early Latinx archives as densely interconnected sites of political imagination rather than completely discrete zones. These earlier archives also open the study of latinidad beyond the familiar terms and timelines of U.S. intervention.
Bio: Dr. Evelyn Soto holds a BA from Cornell University and an MA/PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Across her research and teaching, she brings together American literary studies, Latinx studies, and comparative histories of race to examine how hemispheric geopolitics fundamentally underpin cultural and literary production throughout the long nineteenth-century and beyond. She is currently completing a first book manuscript titled Tainted Translations: Early Latinx Political Imaginaries and Trans-American Empire. The manuscript has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies and Mellon Foundation programs. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Latinx Literature in Transition, Histories and Cultures of Latinas, and the C19 Podcast series, among others.