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.

Call for Abstracts

We welcome abstracts for oral presentations, multimodal presentations, or creative works from across all disciplines on any topic concerning the theme of "Reclaiming Insurgency." Undergraduate students are also welcome to submit abstracts. 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Community-Oriented Scholarship
• Ethnic Studies
• Immigration and Transnationalism
• Citizenship
• Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
• Community Health
• Critical Artist Scholarship
• Language and Social Interaction
• History 
• Communications & Media Studies 

Guidelines for Submission: 

• Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Abstracts should be suitable for anonymous review. 
• Please submit all proposals electronically as an attachment to llsgradconference.illinois@gmail.com
  • Subject: UIUC LLS Conference 2024 Abstract

Please include the following in your email message but NOT in the abstract (except the title, which should appear in both):

• Paper Title
• Author’s name (if more than one author, list the primary author first followed by subsequent authors)
• Consideration for thematic panel?:   Yes ___       No ___
• Author(s) affiliation:
• E-mail address at which the author prefers to be contacted:
• Font: Times New Roman, size 12; 1.5 inter-line spacing
• Equipment required for presentation.

       Submit an abstract

      Download the call for abstracts

Abstract deadline extended! July 31, 2024, by 11:59 PM (CDT).

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