Indigenous Writers and Their Critics: an International Symposium

Arturo Arias
School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Art
UC Merced

Gloria Chacon
Literature
UC San Diego

“Indigenous Writers and Their Critics: an International Symposium” bridges the historical, cultural, linguistic, and epistemological divides haunting writers and academics. Approaches to indigenous literature have traditionally been informed by the field of anthropology and ethnography, but this has been changing in the last ten years as evinced in recent publications by scholars in the  Global North. The symposium will profile indigenous writers and critics as part of a dialogue and collaboration about the urgent necessity of indigenous writers’ participation in the production of criticism, a project that we believe has to be supported in academic venues so that scholars in the Global North academy do not replicate North/South knowledge asymmetries. The conference will encourage indigenous writers to critically engage with North American academics who are themselves responding to the work of these indigenous writers. Our conference proposes to contribute to more theoretical publications that engage indigenous literatures in Latin America by publishing the essays shared by critics and writers. As conveners and co-organizers, we have a commitment to ensuring that indigenous knowledges are not buried in North American criticism.