Center for Latin American Studies Hosts Virtual Lecture by Luis Miguel Estrada
The Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), an affiliated regional center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, hosted a virtual lecture by Luis Miguel Estrada, a writer and a scholar of Mexican and Latin American literature, titled “The Wandering Nation.” The lecture was livecast on Thursday, March 26, 2020.
From his personal experience teaching Mexican literature to Mexican American students, Estrada reflected on how contemporary literature articulates new imaginaries on the national or the “mexicanidad” from unstable contexts and positions. Estrada explored how the works of Julián Herbert, Guadalupe Nettel, and Cristina Rivera Garza (who spoke at the Center for Latin American Studies in September 2019) destabilize, demystify, and reinvent the national-Mexican as constructed in the “Narrative of the Revolution.”
Estrada, currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University, also talked about his own literary work, particularly about genres and his approach to the representation of violence in his stories.
The Center for Latin American Studies provides students with a versatile and powerful vehicle to develop an in-depth and interdisciplinary understanding of the Latin American region.The program offers students a wide variety of regionally-focused courses in Latin America, which are taught by a range of academic departments. The interdisciplinary nature of the program provides the necessary breadth and depth for students to understand the complexities and remarkable diversity of Latin America, defined as the 20 independent countries in the Western Hemisphere south of the United States with Spanish, French, or Portuguese as their official languages.