ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Beginning with the epistolary texts that document the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus, America, the quarta pars orbis, was viewed as a repository for European fantasy. Amazons, mermaids, the lost continent of Atlantis and other beings and places inherited from the Greco Latin tradition, but never precisely located on their maps, were simultaneously juxtaposed with biblical history and topography, such as the Seven Tribes of Israel, the Earthly Paradise –itself born from the classical trope of locus amoenus— and the evangelical wanderings of the Apostle Saint Thomas. In this panel we will consider the development of the hybrid palimpsest that is reflected in what Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman has called the “invention of America.” This will be accomplished through a consideration and analysis of the “indigenous factor,” in which incomprehension and misunderstanding led to the re-fashioning of American civilizations from New Spain to New Castile and which began both textually and iconographically in the former centers of pre-Hispanic culture and later colonial capitals: Cuzco and Tenochtitlan. Needless to say, this topic is not limited to the colonial period, as many Latin American authors –particularly those of the “Nueva literatura latinoamericana” and the “Boom,”—have revived these visions born of misapprehension while at the same time laying the foundations of an original American literature that is at once local and universal, past and present.

Friday, March 24

Glen Carman, DePaul University
“Deadly Misreadings of the Aztecs: Sepúlveda y Las Casas”
Anke Birkenmaier, Columbia University
“Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala as Author”
Lois Parkinson Zamora, University of Houston
“Folk Baroque in Puebla, Mexico: Fantastic Figures”
Matthew Ancell, University of California, Irvine
“This…Cyclops: Góngora’s ‘Polyphemus and Galatea and the Poetics of Disfiguration”

Saturday, March 25

Antonio Barrenechea, University of Mary Washington
“Moby Dick as Travel Literature”
Margo Echenberg, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City
“Of Betrayals: Deceiving Self and ‘Other’ in Two Short Stories by Elena Garro and Albert Camus”
Steven Gonzagowski, University of New England
“Lost in a Masquerade: Unveiling the Fiction of Historical Representation in Abel Posse’s The Dogs of Paradise”
Mercy Romero, University of California, Berkeley
“Landscapes of Violation in Eva’s Man and La Condesa Sangrienta”