We’re continuing to develop panels for this year’s ABQ Cultural Conference and want you to be involved. Join our discussion of issues relevant to our conference theme – Crossing Borders: Historical, Social, Cultural – here on our blog and we’ll tease out panels for Sunday, the second day of the conference. We’ve built the three major panels on Saturday, for the most part, and submitted them with grant applications.
The 3 panels include:
- The Southwest border in social and cultural history, from the Gadsden Purchase to the present immigration crisis.
In relation to the Southwest border we’ll address the relationship among Mexican, indigenous, and U.S. societies from the mid nineteenth century to the present. Border issues include territorial claims, laws and customs, cultural relations, educational and economic opportunity, changes in demographics, and immigration.
- Culture and Community, including the relationship of community to the natural world, the cultural concerns of its inhabitants, the status of language and literacy, and the role of public institutions.
“Relationship to the natural world” takes into account land use, exploitation of resources, and other environmental concerns. Education is regarded as a human resource within cultures that is manifested in communities. How differing cultures coexist within a territorial area is one of the most important questions in the Southwest.
- Crossing borders of our own: homeland, race and gender issues, poverty, disabilities, violence and cultural trauma, and the role of empowerment in borderlands society.
Borders can be historical, social, or personal – often all three at the same time. Stories often show how these elements coexist. From classical literature of the Southwest we can envision the historical and social lives of the participants in a moving framework. Such stories remind us in turn of the barriers that often exist within a given community, and how we seek to overcome those barriers.
Issues we’ve offered in previous years include:
- Southwest Culture and Society (history, economics, environmental politics)
- Indo-Hispanic Culture (links between indigenous populations: politics and art)
- Peoples Culture (Midwest populism and political culture)
- Cultural Communities (language-based, gender-based, working class and labor)
- Art beyond Borders (shared cultures, cosmopolitanism, performance, translation)
- Cultural Memory (storytelling, community art, music and song, almanacs)
- Writing for Survival (underserved populations, prisoners)
- The Power of Literacy and the Protection of Cultures
- Literary Performance, Writing and Publishing
- Testimony
- Trauma, Stress, and Resilience
- Alternative and Digital Media
Return to our blog often to learn about issues relevant to our conference mission and this year’s theme. We invite you to join our conversation with your comments.
What’s the Gadsden Purchase? Are we still talking about that?
Kidding.
For me, the themes revolving around publishing, writing and education are especially rich this year, given everything going on in Tucson/Arizona and with Amazon, e-books, etc etc.
The word “Testimony” just caught my eye again in your list. I think it would be uber-SUper to get some Arizona students up here to talk about their plight, as you all did at UNM for the recent rhetoric/writing conference you put on, Leslie.