Latinx: A Panel

 

Latinx: A Panel

(Please visit this page for the flyer.)

Hosted by Festival Latinx, LALS UAB, Cipactli and LAGAPSA

Topics:

• The origins of Latinx Linguistic debates about the term
• The social, political, and cultural significance of Latinx Queer theory and how it relates to the word
• Community activism and the use of the term 
• Student activism on and off campus in promoting the term
• Q&A

Panelists: 

Deja Lynn Alvarez is a proud Latinx transwoman activist and advocate, and now the first transwoman to run for public office (city council) in the state of PA. She volunteers in leadership capacities for several local organizations, including Mayor Kenney’s Commission of LGBT Affairs, the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs, the William Way Community Center, the Philly Women’s Rally, and the Liberty City Democrats. Ms.Alvarez also serves as a member of the Philadelphia Police Advisory committee,the Pennsylvania HIV planning committee, co-chairs the annual Trans March in Philadelphia, and chairs the annual Philadelphia Trans Day ofRemembrance.She is a group facilitator at The Philadelphia AIDS Consortium’s Transformation Group and has facilitated groups at the Morris Home, the first trans-specific recovery home in the United States. Ms. Alvarez is the co-founder and former executive director of the LGBTQ Home for Hope, where she was able to get the first LGBTQ specific shelter/recovery program in the city up and running. She is one of the founding members of the Trans Wellness Program at the Mazzoni Center, a co-founder and former facilitator of Sisterly Love (a Trans support and skill-building program by and for transgender women), and a former coordinator for the Trans Information Project of GALAEI. In recognition of her leadership inddedicationto Philly’strans communities, Ms.Alvarez was awarded the 2015 Jaci Adams award from Philly Pride, and the 2016 Person of the Year from the Philadelphia Gay News, among numerous other awards for her life’s work and dedication to Trans and LGBT causes. Professionally, she currentlyworks as a system navigator for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Health. She joined the Transgender Training Institute’s Training Team in 2018 and brings with her a wealth of knowledge about the transgender communities and lived experiences of transgender people.

Silvia Ayala is a Penn Undergraduate Student (C'21) majoring in Philosophy and minoring in Latin American and Latino Studies. She is an active member of the Latin American and Latino Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board.

Ed Morales is a journalist who has investigated New York City electoral politics, police brutality, street gangs, grassroots activists, and the Latino arts and music scene. He has been a Latin music Newsday columnist and longtime Village Voice contributing writer whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Miami Herald, San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Jacobin, and The Nation. He was a contributing editor to NACLA Report on the Americas and a frequent contributor of op-ed columns for The Progressive Media Project.Ed Morales newest book, Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture. He has lectured at Bowdoin College, Vanderbilt University, University ofNew Mexico, West Chester College in Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Hunter College, Wooster College of Ohio, NYU, and the University of Connecticut. Morales was the recipient of a Jerome Fellowship in 1992 to research Latino Theater and in 2006-7 he was selected for the prestigious Revson Fellowship at Columbia University. While a Revson Fellow, he co-directed a 55-minute documentary called “Whose Barrio?” The film was inspired by “Spanish Harlem on His Mind,” an essay published in 2003 in The New York Times and in the anthology New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times, edited by Constance Rosenblum (NYU Press, 2005). Ed Morales is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and occasionally appears as a host on WBAI-FM.

Selma Feliciano Arroyo is a lecturer in Spanish in Penn’s Department of Romance Languages. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez and a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation focused on the conceptions, strategies, and aesthetics of autogestión (workers’ self-management) at play in a selection of LatinAmerican literary and performance projects from the 21st century. At Penn, in addition to teaching Spanish courses at various levels, she frequently teaches undergraduate literature seminars on topics such as Caribbean feminist and queer cultural production, responses to neoliberalism articulated through aesthetic practices, and Latin American theater and performance studies. She is currently teaching a class on theater and gender in Latin America.

Adrián Rivera-Reyes isaPuertoRicanPostdoctoralFellowatPennMedicine and a candidate for Philadelphia City Council. Adrian holds a PhD in Cancer Biology from Penn and a B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. During his time at Penn, he led the Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group,was part of GAPSA's External AffairsC ommittee, aco-leader of Diversity and Inclusion for the 2017 Philadelphia March for Science, led efforts to recruit diversity trainees at Penn Medicine with the Office of Research and Diversity Training Programs, served as a labor organizer with the Penn graduate student union GET-UP, and worked as a Policy Analyst for a US Congressional candidate. 

Angie N. Ocampo is a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology. She received her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in Sociology and Ethnic Studies from Brown University in 2015. Her research interests include Latino immigrant incorporation, racial attitudes, and racial/ethnic stratification. Angie’s dissertation focuses on the critical process of social acceptance as a mediator for immigrant incorporation, where native-born whites determine which immigrants (and their descendants) have access to becoming American. Angie’s other projects include examining the gendered nature of Latino immigrants’ social position in the United States, the racial attitudes of Latinos toward whites and blacks, and the return migration patterns of Mexican migrants overtime.

Tulia Falleti (Ph.D. Political Science, Northwestern University, 2003; B.A. Sociology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1994) is the Class of 1965 Term Associate Professor of Political Science, Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program, and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Falleti is the author of Decentralization and Subnational Politics in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which earned the Donna Lee Van Cott Award for the best book on political institutions by the Latin American Studies Association; and, with Santiago Cunial, of Participation in Social Policy (forthcoming, Elements in the Politics of Development, Cambridge University Press). She is co-editor, with Orfeo Fioretos and Adam Sheingate, of The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (Oxford University Press, 2016), and with Emilio Parrado of Latin America Since the Left Turn (University of Pennsylvania, 2018), among other co-edited volumes. Her articles on decentralization, federalism, authoritarianism, participation, and qualitative methods have appeared in edited volumes and journals such as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Publius, Qualitative Sociology, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Politics, among others. She is working on a comparative research project on the articulation of indigenous peoples’ demands regarding territorial claims, and rights to prior consultation, living well, and plurinationality.