Professor Rodriguez's talk comes from his in-progress book manuscript, Latina/o Literature Unbound. The project begins with a fundamental question that scholars all too often overlook, namely "What does it mean to label a work of literature or an entire corpus of literature Latina/o?" From this question a host of others spin out: What does that grouping allow us to see, predispose us to see, and preclude us from seeing? If the grouping—which brings together a heterogeneous collection of people and groups under a seemingly homogeneous label—tells us something meaningful, is there an aesthetic or poetics we can develop that would facilitate our analysis of this literature? In short, the book seeks to unbind Latina/o literature from taken-for-granted critical assumptions about its constituents and its goals. It wants us to take a breath and reflect on—to borrow a line from Raymond Carver—what it is we talk about when we talk about Latina/o literature. 

What I Am Thinking About Now is an on-going informal workshop/seminar series to which faculty and graduate students are invited to present and discuss recently published work and work in progress.