We’ve got three exciting upcoming panels at the MLA Convention that have been organized by the Global South Forum. Please make plans to attend!
Digital Boundaries of the Global South (Co-organized with the Digital Humanities Forum)
Friday, January 6, 5:15- 6:30 PM
Presiding: Élika Ortega, Northeastern Univ.
Speakers: Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State Univ.; Francesco Levato, Illinois State Univ.; Jap-Nanak Makkar, Univ. of Virginia; Pramod K. Mishra, Lewis Univ.; Asimina Ino Nikolopoulou, Northeastern Univ.
South-South Policing: Security, Markets, and the Laboring Body
Saturday, January 7, 10:15-11:30 AM, 404 Philadelphia Marriott
Presiding: Anne Garland Mahler, Univ. of Virginia
1. “Carceral Comparisons in Benyamin’s Goat Days,” Neelofer Qadir, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
2. “Policing the Southern Southern Border: Mexico’s Forgotten Border in Nadia Villafuerte’s Barcos en Houston,” Julie Ward, Univ. of Oklahoma
3. “Intimate Enmity in the Global South: The Aesthetics of Colonial Policing in China,” Adhira Mangalagiri, Univ. of Chicago
The Planet in Ruins: The Anthropocene from Below
Sunday, January 8, 1:45-3:00 PM, 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center
Presiding: Alfred J. Lopez, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette
1. “Shortage, Planetary Boundaries, and the Global South,” Austin Hetrick, Univ. of Virginia
2. “Sleepwalking Oceans, Sleepwalking Lands: Place and Displacement in the Novels of Mia Couto,” Brady Smith, Univ. of Chicago
3. “‘Trespassers Will Be Persecuted’: Oil and Property Law in Ben Okri’s ‘What the Tapster Saw,'” Rose Casey, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown
4. “The Disaster Exotic and the Global South,” Liam O’Loughlin, Pacific Lutheran Univ.
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The Global South Forum was started in 2014 when the MLA sent out a call for volunteers to start new forums/divisions. Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, Nirmala Menon, Anne Garland Mahler, and Roopika Risam wrote the proposal and circulated it among about about twenty colleagues whose work has been foundational to the field. In 2016 Mary Louise Pratt was elected to the executive committee, and we will have a new executive committee member this year.
The aim in starting this Forum was to open a space for comparatist exchange on questions around the operation of power and racialization within neoliberal globalization as well as histories of colonization, empire, and social movements. Following the work of, for example, The Global South journal, we are committed to a geographically fluid notion of the Global South that recognizes the multi-directionality of capital flows and that thinks about power, race, and political subjectivity in ways that can but do not necessarily revolve around histories of colonization. As we continue to build this community, we count on your participation and input. Feel free to send ideas for panels, CFPs and other announcements for circulation, suggestions of people to add to our listserv, and suggestions of colleagues to put up for election for the executive committee. Please join the Global South Studies Facebook group as well, which is where we share updates, CFPs, and other materials of interest.