News/Research

Yairamaren Roman Maldonado at the LASA 2018 Conference

09 Jul, 2018

Yairamaren Roman Maldonado at the LASA 2018 Conference

BCNM was pleased to offer small subsidies to our graduate students to help defray the costs associated with presenting their research at the premier conferences in their field. Yairamaren Roman Maldonado presented at the Latin American Studies Association this summer. She recounts the program below.

This year’s Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Conference featured the topic of “Latin American Studies in a Globalized world”. I presented the paper “Portable memory, on/offline cultures and transgressions to the nation in Jorge E. Lage’s Archivo”. My presentation was part of a panel titled The Literatures of the Future, where we covered a range of experimental literatures from the historical avant-gardes to digital poetry. In my paper, I presented some of the most important aspects of the first chapter of my dissertation Caribbean Imaginations in Twenty-First Century Avant-Gardes. First, I spoke about the relationship between Lage’s text and Cuban surveillance and technology. Then, I presented an analysis of how the texts form dialogues with Manovich’s approach to database aesthetics and the list form of digital code. I also attended other panels focused on contemporary culture in the Hispanic Caribbean. One of the panels, titled “Thinking Through Ruins: Debt, Culture, and the Politics of Crisis in Puerto Rico”, discussed different cultural manifestations (from art to performance) that bring attention to the current economic and political crisis in the island. Another remarkable panel I attended was titled “Cuba 2.0: How the Digital Revolution is Remaking the Cuban Revolution”. A range of topics about new media in Cuba, from e-zines to piracy culture and “el paquete” (the package), were covered in this panel. This was a great opportunity to get to know better the amazing work scholars are doing in many different institutions across the country.