MALAS is Thrilled to Announce Our First Chavela Vargas Predoctoral Resident Scholar: Laura Herbert, Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Michigan

MALAS, the Master of Art in Liberal Arts and Sciences at SDSU, is proud to announce a Chavela Vargas predoctoral fellow program for 2012-2013. The recently deceased Chavela Vargas (video below) was a groundbreaking international artist whose work in music, social justice, and gender politics made dramatic contributions to culture and justice on both sides of the Rio Grande river and beyond. It is this singular, dynamic, and boundary-crossing/breaking ability that set Vargas apart from other entertainers and why MALAS elected to grace our first predoctoral fellow program with her name.

Frida Kahlo and Chavela Vargas

Our selected fellow for 2012-13 is a remarkable graduate student from the Spanish section of the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at the University of Michigan: Laura Herbert. Ms. Herbert is presently working on her dissertation, "The Post-NAFTA Intersections of Culture, Market, Nation and Gender on the US-Mexico Border" with her supervisory team of professors: Gareth Williams (chair), Colin Gunckel, and Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes.

Congratulations to Laura Herbert and welcome to SDSU and to MALAS. Herbert will be sitting-in and guest lecturing in MALAS seminars throughout the Fall and Spring and will lecturing on her research at a date to be determined.

Biography

Laura M. Herbert

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan in Romance Languages honored to be the MALAS Chavela Vargas predoctoral fellow for 2012-2013. My thesis focuses on how national mythologies in the United States and Mexico have shifted under the current neoliberal paradigm and how these mythologies mobilize and manipulate certain forms of embodiment. I am particularly interested in the telenovela industry and the work of Roberto Bolaño. I received my B.A. summa cum laude in 2007 from the Ohio State University and in 2008 I began my graduate work in 2008 at Michigan where I am the very fortunate recipient of the Jacob K. Javits fellowship. When I´m not studying, I´m into cooking and yoga!

Here are some of Laura's recent doings:

Upcoming:

“Nosotras versus We: Translating the Implicit Feminism in Pensamientos, prácticas y acciones del GAC,” Translating Intersectionality: Language and the Politics of Multilingual Feminist Solidarities. National Women´s Studies Association Annual Meeting. Oakland California. November 2012.

Past:

“2666’s Literary Mass Grave: Historical Memory and Bolaño on the Border,” Mapping the Mexican Borderlands Seminar, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting.  Providence, Rhode Island.  March 2012.

“When Exports and Diasporas Collide: La Reina del Sur and the Melodrama of Mexican Nationalism,” The Female Body, Gender and Identity in 21st Century Latin America Panel, Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Meeting.  Rochester, New York.  March 2012.

“The Narco Nouveau- Riche: Class Identity and Narco dollars in Colombian Bestsellers” (retiled “Of Sicarios and Prepagos: The Consuming in and of Colombian Narconovelas”), First Seminar on the Narco Imaginary, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting.  Vancouver, Canada.  March 2011.

“Queering the Barrio: Gay Chican@s and the Construction of Liberatory Space,” Spaces and Identity Panel, Spaces of Relation Conference. University of Miami.  Miami, Florida.  February 2011.

Organized Conference Seminar:

Translating Intersectionality: Language and the Politics of Multilingual Feminist Solidarities (co-chaired with Catalina Esguerra-Metheny and Jocelyn Frelier). National Women´s Studies Association Annual Meeting. Oakland California. November 2012.

Mapping the Mexican Borderlands  (co-chaired with Paige Rafoth), American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting.  Providence, Rhode Island.  March 2012.