You are invited to submit an abstract for this panel for the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention to be held on March 5–8, 2026 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Wyndham Grand Hotel Downtown. While you may present virtually, NeMLA has arranged discounted pricing ($159/night) with the hotel, which is conveniently located close to the Cultural District, restaurants, and the North Shore. There will be plenaries by Cherríe Moraga and Simon Han, with additional special events, guest speakers, workshops, and CV clinic. It is a wonderful event and I hope you will join me!

Deadline for abstract submissions on the NeMLA platform is 9/30/2025. You may email me draft proposal before submitting to official platform. 

Each abstract submission must include:

• A title of no more than 80 characters
• An abstract of 200 to 300 words
• A brief bio

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at jennifer.vilchez@rutgers.edu. 

(Re)Generating Keywords for EcoLatinx Studies and Praxis (Panel)

Primary Area / Secondary Area: Women's and Gender Studies / American/DiasporaModality: Hybrid. The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included.Chair(s): Jennifer Vilchez (Rutgers University)  Abstract: This panel offers a creative feminist space to explore the ecological and intersectional commitments of Latinx studies and praxis that have unduly become secondary to its political and institutional uses. This tendency has obscured the liberatory possibilities Latinx encapsulates as a response to the limitations of historical categories and binaries like Hispanic/Non-Hispanic, Latino/Latina, men/women, American/migrant, citizen/undocumented, and conservative/liberal. Latinx rescinds the ordering of the human and human lives to speak back to power in its act of naming. Unfortunately, the term today has been hyped up as being forcefully applied onto the public while imposing leftist woke politics and so-called gender ideology. To think beyond these discourses, this panel aims to return to thinking alongside the relational and natural connections by seeking collaboration on a speculative keyword guide about the diversity of what I dub “ecolatinx” studies and praxis. Through a sample compilation of keywords of animals, plants, foods, drinks, remains, elements, weather, minerals, and/or rocks, this panel acts as a small guide of critical terms and concepts of ecolatinx studies and praxis. If your work thinks alongside fauna, flora, rivers, tea, wind, rice, snakes, or other such things, to discuss gender, race, power, coloniality, environmental justice, or social justice, I invite you to submit an abstract for a paper on a single term to help trace the contours and debates of a particular topic of Latinx studies. Consider how María Lugones discussed mayonnaise to critique logics of purity that forget emulsion, an element that is necessary for coalition across differences. To introduce the Capitalocene, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore highlight madiera (wood) in the history of Portuguese sugar production that precedes the transatlantic slave trade. As the title suggests, this session aims to generate and regenerate terms, thus papers may revisit or historicize already used keywords and concepts.

Other ideas include writing about the coqui as cultural symbol of Puerto Rico. Or the marketization of the llama and alpaca as a way to think about contemporary modes of colonialism, capitalism, and erasure of indigenous sovereignty. 

I look forward to your creative submissions!