Reclaiming Insurgency
October 25, 2024 9:00AM-6:30PM
Levis Faculty Center
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
History of Conference
The first UIUC Latina/o Studies Graduate Student Conference, titled “Latinidad in the New Millenium: Bridging Borders In and Beyond Academia”, was held over 21 years ago in April 2003. Over the span of the next six years after that, graduate students at UIUC were able to establish the conference as a national fixture, bringing in scholars from across disciplines (and the country) to engage in dialogues that considered the “commonalities, differences, and varied experiences of Latina/o populations”. Themes such as “re(imagining) gender, sexuality, and feminism in LLS”, “exploring and challenging fronteras”, and “reaffirming our commitment to activism and resistance through scholarship” helped orient each conference as both a thorough examination of the theoretical undercurrents guiding Latina/o Studies as well as a way to re-think the role of the academy in relation to the communities many of the conference participants belonged to.
The last UIUC LLS Graduate Student Conference was held in 2009, and this year’s interdisciplinary organizing committee of graduate students is hoping to both revive a much-needed intellectual fixture and establish a foundation that can last for years to come.
Conference Overview and Purpose
The purpose of this conference is to explore the role that contemporary scholars can play in the struggle against academic counterinsurgency, defined by Dylan Rodriguez (2020) as “the full spectrum of pacification, isolation, and domestication strategies that extend beyond violent state repression.” We aim to re-center the revolutionary origins of Latina/o/x and Ethnic Studies and interrogate their current potential as conceptual fields to materially impact the marginalized communities who are often their site of study.
We also aim to (1) examine what it would mean to reclaim insurgency in our work as well as the limitations of doing so within the context of the academy, and (2) how to re-orient knowledge production away from the confinements of the university and into the hands of our communities.
“Reclaiming Insurgency” seeks to foster an ongoing dialogue across disciplines that will consider the commonalities, differences, and diverse experiences we bring to the table as academics, while also serving as a call to see ourselves as far more than what the academy wants us to be.
Program of Events
Friday, October 25
| 9:00-10:00 AM | Breakfast and Registration |
| 10:00-10:50 AM |
Thematic Panel 1a: Historical Trends Room 208 Thematic Panel 1B: Immigration, Citizenship, and Transnationalism Room 210 |
| 11:00- 11:50 AM |
Thematic Panel 2A: Community Health Room 208 Thematic Panel 2B: Current Topics in Education Room 210 |
| 12:00-1:20 PM |
Lunch and Networking Room 300 |
| 1:30-2:20 PM |
Thematic Panel 3a: Race, Class, Gender, & Sexuality I Room 208 Thematic Panel 3B: Community Oriented Scholarship Room 210 |
| 2:30-3:20PM |
Thematic Panel 4A: Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality II Room 208 Thematic Panel 4B: Critical Literary Scholarship Room 210 |
| 3:30-5:00 PM |
Keynote Room 300 |
| 5:00-6:30 PM |
Dinner Reception Room 300 |
Meals and refreshments will be provided at the event.
Thank you to our sponsors!
Department of Latina/Latino Studies, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Department of History, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Applied Health Sciences, Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, Office of the Provost, Department of Health & Kinesiology, Department of Anthropology, Department of Asian American Studies, Department of Political Science, Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory, La Casa Cultural Latina, Humanities Research Institute.