ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Language rights of indigenous peoples are acknowledged and protected by national constitutions, international treaties and declarations. As activist movements increase, indigenous writers are reviving and developing written literature in their languages. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, indigenous language publications hold a precarious place in the literature marketplace, a function of the specific issues confronting the individual language communities: official language status, socio-political and economic status, education and literacy, access to media and publishing, shift from oral to written tradition, the existence of a viable reading public and the identification of a national and international audience. Some authors are leaders in political indigenous rights movements and assert their linguistic rights by writing in their native language, while others write in Spanish or English, in a mixed-language style expressing their cultural and linguistic identity. The literary texts are published in dual-language or translated editions in order to reach a wider market. Papers in this seminar examine both Guatemalan and Peruvian indigenous literature, and reflect literary, linguistic, anthropological and political perspectives. Topics cover the socio-cultural content of contemporary Mayan literature, and the profound influence of the oral tradition on the written genres. Canon formation and style in both literary and performing arts are discussed, and linguistic issues are addressed in the context of bilingual authorship, adaptation to audience/reader, and questions of translation/re-writing. Concluding papers analyze the financial and political factors affecting the status of Mayan and Quechua languages and publications.

Friday, March 24

Nadine Grimm, Cleveland State University
“‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ Persistent Voices in Contemporary Mayan Literature”
McKenna R. Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Gender Constructions in Recent Guatemalan Literature”
Gaspar Pedro González, Universidad Mariano Galvez
“Tradición Oral Maya”
Laura Martin, Cleveland State University
“Luis de Lion and the Popol Vuh: Continuity and Adaptation in Mayan Traditional Rhetoric”

Saturday, March 25

Maury Hutcheson, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Bilingualism, Authorship, and Cultural Capital in the Dance-Drama Texts of the K’iche’ Maya”
Hana Muzika Kahn, Rutgers University
“Writing Mayan Languages in Spanish: Bilingual Maya Writers and Issues of Re-writing/Translating the Literary Text”
Timothy Smith, University of South Florida
“Teaching our Culture, Teaching our Law: The Uneasy Politics of Mayan Language Revival and Foreign Aid Donors in Postwar Guatemala”
Serafín Coronel-Molina, Princeton University
“Empowering Quechua in Peru: Status and Corpus Planning Endeavors”