Venue: Seminar Room, IASH, 2 Hope Park Square

[Event co-hosted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities]

With talk of a border wall dominating the news, a divisive moment in U.S. border politics is unfolding amidst a much longer context of cultural exchange and evolution in the border region. What can such narratives teach us about the current moment? Join two leading humanities scholars of the U.S. borderlands as they discuss their work in this context, in an event that will hopefully draw links with European scholarship on similar themes.

Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent book is A Small Story About the Sky, preceded by The Dangerous Shirt and The Theater of Night, which received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up on the Mexican border. University Professor of Letters, Regent’s Professor, and the Katharine C. Turner Chair in English, Ríos has taught at Arizona State University for over 35 years.

Anita Huizar-Hernández is an Assistant Professor of Border Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. Her research examines how narratives, both real and imagined, have shaped the political, economic, and cultural landscape of the Southwestern borderlands. Her most recent work is forthcoming in the spring issues of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.