NeMLA's 53rd CONVENTION
Baltimore, MD
March 10-13, 2022

After a successful roundtable at the 2021 NeMLA conference, we again invite participants to share their experiences with interdisciplinary collaborations. Proposals are welcome from those who have broken disciplinary silos in the areas of research, course development and/or teaching. We will share success stories and pitfalls in building and sustaining those relationships. We are interested in hearing about triumphs as well as learning from less successful attempts, and strongly encourage team presentations. The organizers (a mathematician and a humanist) will discuss their own experiences leading initiatives and co-developing courses that blend STEM and the humanities.

Roundtable: Students as Agents: Reenvisioning BIPOC German Studies at Minority Serving Institutions

What does it mean to teach German studies at Minority Serving Institutions (such as HBCUs, HSIs, TCUs, AAPISIs) in keeping with the unique missions and programming of these institutions of higher education? German studies, when presented and practiced as unmarked whiteness in the cannon, curricula, and programs, and where diversity is peripheral, reproduces existing power structures and excludes the voices and experiences of our students. This lack of representation and identification leads to underrepresentation of Students of Color in German studies.

This panel explores topographies of memory and architecture as a powerful force for cinematic storytelling, cityscapes’ psychosis, etc. As part of the special session, we are looking for contributions examining and analyzing diverse relationships between cinema, television, architecture, and memory and their links with contemporary Spanish media and identity. Submissions in English and Spanish, although we recommend the latter.Since Foucault conceptualized the notion of “heterotopy” as those ephemeral or stable places in relation to the parameters of exclusions of the dominant groups, the emergence of the internet and social media has further transformed traditional heterotopias.

Panel: Race, Place, and Migration in Afro-Latinx Literature and Visual Art 

This panel invites papers focused on the analysis of Afro-Latinx migratory dynamics as represented in Latin American art (films, plastic and visual art, live performances, and so on) and literature (such as novels, poems, plays, comics, visual poetry). Papers on the Caribbean, Centro America, South America, and Brazil are welcomed.  

Trauma when remains unresolved can end up causing more harm than one can imagine. Trauma can be caused by the most insignificant of incidents that happen in a person’s life. But how far have we come in understanding the trope of trauma? How do we talk about it with proper sensitivity? How much do we push before a past trauma breaks us again? In these trying times when solidarity and care are the only ways to make the world a more humane space to sustain within, how shall we treat the trauma of our loved ones and fellow human beings? How do we realize that the shame associated with trauma is but extreme societal conditioning? How do we unlearn the social stigma related to trauma? How does trauma force us to alter our memories as a defense mechanism?