2018 MALCS Summer Institute

Convivencia y Resistencia: Fronterizas for Social Justice

The assaults to Latinx and Chicanx communities have mounted over the past few years, and nowhere are they more apparent than along the U.S. – Mexico border. National and state administrations have taken anti-womanist and anti-immigrant stances that threaten the peace, security, and existence of our Chicanx and Latinx communities. Latinx immigrant youth are under attack and DACA-mented students are in limbo, wondering what will happen to their futures and their families. We push back on the arguments for more border walls, recognizing that our communities are already under heavy state surveillance and prosecution. Immigration raids are now becoming the norm, and our anxieties and fears of the unknown are taxing our mental, physical, and spiritual health. Violence and hostilities are endemic in our communities; our families are being divided by deportations, mass shootings, police brutality, and the stress, anxiety, and depression that come with our chaotic times.

It is during these troublesome times that we must strengthen our resistencia with convivencia, tapping into our indigenous roots of resistance and coexistence. The MALCS Summer Institute provides the space to reflect on our borderlands existence and share it with our sisters/hermanas MACLSistas so it functions as a source of strength and resolve. Fronteras are under siege and we live in a constant state of in-between as third space MALCistas. As Gloria Anzaldúa would say, “Nepantla is our state of being.” To survive, we claim our borderlands, our mother tongues, our mixed ethnic ancestries, our indigenous and African roots, our spiritualities, our shared spaces, and our complex identities and we commit to doing so collectively.

The 2018 MALCS Summer Institute will showcase art and scholarship focused on gender non-conforming, transgender, queer, Chicana, Latina, Afro-Latina, Asian-Latina, Native American and Indigenous individuals and communities challenging and resisting structures of oppression in local, national, and international contexts through the spirit of convivencia. We welcome panels, roundtables, performances, workshops, and individual paper proposals that address this year’s theme, which may include the following approaches:

• Intersectional Feminist Thoughts and Theories
• Indigenous Epistemologies
• Current Political Climate and Border Issues
• Immigration Reform and Border Security
• Border Disputes of Land, Space, and the Body
• Re/Claiming Spaces with Community Alliances
• Conflict, Violence, Trauma, and Healing
• Coexisting Communities and Institutions
• Resistencia – Identity Politics and Cultural Representations
• Nepantla Practices and Theories
• Spirituality and Activism
• Children, Youth, and Community
• Borderlands Performance

Ready to submit? Here’s what to do:

• Become a member of MALCS at https://dev.malcs.org/membership/. If you are submitting on behalf of a larger group, make sure that everyone is a member. Proposals received from non-members will not be considered.
• Login to your MALCS account at https://www.malcs.wildapricot.org/ to check and update your membership status or to reset a password under “forgot your password.
• Click on the CFP SI Submission link or go to https://institute.malcs.org/. Once you login, you will be able to fill in all required categories of 2018 MALCS SI CFP Google Form. Upon submission you will received a confirmation email.
• That’s it! Celebrate this accomplishment and wait to hear from us.

Here’s a few things you need to know:

• Proposers will be notified of acceptance on or before May 1, 2018.
• Questions about the submission process can be sent to MALCS Chair, Cici Aragón, at ccaragon@malcs.org.
• If you are a student and unable to become a member at this time, please email MALCS Membership Coordinator, Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez, at membership@malcs.org to make arrangements.
• We recognize the complexities of travel for communities affected by travel restrictions to the borderlands. If you are interested in submitting a proposal for a virtual panel, please contact MALCS Chair, Cici Aragón, at ccaragon@malcs.org.
• Information about the 2018 MALCS Summer Institute at the University of Texas-El Paso will be posted in April 2018 at https://www.institute.malcs.org.

CFP Deadline: Friday, 03/30/2018

CFP Submission