This roundtable explores the process involved in building a keywords project in Latina/o Studies and how such a project defines and articulates the past, present, and future of Latina/o Studies. Implicit in the discussion is... [ view full abstract ]
This roundtable explores the process involved in building a keywords project in Latina/o Studies and how such a project defines and articulates the past, present, and future of Latina/o Studies. Implicit in the discussion is the evolution of Latina/o Studies as a field and discipline, the primacy and disruption of certain traditional fields, the choices made by editors to include certain keywords over others, the push to reassert multiple, alternative and distinct theories, methods, and arguments and the future trajectory of Latina/o Studies.
Inspired by Raymond Williams' foundational Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), our project forms part of the NYU Press series on keywords, and as such is in dialogue with other volumes, for example on American cultural studies (2007, second ed. 2014) and Asian American studies (2015). Our book partakes of the particular advantages of this model, but also negotiates its challenges and constraints. We also see our book in dialogue with but different from earlier projects such as Paul Allatson's Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies (2007), Robert McKee Irwin and Mónica Szurmuk's Dictionary of Latin American Cultural Studies (2014), and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, and Marisa Belausteguigoitia's co-edited Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories (2015), not to mention the numerous Latina/o encyclopedias that have appeared in the last twenty years.
The roundtable includes the three co-editors of Keywords in Latina/o Studies (NYU Press, forthcoming): LaFountain Stokes, Mirabal, and Vargas; along with two contributors: Brady and Hames Garcia. The aim is to initiate a conversation among editors, contributors, the audience concerning the direction of the field of Latina/o Studies, and the impact of Keywords in defining Latina/o Studies.
