ALS Faculty and Graduate Students attended, presented, and participated in the 54th Annual Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This year, the conference featured a reading by Luci Tapahonso and a lecture titled, “The Other New Mexico: Reveries, Reflections, Rants” by Denise Chávez. The event was co-sponsored by the UNM English Department, the Center for Regional Studies, and the Institute for American Indian Research, which announced its first annual Luci Tapahonso Distinguished Indigenous Speakers Series.
Luci Tapahonso is the first Navajo Poet Laureate and an alumna of our undergraduate program (BA, 1980) as well as a retired Professor of Creative Writing. Tapahonso was presented with the Distinguished Achievement Award and was a speaker in the Distinguished Indigenous Speaker Series, a series that brought together Indigenous scholars and intellectuals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences to share their perspectives on Indigenous issues.
Denise Chávez is a celebrated Chicana writer and alumna of our department (MA, 1984) who received an honorary doctorate from UNM (2004). Along with these two high-profile writers, faculty, graduate students, and alumnae in American Literary Studies were amongst those attending and presenting papers on the theme, “Palimpsests and Western Literatures: The Layered Spaces of History Imagination, and the Future.”
Amy Gore, ALS PhD alumna (2019), who is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at North Dakota State University, organized the panel, “Joaquin Murieta Across Borders,” where she presented, “Violent Bibliography and the Transnational Legacy of Ridge’s Murieta;” and ALS Professor, Jesse Alemán presented, “The Rinaldo Rinaldini of California: Global Print Culture and the Making of Joaquin Murieta.”
Erin Murrah-Mandril, ALS PhD alumna (2014) and Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Texas, Arlington, presented, “Mapping Latinx Political Autobiography in the U.S.” Murrah-Mandril’s book, In the Mean Time: The Temporal Colonization of Mexican America (U Nebraska, 2021) will be released in paperback next year.
A. Laurie Lowrance, ALS PhD alumna (2021) and currently a faculty member in the English Department at Cisco College, presented, “Adina de Zavala’s Scrapbooks: Rewriting and Repurposing the Alamo as Domestic Space” in the session, “Imagining Otherwise: Women Righting the West.”
Sarah Hernandez, ALS Assistant Professor, organized a panel, “Readings and Counter-Readings of Oceti Sakowin Land and Cultural Sustainment Narratives,” where she presented, “Missionary Colonizers and the Politics of the Printing Press,” in the session, “Readings and Counter-Readings of Oceti Sakowin Land and Cultural Sustainment Narratives;” and RW Lecturer, Julie Newmark presented, “Charles Alexander Eastman and Presence, Absence, and Resistance” and “Reports and Official Correspondence.”
ALS Associate Professor, Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán organized the panel, “Chicana Palimpsests: Creativity and Critical Inquiry” where she presented, “Chicana Letters: Writing Back, Con Safos;” UNM alumna, Dr. Karen Roybal, Associate Professor at Colorado College presented, “Sabrina and Corina: Storytelling as an Act of Resistance against Displacement,” and second-year MA student, Kimberly Blake presented, “Ethnic, Feminist, Ecopoetics in Denise Chávez’s The Last of the Menu Girls.”
Vizcaíno-Alemán additionally chaired the session, “Historiography, Intertextuality, and Decolonial Approaches to Rudolfo Anaya’s Borderlands.”
Second-year ALS PhD Candidate, Brandy Reeves presented, “Deconstructing the Family in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories” in the session, “Coming of Age in the West.”
Altogether, the 54th Annual WLA featured the best and brightest of UNM’s American Literary Studies program, as well as the words and wisdom of its most influential and dynamic Chicana and Indigenous women writers.
Dr. Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán organized “Chicana Palimpsests: Creativity and Critical Inquiry,” which took place after Denise Chávez’s lecture, “The Other New Mexico: Reveries, Reflections, Rants.” Vizcaíno-Alemán introduced the effusive speaker, and Chávez attended the panel featuring UNM alumna Dr. Karen Roybal, Associate Professor at Colorado College, who presented “Sabrina and Corina: Storytelling as an Act of Resistance against Displacement.” Vizcaíno-Alemán presented “Chicana Letters: Writing Back, Con Safos,” and second-year MA student Kimberly Blake presented “Ethnic, Feminist, Ecopoetics in Denise Chávez’s The Last of the Menu Girls.” Also at the conference, second-year PhD student Brandy Reeves presented “Deconstructing the Family in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,” and first-year MA student Deanna Tenorio volunteered at the registration booth. Altogether, the 54th Annual WLA featured the best and brightest of UNM’s American Literary Studies program, as well as the words and wisdom of its most influential and dynamic Chicana and Indigenous women writers.
