Latin American Studies Forum
3rd Latin American Studies Forum
Thursday, March 3, 2022
10:00 – 11:30 Latinx Linguistic Special Session
Virtual Event • Reserve your Spot
12:00 – 1:30 Student Presentations
Miller Hall • Collaborative Space
12:00 – 1:30 Academic Advising
Study Abroad ~ LAS Program
Miller Hall • Collaborative Space
2:30 – 3:30 Round Table • Miller Hall 131
Hispanic, Latinx, Latine, Latinche,
Latino, Chicanx. How we call ourselves?
3:30 – 4:00 Coffee and Refreshments
Miller Hall 223C
4:00 – 5:30 Keynote Address • Miller Hall 138
Dr. Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva
Cimarrón Citizenship: Luis Felipe Dessús
and Afro-Puerto Rican Middle-Class Politics
in Early Twentieth Century.
Sponsored by
Department of Linguistics • American Cultural Studies • Department of Modern
and Classical Languages • Department of History • College of Humanities
and Social Sciences • Latin American Studies Program
Latinx Linguistics Special Session
Landscaping the Linguistic of University Campuses as a Culturally Sustaining Practice. A Linguistic Social Justice Issue
Virtual Event. Thursday, March 3. 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. (PT)
• Presenting: Dr. Michelle Ramos Pellicia
California State University San Marcos
• Respondent: Dr. Rodolfo Mata
Western Washington University
• Moderator: Dr. Sheryl Bernardo-Hinesley
Western Washington University
Free online event
The aims of this session are:
• to define linguistic landscaping and its applied uses within our discipline.
• to establish the connection between linguistic landscaping and culturally sustaining practices.
• to consider the implications of such practices in the linguistic social justice work.
Various cases of renaming of university campus buildings, the history behind them, processes, and community advocacy will be examined. In addition, past and present impacts of naming practices will be explored.
From Bayamón, Puerto Rico, Dr. Michelle Ramos Pellicia earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from The Ohio State University. At California State University San Marcos, she teaches courses on sociolinguistics, Spanish in the United States, Spanish in the US Southwest, Spanish Dialectology, teaching methodologies, Spanish for heritage speakers, among other courses. She is the author of: Language Contact and Dialect Contact: Crossgenerational Phonological Variation in a Puerto Rican Community in the Midwest of the United States, and the co-author with Dr. Patricia Gubitosi of The Linguistic Landscape in the Spanish-speaking World in press with John Benjamins. Her scholarly articles appear in Latino Studies, International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest, Confluencias, and Modern Language Journal. She is the co-founder of University without Borders, a collective which she currently co-chairs. She is a board member of the Undocumented People Rise in Solidarity and Empowerment. She is the California Faculty Association CSUSM E-Board Chapter President, as well as the Co-Chair of the California Faculty Association Chicanx/Latinx Statewide Caucus.
Student Presentations
Thursday, March 3, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Miller Hall • Collaborative Space
Pizza, fruits, cookies, and coffee will be served!
• Latinx Student Union (LSU)
• Indigenizing the Nation: Indigenous Aesthetics and Popular Culture
in 20th Century Latin America
Katrisha Andrade, Trevor Ortega, Anthony Ray, Julian Pritchard
• The Roots of Narcocorridos in Mexico
Rylie Carter, Connor Roble, Ana López Merino
• Origins and Cultural Significance of Vallenato Music
Atziry Torres Benito, Reed Chesnek, Kaitlyn Barnack, Megan Fritz
• Pulque and its Relationship to Racial Development in Mexico
Lupita Hernández Rodríguez, Jessica Jiménez, Natalia Guillén, Etta McDowell
• The Trans Community Network of Colombia: Creative Resistance
and Inclusive Community in Colombia
Kenzie Kesling, Hayden Lacoste, Sylvia Cohen, Maddie Gard
• The Mysterious Kidnappings of Ayotzinapa
Cyntia Castro, Eric García Ramírez, Dichali Nash
• Lead Artists of the Mexican Revolution:
The Murals of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros
Anna Brinkerkoff, Elinor Serumgard, Madeline Luck
• Festival of the Sun in South America: Past and Present
Javin Morrison, Anna Hedrick, Nora Wilson y Madeline Scholten
• When Art and Social Justice Combine:
The Venezuelan Artist Cristóbal Rojas
Savannah Hastings, MacKenzie Crawford, Soledad Bernal, Davin Rose
• The Return of Socialism in Latin America in the Twenty-first Century
Logan Ruch, Della Dimuzio, Beatrice King
• When Mayan Food and Rituals come to Life: The Tortilla and Pulque
Stephanie Hernández, Adrián Ortega, Olga Murillo
• Art as Protest and Identity on the Border Between the US and Mexico
Sylvia Sloan, Cara Doyle, Ray Murphy, Eric Guizar
• Sun, Rain, Night, and Life of Aztec Mythology
Etta McDowell, Cannon Walker, Kaitlyn Jones, Isabelle Graham
• Latinx Communities through Muralism in the United States
Leia Kaminsky, Sarah Massie, Valerie Chung, Fiona Martínez
• Moros y Cristianos: The History of Colonization in Cuba
Through the Lens of Food
Aleah Church-Houck, Ethan Nishi, Jaidan Reynolds-Suber, Mads Hall
• Historical Folklore and Modern Influences on the Carnival of
Oruro, Bolivia
Cherise Russo, Lily Morris, Alex Zahajko, Grace Simantel
• Modern Relationships in Costa Rica through Biodiversity,
Ecotourism, and Scientific Advancements
Amanda Jackson, Bianca Custer, Leanne Kibbee
Study Abroad in Latin America
Study Abroad Advising
Thursday, March 3, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Miller Hall • Collaborative Space
WWU offers many affordable study abroad and internship opportunities in Latin America including Faculty Led Programs, Exchange Programs, Internships, Study Abroad Programs, and Service Learning!
Meet with Hannah Nevitt to talk about scholarships, financial aid, and program options that would best fit your personal, academic, and language goals.
Hannah Nevitt
General Study Abroad Advising
How close are you to fulfill a Major
in the Latin American Studies Program?
Academic Advising
Thursday, March 3, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Miller Hall • Collaborative Space
Interdisciplinary in nature, the Program offers a rich set of courses,
preparing students to not only have an in-depth understanding
of Latinx and Latin American histories, cultures, politics, sociologies,
and languages, but also to explore Latinx cultures and Latin America’s
connections with a globalized world.
Focusing on Latin American Studies pairs well as second major to almost any degree program.
Round Table
Hispanic, Latinx, Latine, Latinche, Latino, Chicanx.
How we call ourselves?
Thursday, March 3. 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Miller Hall 131
WWU Participants:
• Yaileen Gonzalez Gutierrez
Latinx Student Union
• Daniela Reyes
Latinx Student Union
• Daisy Padilla
Woodring College
• Dr. Rodolfo Mata
Modern and Classical Languages
• Moderator: Dr. Angela Fillingim
Fairhaven College
This round table aims to explore the intersections of identities, labels, and practices. In this context: How do you identify and why? What are the politics of this label? How do systems identify and label you? How does this impact you? How can we use labels and identities to stand in solidarity and agitate for transformation?
Keynote Address
Thursday, March 3, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Miller Hall 138
Cimarrón Citizenship: Luis Felipe Dessús
and Afro-Puerto Rican Middle-Class Politics
in Early Twentieth Century
Dr. Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva
This talk is part of an on-going research project that seeks to unearth Afro-Puerto Rican theorizations and practices at the turn-of-the twentieth century about freedom, sovereignty, humanism, and democracy. The main focus
of this meditation is the work of the journalist-politician-artist Luis Felipe Dessús as a window into the doings of a group of Afro-Puerto Rican middle-class intellectuals in pursuit of civil rights in Puerto Rico during the first phase of US colonial rule. More specifically, it explores the elaboration of radical mestizaje as a racialized historical narrative and identity grounded in African ancestry and slavery as the critical foundation to anticolonial mobilization in Puerto Rico.
Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Washington-Seattle. She also serves as the Director of the Undergraduate Program in the History Department. Rodríguez-Silva's research focuses on race-making in the Americas, racial identity formation, abolition and post-emancipation racial politics, and comparative colonial arrangements in the configuration of empires. Rodríguez-Silva’s book Silencing Blackness: Disentangling Race, Colonial Regimes, and National Struggles in Post-Emancipation Puerto Rico, 1850-1920 (Palgrave, 2012) received the 2012-2014 Frank Bonilla Book Award for Best Book on Puerto Rican Studies. She has published several book chapters and articles, some of which you can find in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Positions: Asia Critique, NACLA, and Modern American History. Rodríguez is currently working on a book project titled Cimarrón Citizenship: Reconstituting the Black Middle Class of Early Twentieth Century Puerto Rico.