Thinking from the Hole: Latinidad on the Edge

Join us for a faculty lunch talk with Maia Gil’Adí, Assistant Professor of English and Latinx Literature at Boston University. Drawing from her current book project, Maia Gil’Adí examines Hernan Díaz’s novel, In the Distance (2017), to show how this Latinx novel in disguise challenges definitions of Latinx literature, speculative fiction, and canon formations. Telling the story of a young Swedish immigrant who attempts to make his way to New York from California in the mid-nineteenth century, Gil’Adí argues that In the Distance is invested in the reinvestigation of notions of “foreign/ness,” “citizenship,” and “nation” while positioning latinidad as a speculative generic mode.