Dean of the College, Division of Languages and Literature, Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures (FLCL), and Spanish Studies Present

Poetics of Maroonage: Posthuman Spaces in Hispanophone Caribbean Poetry

This presentation will discuss twenty-first century poetry by two Afro-Hispanophone Caribbean poets, Mayra Santos-Febres from Puerto Rico and Soleida Ríos from Cuba, to underline how their poetry imagines futures under threatening circumstances such as forced displacement and anti-blackness. How does the longue durée of Black resistance influence twenty-first-century poetics?

Dr. Ethel Barja Cuyutupa will present her research, which takes place through an interdisciplinary approach in between history and poetics and in dialogue with scholars interested in how lyric language is historically inflicted and intertwined with social justice and Blackness. The intertwining of imagery of long-lasting Black resistance and the emotional and political dimensions of the posthuman lyric subject ensures the poetics of maroonage exposes transhistorical genealogies of hope.

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Ethel Barja is a scholar, educator, and award-winning poet originally from the Andes, Peru. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from Brown University and an MA in Hispanic literary Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor in the Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies Department at Salisbury University. Her research focuses on transnational and interdisciplinary approaches to Hispanophone Caribbean, Andean, and Latinx literature, integrating critical Indigenous studies, Afro-poetics, gender, and posthuman studies. She is the author of the monograph titled Poesía e insurrección: La Revolución cubana en el imaginario latinoamericano. Her poetry collections include Insomnio Vocal, Hope is Tanning on a Nudist Beach, and La Muda.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102

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