Cornell University/Syracuse University Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Studies Regional Identity in Times of Globalization and Diaspora April 2-3, 2009 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Conference Participant Biographies Beth M. Bouloukos is a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University. She is currently writing her dissertation on issues of gender and sexuality in relation to ecstasy and transcendence in the literature and film of Cuba, Mexico, and Bolivia. Her academic interests also include theories of space and phenomenology. She recently published on Cathy Arellano (Chicana poet and activist) and Rafael Campo (Cuban- American author and physician) in LGBTQ America Today. John Burdick is Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University. He is the author of Looking for God in Brazil (California, 1993), Blessed Anastacia (Routledge 1998), and Legacies of Liberation (Ashgate, 2004). He is editor of The Church at the Grassroots (with Ted Hewitt; Greenwood Press, 2000) and Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? (with Ken Roberts and Phil Oxhorn; Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). He is currently editing, with Kwame Dixon, a volume on Afro-Latin culture and politics (University Press of Florida), and completing a study of racial consciousness among evangelical Protestants in Brazil. Miranda Cady Hallett is completing her doctoral dissertation in cultural anthropology at Cornell University. Her thesis, Disappeared Subjects: migration, legality, and the neoliberal state, examines migrant “illegality” as a cultural condition produced by the state to displace its own creation of racialized hierarchies in the current neoliberal order. In past work, she has also sought to turn the analytical tools of anthropology and critical social theory on to cultural discourses and artifacts produced by elites and in the interests of state power. For example, she has analyzed El Salvador’s “War on Gangs” as a nation- building project that exploits the repression of demonized and marked Others for the purposes of state hegemony. Nicole Calandra earned a Masters degree in French Literature from Bryn Mawr College and is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts. She is currently researching humor in French Caribbean literature and images of immigration in literature of the Caribbean diaspora. Paul Donoghue, a sophomore at McDaniel College, stuides Spanish and Political Science double major with a minor in Arabic. He has been studying literature of the Spanish language for around a year. He would like to become a translator for the FBI when he graduates from college. Helen Burgos Ellis is completing her Master of Arts degree in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, under the supervision of Professors Kevin Terraciano, Cecelia Klein, and Charlene Villaseñor-Black. Her research is focused on the study of the art and the socio- economic history of subaltern groups (African and indigenous groups) of Latin America. She has also conducted extensive research on nineteenth-century Latin America, a pivotal period with profound consequences from land privatization and the manner in which indigenous groups organized their communities. Ms. Ellis is also a project member of the Centro de Estudios Coloniales Iberoamericanos (CECI), where she works on the paleographic transcription and annotation of Mesoamerican texts from the sixteenth century. Héctor Abad Faciolince studied literature, creative writing, and poetry at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Pursued studies in Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. He completed studies on Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Turin. He worked as a lecturer of Spanish at the University of Verona and also earned a living translating literary works from Italian to Spanish. Upon returning to Colombia, Héctor was appointed director of the University of Antioquia Journal from 1993 to 1997. He has also been a columnist for prestigious newspapers and magazines in Colombia and he is a regular contributor of other Latin American and Spanish papers and magazines. Héctor has been a guest speaker at numerous well known universities worldwide and has been a seasonal lecturer at the University of Vercelli. He lived in Berlin after being awarded the prestigious German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Upon returning to Medellin, he was appointed editor-in-chief of the EAFIT University Press. Since May 2008, Héctor has been a member of the editorial board of El Espectador. Héctor’s published works include: Basura (2000), Palabras Sueltas (2002), Oriente Empieza en El Cairo (2002), Angosta (2004), El Olvido que Seremos (2006), Las Formas de la Pereza y Otros Ensayos (2007) and El Amanecer de un Marido (2008). Andrea Fanta is a Visiting Instructor of Spanish at Centre College. She earned an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from Louisiana State University (2002) and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan (2008). Her research interests focus on the intersections between literature, history, and philosophy in contemporary Latin America. Lilia Fernández Souza is from Mérida, Yucatán, México. She studied Anthropological Sciences with a specialization in Archaeology at the Faculty of Anthropological Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY), earning the Master’s degree in 1999. She earned a PhD in Mesoamerican Studies at the Universität Hamburg. Fernández Souza has taught at the UADY Faculty of Antropological Sciences since 2000 where she coordinates the Archaeology Licenciatura Program. Her study areas are related to Mayan culture, especially architecture and gender archaeology. More recently, she has studied manifestations of rituality in domestic contexts using archaeology, ethnohistorical and ethnographical data. She has participated in several archaeological projects. Myrna García-Calderón is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Lingusitcs at Syracuse University. She has published articles on women writers, urban imaginaries, Latino writers, and Hispanic Caribbean culture. She is the author of Lecturas desde el fragment. Literatura e imaginario cultural en Puerto Rico (1998). Erika Carter Grosso is a first year Ph.D. student at Syracuse University pursuing in the interdisciplinary Social Sciences Program. Her area of concentration is Latin America and the Caribbean, with special topical interests in Cuban politics and Latino migration. She holds a Master’s Degree in Spanish language, literature, and linguistics from Syracuse University. Turner Hirsh, a sophomore at McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, is double majoring in Spanish and Political Science. He has been studying Spanish for 8 years. After graduation, he hopes to go into the Peace Corps. Steven Latzo is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at Binghamton University (State University of New York). He is interested in exploring the intersections between Latin American literature, culture and politics, an interest which developed with time. During the mid-nineties, he volunteered in Honduras with Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, an international network for orphaned and abandoned children. Since then, he has studied in a progressive language school in Guatemala, and taught at Binghamton University, Temple University in Philadelphia, and most recently at Broome Community College. Amanda Magdalena is a first-year M.A. student in the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Memphis with a major in Foreign Languages (Spanish and French) and a minor in English. After graduating she completed a two- year program with the U.S. Peace Corps in Mauritania, West Africa where she served as a Teacher Training Advisor. Her current research interests include the effect of sport (particularly baseball) on female identity formation and participation in social activism in Central America and Chicano population within the United States during the 1920s-1970s. Jaime Manrique is Colombian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator who has written both in English and Spanish, and whose work has been translated into many languages. Among his publications in English are the volumes of poems My Night with Federico García Lorca; Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus; the novels Colombian Gold, Latin Moon in Manhattan, Twilight at the Equator, and Our Lives Are the Rivers; and the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. His reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Salon.com, The Washington Post Book World, BOMB and The Village Voice. His honors include Colombia’s National Poetry Award, 2007 International Latino Book Award and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently at work on Cervantes Street, a novel about Miguel de Cervantes. From 2002-2008 Manrique was associate professor in the MFA program in writing at Columbia University. Currently he’s Visiting Writer in the MFA program in writing at Rutgers University. He is a Trustee of PEN American Center and chairs the Membership Committee. Dr. Gustavo Mejia holds a Doctorate degree from the University of Essex in Great Britain. He served as director of the Department of Literature at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where he had earned his PhD in Philosophy and Letters. In his native Colombia, he also taught at the Universidad Nacional. In the United States, he has taught