Encuentro Xican@ II: Call for papers

Encuentro Xican@ II: Call for papers
please send far and wide. the new due date is friday March 20. Javier.


encuentro xican@ 2,

or, xican@ love and the new familia: gender, sexuality, and alliance

University of California, Berkeley

April 24, 2009



"Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered on
women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, even more than women, are fettered
to gender roles. Women at least have had the guts to break out of bondage.
Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the woman
inside them and to challenge the current masculinity. I've encountered a
few scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of a new
breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexist behaviors that
they have not been able to eradicate. We need a new masculinity and the
new man needs a movement." Gloria Anzaldúa


The California electorate recently voted to uphold traditional gender
roles by passing Proposition 8. The controversy over the role played by
voters of color in passing this anti-gay measure has raised some questions
full with the possibility for both tension and alliance. At the heart of
this inquiry is love as responsibility, the ability to respond to one
another. Does the Chican@ community have love for its gays, lesbians,
queers and transgenders, and do gay, lesbian, queer, and transgender
Chican@s have love for their community? Familia has always been an
important value for Chicana/os, and familia seems to be the central value
for the advocates of gay marriage. How can familia be redefined without
the fetters of gender roles?

For our second encuentro xican@, we wish to explore tensions and alliances
among queer, straight, male, female, transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA.
What does it mean to be a ChicanO/A feminist? What does it mean to be a
Chican@ feminist? In this 21st century, do we see Anzaldúa's new breed of
“gentle straight men”? What is at stake with this critical dialogue is the
possibility of re-articulating thoughts and practices, decolonizing the
present as well as articulating a future where gender and sexuality are
re-inscribed into the dynamics of power, society at large, and the Chican@
community in particular.We are fully aware that alliances are subject to
betrayal, even self-betrayal. An alliance must be both mutual learning and
referenced positionality, which means recognizing one's own privilege.
True meaningful alliances between Chicanas and Chicanos--across genders,
sexual orientations, generations, classes, and political ideologies--is an
ethical demand we must forge together and must not be taken lightly. How
can alliance be redefined as familia, with all its tensions and all its
loves?


We invite presentations (in English, Spanish) that explore and interrogate
various conflicts/alliances among gay, queer, straight, male, female,
transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA, and their relations to labor history,
youth culture, indigeneity, migration, spirituality, performance studies,
visual and popular culture, policy, and violence against people of color.
Cultural arts centers, community workers, students and faculty from all
levels are all invited to participate in our encuentro. We are open to
receive individual or panel proposals that might work differently than a
‘traditional’ conference paper and encourage academic-artist-activists to
integrate different aspects of your work and talents that may take the
form of exhibit, performance, workshop, roundtable discussion, academic
criticism, or any rasquache combination of these.

Submit 300 word abstracts via email as word documents or PDF files by
March 20, 2009. Accepted presenters will be notified by March 25.
Submissions and inquiries should be sent to encuentroXWG@gmail.com