LandAcknowledgement
We acknowledge the land we are on, the Yanaguana, named for the life-giving waters of the San Antonio River. Indigenous peoples have lived in this area for approximately ten thousand years, and this long, rich history deserves telling. We pay respect to the ancestors and the many Indigenous people here today, including the Esto’k Gna/Carrizo-Comecrudo Nation and the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation. We recognize this region as home to the Payaya, Coahuilteca, Lipan Apache, and Comanche, as well as other diasporic peoples from Mexico, the Southern Plains, and the Eastern United States. We pledge to learn about and act in solidarity with Indigenous struggles for social justice.
ArtistSpotlight
We are honored to host artist Celeste De Luna of Metztli Press, creator of the cover image for The Bard in the Borderlands. Please visit her pop-up gallery throughout the conference and support local printmaking.
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Texas A&M UniversitySan Antonio
8:00-9:00 – Registration and Breakfast (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
9:00-9:15 – Welcome (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos, BSC Founders
Salvador Hector Ochoa, President of A&M-SA
9:30-11:00 – Concurrent Panels (A)
Panel A1: Teaching Borderlands Shakespeare (Classroom Hall 102)
Chair: Elena Foulis
Matthew Harrison, “Decorating the Hurdle”
Jesus Montaño, “Teaching (in) the Borderlands: Shakespeare’s Role for Young Holders and Creators of Knowledge”
Araceli Manriquez, “Creating a Curriculum Guide for The Bard in the Borderlands”
Donna Woodford-Gormley, “Teaching Borderlands Shakespeare at an HSI”
Panel A2: The Canon en La Frontera (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
Chair: Yvette Chairez
Adriana Dominguez and Jay Stratton, “The Canon en la Frontera: Honoring Bilingualism en el Teatro”
Jorge Augusto Contreras, “Devising and Performing This Is Not Romeo & Juliet in the RGV”
11:15-12:30 – Keynote Session (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
Ruben Espinosa, “Shakespeare on the Border: A Cruel and Loveless Country”
Scrutinizing the presence and uses of Shakespeare amid the military and linguistic violence on the U.S.Mexico border, this talk challenges optimistically laden views of his value therein. Narratives that seek to define the U.S. Southwest and its borders political, geographic, discursive—have been painfully forged over time, and as such we must resist these narratives if there is any hope of escaping the inherited boundaries that are often defined in and through Shakespeare. Indeed, we must embrace counternarratives that center the voices in la frontera that have been silenced for far too long.
12:30-1:30 – Lunch (BLH Multipurpose Room and Courtyard)
Welcome by Debra Feakes, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, A&M–SA
Protest readings of British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost by A&M-SA students
Introduction by Yvette Chairez, A&M-SA
1:30-3:00 – Concurrent Panels (B)
Panel B1: Border Politics and Aesthetics (Classroom Hall 102)
Chair: Cathryn Merla-Watson
Zainab Cheema, “Intersectional Borderlands: Appropriating Shakespeare in Latinx and Middle Eastern Border Poetics”
Danielle Garcia-Karr, “Wailing for Justice: Ophelia and La Llorona Unframed in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic”
Jazmine Janay Cuevas, “‘But we ’ re always here’: Borderless Approaches to Uncovering the E-race-ed in the Borderland Binary”
Alondra Ceballos, “‘More agile than a turtle, stronger than a mouse ’ : Falstaffery in Chespirito’s El Chapulín Colorado and Its Afterlives”
Panel B2: Arte y Música (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
Chair: Jesus Montaño
Marinela Golemi and Galileah Sanchez, “‘Somos Romeo y Julieta, pero más modernizado’: Eroticizing Star-Crossed Lovers in Popular Latin Music”
Demian Chavez, “Alimento del Amor: The Music of Borderland Shakespeare”
Penelope Boyer and Michael Marínez, “Aliena & Ophelia”
3:15-4:30 – Playwright Roundtable (Patriots’ Casa Ceremony Room)
Making Theater with and in Community, featuring James Lujan, Seres Jaime Magaña, and Bernardo Mazón Daher in conversation with Katherine Gillen
This roundtable conversation brings together three innovative and influential playwrights whose Shakespeare adaptations appear in The Bard in the Borderlands. Lujan, Magaña, and Mazón will discuss their plays, Kino and Teresa, The Tragic Corrido of Romeo and Lupe, and Measure for Measure | Medida por medida, as well as the collaborative work of creating theater that is grounded in Chicanx and Indigenous communities.
4:30 – Cocktail Hour with NACCS Tejas Foco (Auditorium Lobby)
Welcome by Valerie A. Martínez and
Chris
Carmona, NACCS Tejas Foco Organizers
5:30 – Performance of Corridos by Azul Barrientos (Auditorium)
Introduction by Norma Elia Cantú, Trinity University
6:30-7:45 – Keynote Session (Auditorium)
“Borderlands Ballads (Corridos) and Shakespeare: Resistance and Affirmation,” María Herrera-Sobek
One of the creative gifts of the Borderlands is the musical tradition known as the corrido, or Mexican ballad. While it may seem incongruous to link the corrido with Shakespeare, this presentation will explore the many similarities found between the enormous number of corridos from the mid 1800s to the present and Shakespeare’s equally gigantic literary output. Shakespeare’s genius in writing his magnificent theatrical dramas and the genius of the Mexican and Chicana/o community in ballad production share qualities of resistance and affirmation. As examples of the Shakespeare– corrido connection, the talk will examine “Corrido de Hamlet,” “Corrido de Romeo y Julieta,” and “Corrido de Ramón y Julieta.”
Friday,March8,2024
TrinityUniversity
8:00-9:00 – Registration and Breakfast (Dicke Hall Brazil Commons)
9:00-10:30 – Workshop I (Dicke Hall 308)
“The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise”: Translating Shakespeare, with Alfredo Michel Modenessi
The art of translating entails taking all the risks while expecting few rewards outside personal delight – or relief. When translating Shakespeare (yet again), this grows exponentially. Why do it? Why not? This workshop will introduce participants to practical and theoretical approaches to translating Shakespeare. Led by translator and scholar Alfredo Michel Modenessi (UNAM), the workshop will provide handson opportunities to put these approaches into practice. Participants will be encouraged to draw on their diverse linguistic and cultural knowledges. Familiarity with Spanish will be helpful but is not required.
This workshop is sponsored by the Folger Shakespeare Library.
9:00-10:30 –
Concurrent Panels (C)
Panel C1: Perspectives on Culture, Shakespeare, and Decoloniality (Dicke Hall 108)
Chair: Matthew Harrison
Andrea Magbual and Chelsea Hazzard, “Connecting While Decolonizing”
Jaydn Jeffries, “Reimagining Justice and Identity in The Merchant of Santa Fe”
Denisse Marquez, “Navigating Cultural Crossroads: How Spanglish Has Become More Than Just ‘Broken Spanish’”
Paloma Díaz-Minshew, “Measure por medida: Language Mixing as a Literary Device”
Panel C2: Language, Performance, and Appropriation (Dicke Hall 204)
Chair: Cathryn Merla-Watson
Greg Watkins and Sebastián Martínez Sánchez, “Spanish-Language Resources in Digital Shakespeare: A Report”
Keolanani Kinghorn, “A Decolonial Approach to Shakespeare: From Classroom to Theater”
Lisa Jennings, “A Light Disinterment, or, Birnam Wood Has Come to Kingston: Reimagining Shakespeare’s Legacy in a Jamaican Yaad”
11:00-12:30 – Workshop II (Dicke Hall 308)
Working en Comunidad, with Elena Foulis
Led by Elena Foulis (A&M–SA), an accomplished scholar in the fields of Latine/x oral history and digital humanities, this workshop will engage participants in conversations about community-engaged scholarship. Participants will learn how to identify and serve community needs, develop reciprocal partnerships, and build communal spaces of trust and support. The workshop will also explore strategies for circulating community-engaged scholarship and for making it visible to a range of audiences.
11:00-12:30 – Concurrent Panels (D)
Panel D1: Translation and Performance (Dicke Hall 108)
Chair: Jesus Montaño
Yvette Chairez, “Stratford-Upon-West-Texas: A Case Study on Translingual Shakespeare and the Globe of the Great Southwest”
Laurence Wensel, “Sueño en una Noche de Verano: Translating and Performing Shakespeare in Spanish”
Robin Kello, “Bilingual Shakespeare in Performance”
Panel D2: Identity and Geography in the Classroom (Dicke Hall 204)
Chair: Jamie Sutton
Annabella Baboun, Nia Engrassi, and Isabella Fadhel, “Approaches to Borderlands Shakespeare: A Latina Miami Borderlands Perspective”
Lauren Shook and Ashley Medellin, “Where am I in this Text? Teaching Kim F. Hall's ’Beauty and the Beast of Whiteness’ at an HSI”
12:30-1:30 – Lunch (Dicke Hall Brazil Commons)
1:30-3:30 – Performance Showcase (Dicke Hall 108)
Stephen Richter, Ivalyn Kaleilehua Kawamae, and Royce-Jason De la Villa, Eastside Story Live Preview (Texas Style)
Jorge Augusto Contreras and Carlos Cravioto, This Is Not Romeo & Juliet, performed by Priscylla Guzman, Kaylen Garza, Naomi Vivian, Yumana Zayed, Alessandra Jaimes, Andres Garcia, and Majida Zayed
Miguel Ángel Lopez, Romeo y Julio
Oliviana Wright, Shaun Davis, and Gabriel Fernandez, La Malinche Macbeta
4:00-5:15 – Álvarez Seminar Keynote Session (Dicke Hall 104, Mabee Auditorium)
The Roots of Borderlands Shakespeare in Chicano Teatro: Edit Villarreal and José Cruz González in conversation with Kathryn Vomero Santos
Introductory remarks by Dania Abreu-Torres and Paloma Díaz-Minshew, Trinity University
Sponsored by the Trinity University MAS Álvarez Seminar Series, this event features award-winning playwrights Edit Villarreal and José Cruz González. In addition to addressing The Language of Flowers (BitB, Vol. 1) and Invierno (BitB, Vol. 2), the playwrights will talk about their larger bodies of work as well their motivations for adapting Shakespeare in Borderlands contexts. This conversation will also explore the innovative ways Chicanx theatremakers are incorporating Shakespeare into the teatro tradition to address the long histories and present realities of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands.
5:30-6:30 – Closing Reception (Dicke Hall Brazil Commons)
7:30-9:00 – Performance of Gregg Barrios’s I-DJ (Cellar Theater at The Public, 800 W Ashby Pl)
Produced by Teatro Audaz, San Antonio’s premier Latinx theater company, Gregg Barrios’s I-DJ is a story of Warren Peace, aka Amado Guerrero Paz, a gay Mexican American youth who finds his calling as a DJ. He spins the soundtrack of his life on the dance floor by night and by day in a gay send-up of Shakesqueer's Ham-a-lot set to a dub-step beat of ecstasy, tainted love, Rollerena, and Herb Alpert. When a younger DJ challenges him to a musical standoff, their stories and their music collide. Only one will emerge triumphant.
