A core component of CSREA’s mission is supporting the development of cutting-edge, collaborative, intellectual work. “What I Am Thinking About Now” is an informal workshop/seminar series where faculty and advanced students present recently published works and works in progress for early-stage feedback and development. See all of this semester’s WITAN events here.
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Malinche or Malintzin? Indigenous and Latinx Reconstructions of the Colonial-era Interpreter
Mariajosé Rodriguez-Pliego, CSREA Interdisciplinary Opportunity Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, Brown University
This talk will make the case that an ongoing wave of contemporary Indigenous reconstructions of La Malinche lays bare the racial and gender hierarchies upon which the Mexican and Chicano ideals of nationhood were established. It will address an essay by Mixe linguist Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, a short story by Nahua author Ethel Xochitiotzin Pérez and poetry by Chicana author Vanesa Angélica Villareal.
About the Presenter
Mariajosé is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Brown University. Her dissertation “Foundational Futures: Nation, Migration and Environment in the Literatures of Abiayala,” studies the idea of the nation through the vantage point of Indigenous and Latinx narratives. It brings together a multilingual corpus of stories in Spanish, Nahuatl and English in order to trace connections between storytelling traditions that teach us alternative forms of land ownership and belonging. Her work has been awarded the 2021-2022 Presidential Master’s Prize by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) and is forthcoming in the journal Comparative Literature.