California State University, Los Angeles
April 14, 2017
California State University, Los Angeles
Music Hall
April 14-15, 2017
This Conference is Free and Open to the Public.
Music Hall
April 14-15, 2017
Sponsored by Cal State L.A.'s Office of
the President, Office of the Provost, the Gigi Gaucher-Morales Memorial
Conferences, the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Natural and Social Sciences, the Department of Chicana/o and
Latina/o Studies, the Latin American Studies Program, the Emeriti Association
at Cal State L.A., and the joint sponsorship of
Consulado General de México en Los Angeles,
Consulado General de México en Los Angeles,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (México),
and México's Secretaría de Cultura.
and México's Secretaría de Cultura.
This Conference is Free and Open to the Public.
Cal
State L.A. Map Website:
http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/maps/index.php
Acclaimed by his peers as Mexico’s “Universal writer,” Alfonso Reyes (Nuevo León, México,
1889-1959) was the admired embodiment of the Latin American poet, essayist, and
literary theorist during the first half of the twentieth century. The son of Bernardo Reyes, governor of Nuevo Leόn and army general under Porfirio Díaz, Alfonso Reyes served México in various diplomatic posts from 1913 to
1939 in Argentina, Brazil,
France, and Spain, and functioned as the President of the Mexican delegation to
UNESCO after the Second World War. Reyes was the director of the Casa de España (1939), later
known as Colegio de México. Through his travels and many years of diplomatic
service abroad Reyes worked and corresponded with leading Latin American and
European writers and philosophers such as José Ortega y Gasset (Spain), Jorge
Luis Borges (Argentina), Juana de Ibarbourou (Uruguay), and Werner Jaeger
(Germany), to name a few. He translated into Spanish works by Jules Romains,
G.K. Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson, G Murray, C.M Bowra and, among others,
Laurence Sterne and Homer’s Iliad. Reyes was the guiding mentor of younger
Mexican writers, Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes among them, whose work can only
be fully understood in the light of Alfonso Reyes's vast and varied literary creativity. While post-Revolutionary Mexico stood for a break with a national past marred by
dictatorships and colonialism, Reyes sought continuity in terms of Mexico’s stratified past—Mesoamerican, colonial, post-Independence, and contemporary—and with a Greco-Roman humanist tradition that flourished in Mexico as of the sixteenth century. These national and classical heritages were regarded by Alfonso Reyes as founding origins for Mexico’s quest toward a culture of criticism, historical change, and democratic institutions. In El arco y la lira (1956), Octavio Paz declared
his indebtedness to Reyes for his unconditional friendship and for being a
writer’s model: in Reyes’s essays Paz claimed to have found order, lucidity,
and illumination.
Alfonso
Reyes’s literary background was shaped by major national and international
conflicts: among the former, the Mexican Revolution and the political tensions
in post-revolutionary Mexico; most salient in the latter: international events
such as the First World War, the rise of European fascism, avant-garde
movements (Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism), and the emergent realities of
nationalist and right-wing politics in Latin America. Alfonso Reyes wrote with insight and independent spirit about avant-garde movements, and with ethical force against the
rising tide of Italian fascism and Nazi politics in Hitler's Germany. With an astonishing
intellectual curiosity and capacity for work, Reyes thought and wrote about
every important topic and major intellectual current that continue to define his beleaguered times.
The 2017 Conference on Alfonso Reyes includes eight
keynote and featured speakers representing France, Mexico, and the United
States. Three sessions on various conference-related topics and one book
presentation complete the conference program. To view the biographies and
lecture abstracts of speakers and panelists, scroll down to the end of the
online conference program. This conference is the result of a close
collaboration of Mexican and U.S. faculty, and was made possible by Cal State
L.A.'s Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Gigi
Gaucher-Morales Memorial Conference Series, the College of Arts and Letters,
the College of Natural and Social Sciences, the Department of Chicana/o and
Latina/o Studies, the Latin American Studies Program, the Emeriti Association
at Cal State L.A., and the joint sponsorship of Consulado
General de México en Los Angeles, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
conference program
Friday, April 14
Registration (free admission):
8:30-9:00 A. M.
Music Hall
California State University, Los Angeles
Left to Right: Steven Trujillo, Richard Pérez,
and Cristόbal Palma (Registration team)
Michael Cervantes (Alumnus, Conference Photographer)
and Cristόbal Palma (Registration team)
introduction and welcome
9:00-9:30 a.m.
Music Hall
DR. LYNN MAHONEY
PROVOST AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
PROVOST AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LOS ANGELES
Ministro Andrés Webster Henestrosa
Mexico's consulate general in Los Angeles
opening of conference
Conference Organizer:
Roberto Cantú
Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o
Studies
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
Conference Co-Organizers:
Nora Cisneros
Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
Alejandro
Covarrubias
Department of Chicana/o and Latina/o
Studies
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
Alex Espinoza
Department of TV, Film, and Media
Program in Creative Writing and Literary
Arts
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
Keynote Speaker
Friday, April 14, 9:30-10:30 a.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Héctor Perea
Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México
Title of Lecture:
“The Bronze
Statue, in Flesh and Blood”
Moderator:
Alex Espinoza
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
Teatro Degollado, Guadalajara
(Jalisco), México
Plenary Session # 1
Friday, April 14, 10:45 A.M.-12:00
p.m.
Music Hall
“Alfonso
reyes: Poetry, Philosophy,
and Literary theory”
Moderator: Alejandro Covarrubias, California State University, Los Angeles
Panelists:
1. “Hacia un deslinde de la literatura: Alfonso Reyes
ante la crítica filosófica”
Aurelia Valero Pie, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México
2. “A Friend in Foreign Lands: Alfonso Reyes and Werner Jaeger”
Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles
3. "Beyond Philosophy: Alfonso Reyes and the Modern Mexican Essay"
Robert Sánchez, Mount
Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles
Fabián Espejel, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México
Luncheon Break: 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Featured Speaker
Friday, April 14,
1:00-2:00 p.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Washington University in St. Louis
Title of Lecture:
“The Alphonsine
Literary Form:
Idealism, Modernism and the
Essay”
Moderator:
Hildebrando Villarreal
Hildebrando Villarreal
California State University, Los Angeles
Plenary Session #2
Friday, April 14, 2:15-3:30
p.m.
Music Hall
“Alfonso Reyes: Correspondence and literary lineages”
Moderator: Jorge Leal, California State University, Los Angeles
Panelists:
1. “Carlos
Pereyra y Alfonso Reyes, correspondencia y obra”
Aurora Díez-Canedo F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
2. “Alfonso Reyes y
Carlos Fuentes: Linaje literario”
Georgina
García Gutiérrez Vélez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Featured Speaker
Friday, April 14,
3:45-5:00 p.m.
Music Hall
Music Hall
Dr. Florence Olivier
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France
Title of Lecture:
“Autorretrato y retrato oblicuo de Alfonso Reyes:
La
correspondencia con Genaro Estrada
entre
1927 y 1937”
Moderator:
Sara González
California State University, Los Angeles
Marcos Daniel Aguilar (UNAM) interacts with panelists
Book
Presentation
Friday, April 14, 5:10-6:00 p.m.
Music Hall
Friday, April 14, 5:10-6:00 p.m.
Music Hall
EQUESTRIAN
REBELS:
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON MARIANO AZUELA AND THE NOVEL
OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION (2016)
Moderator:
Roberto Cantú, California State
University, Los Angeles
1. “Mariano
Azuela, la novela de la revolución y la revolución mexicana vistos por los
escritoires españoles”
Aurora Díez-Canedo F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
2. “La crítica
literaria de Mariano Azuela”
Georgina
García Gutiérrez Vélez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
3.
“Epica en modo menor o guerrilla narrativa en Cartucho de Nellie Campobello”
Florence Olivier, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Paris 3, France
4.
“Accidentes de tránsito: itinerario del escritor Mariano Azuela”
Fernando Curiel Defossé, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México
Sebastián
Pineda Buitrago
Ignacio
Sánchez Prado
Saturday, April 15
With (L to R) Sara González, Cristόbal Palma, Juan Carlos Parrilla, and Manuel Castillejos
Plenary Session #3
Saturday, April 15,
9:00-10:30 a.m.
Music Hall
“The Nation, the Avant-Garde,
and Alfonso Reyes’ obras completas”
Moderator: Nora Cisneros, California State
University, Los Angeles
Panelists:
1. “Modelo amoroso de
nación: Alfonso Reyes antes de Octavio Paz”
Rosa María Hernández García, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Nuevo
León, México
2. “La idea de revolución
educativa en América Latina: Un diálogo intelectual y de vanguardia entre
Alfonso Reyes y Cecília Meireles”
Marcos Daniel Aguilar, Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México
3. “Un hilo de
Ariadna: Constancia poética y el proyecto editorial alfonsino”
Raúl Cruz Villanueva, FFyL-UNAM
Founders of Mexico’s Colegio Nacional, with (Left to Right, back row) José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Isaac Ochoterena, Ignacio Chávez, Antonio Caso, Alfonso Reyes, Carlos Chávez, and (below, L to R) Manuel Uribe Troncoso, Mariano Azuela, Ezequiel A. Chávez, Enrique González Martínez, Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, and José Vasconcelos.
Featured Speaker
Saturday, April
15, 10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Fernando Curiel Defossé
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Title of Lecture:
“letras en claro”
Moderator:
Alejandro Covarrubias
California State University, Los Angeles
Fabián
Espejel and Dr. Goriça Majstorovic
Luncheon Break: 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Featured Speaker
Saturday, April 15, 1:00-2:00 p. m.
Saturday, April 15, 1:00-2:00 p. m.
Music Hall
Dr. Adela Pineda Franco
Boston University
Title of Lecture:
“Alfonso Reyes Facing Early Cinema
and the Fateful Years of the Mexican Revolution”
Moderator:
Alex Espinoza
Featured Speaker
Saturday, April 15, 2:15-3:15 p.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Goriça Majstorovic
Stockton University, New Jersey
Title of Lecture:
“Alfonso
Reyes
and Cosmopolitanism”
Moderator:
Nora Cisneros
California State University, Los Angeles
Featured Speaker
Saturday, April 15,
3:30-4:40 p.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Sebastián Pineda Buitrago
Universidad Iberoamericana
Puebla, México
Title of Lecture:
“A
‘Pragmatic poet’
in the Interwar Period (1914-1939):
Alfonso Reyes
and the
Modern Anglo-American Essayistic Tradition”
Moderator:
George B. Sánchez-Tello
Keynote Speaker
Saturday, April 15,
4:45-6:00 p.m.
Music Hall
Dr. Víctor
Barrera Enderle
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad Autόnoma de Nuevo Leόn, México
Title of Lecture:
“Alfonso Reyes and the Latin
American Essay”
Moderator:
Roberto Cantú
California State University, Los Angeles
Names of keynote and featured speakers,
Titles of
Presentations, and Abstracts
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Víctor Barrera Enderle
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad Autόnoma de Nuevo Leόn, México
Title of Lecture:
"Alfonso Reyes and the Latin American Essay"
"Alfonso Reyes and the Latin American Essay"
Alfonso Reyes was not only a representative figure of the twentieth century Latin American essay, but one of its leading theorists and scholars. Reyes created a theory of the essay and put it into practice, which allowed him to develop a complex map of Latin American cultural life. The particularities of this literary genre offered him, at the same time, a critical strategy for reading and appropriating the best of Western culture, as well as the ability to configure a voice in the constellation of Spanish-speaking authors in the first half of twentieth century. When Alfonso Reyes began writing essays (driven by his friend and mentor Pedro Henríquez Ureña), this literary genre had acquired in Mexico its own characteristics: the search for identity, reflections on nationalism, and a survey of our relationship with Western culture. Reyes brings two fundamental elements to the Latin American essay: subjectivity and criticism. In this lecture I will discuss these elements and issues in depth.
Dr. Víctor Barrera Enderle (Monterrey, México, 1972) is Professor in the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras at the Universidad Autόnoma de Nuevo Leόn (México). He received his Ph.D. at the Universidad de Chile, where he subsequently taught as a Visiting Professor. In addition, he has been Visiting Researcher at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Berlin, Germany). Dr. Barrera Enderle is a writer, essayist, literary critic and one of the world’s leading Alfonso Reyes scholars. He was a ecipient of the 2008 Fellowship awarded by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, and has served as the editor of the literary journal Armas y Letras, and as coordinator of the Centro de Escritores de Nuevo León. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores de México and co-editor of the online literary journal Levadura where he publishes his column titled "Aristarquía." Dr. Barrera Enderle’s many publications include the following books: La mudanza incesante. Teoría y crítica literarias en Alfonso Reyes (Monterrey, UANL: 2002); De la amistad literaria (Ensayo sobre la genealogía de una amistad: Alfonso Reyes / Pedro Henríquez Ureña, 1906-1914) (Monterrey, UANL: 2006, recipient of the 2005 Award “Certamen Nacional de Ensayo ‘Alfonso Reyes”); Globalización y literatura (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 2008); La reinvención de Ariel. Reflexiones neoarielistas sobre humanismo crítico y posmodernidad a América Latina (México: Conarte /Conaculta, 2013); and, among other titles, Siete ensayos sobre literatura y región (Monterrey: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras /UANL, 2014) and Nadie me dijo que habría días como éstos (Monterrey: Analfabeta, 2015).
Featured Speaker
Dr. Fernando Curiel Defossé
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Title of Lecture:
“Letras en Claro"
El objectivo de esta presentación es el estudio de Historia documental de mis libros, serie de artículos en los que Alfonso Reyes anticipa a la historia intelectual en México. El enfoque es sobre los antecedentes mediatos e inmediatos; el proceso de escritura; método y medios; período comprendido (1911-1924); período faltante (1925-1959); proyectos paralelos (Obras completas, Memorias, Diario), y conclusiones.
Fernando Curiel Defossé holds a Law degree, a master’s degree in Arts and Letters, and a doctorate in history from Mexico’s National University (UNAM). He is a writer of fiction, essayist, researcher, editor, disseminator, and actively involved in university government. He is the author of wide-ranging publications in areas of literary studies, industrial literature, communication, and generational history, with salient titles such Onetti: calculado infortunio (Premio Xavier Villaurrutia), La querella de Guzmán (Premio José Revueltas), El cielo no se abre. Semblanza documental de Alfonso Reyes (Premio de Biografía Colima), Hijo de Lampazos. García Naranjo en sus memorias (Mención Premio Alfonso Reyes) y La revuelta. Interpretación del Ateneo de la Juventud (1906-1929). He has edited literary journals, epistolary anthologies, diaries, and memoirs written by modernist writers and members of the Ateneo de la Juventud, and the Contemporáneos generation. He edited the facsimile edition of Revista Azul, Revista Moderna, the newspaper edition of La sombra del caudillo, and the research publications titled Índice de las revistas culturales del siglo XX and Darío en México.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Gorica Majstorovic
Stockton University, New Jersey
Title of Lecture:
“Alfonso Reyes and Cosmopolitanism”
This presentation addresses (Latin) Americanist constructions of cosmopolitanism, conceptualized in relation to the imperial geopolitics as a situated, critical stance, in the texts of Alfonso Reyes and his contemporaries, most prominently Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Dominican essayist, philosopher, and literary critic, and Victoria Ocampo, Argentine writer, essayist, and editor of the journal Sur from 1931-1976. Alfonso Reyes’s works, such as “Notas sobre la inteligencia americana” published in 1936, and Ultima Tule published in 1942, interrogate standard notions of universal humanism, and advocate—among other ideas—an American utopia, while fully acknowledging coloniality as the central problem of modernity and committing “to use a cosmopolitan stance to decolonize Latin American intellectual practice” (Ignacio Sánchez Prado, “The Age of Utopia”). Setting into conversation Henríquez-Ureña’s La utopía de América (1925), and Reyes’ texts that analyze a projection of an ideal utopian future onto America, the talk seeks to establish a transnational understanding of these aesthetic and political developments as significantly marked by the two world wars. During the interwar years, Alfonso Reyes was first the ambassador of Mexico in Argentina, and then he served in Brazil, from where he wrote an essay commemorating El Día Americano in 1932. Upon analyzing immigration movements and the subsequent revaluation of the nation, I suggest that in Alfonso Reyes cosmopolitan mediation is “dis-hierarchized,” almost always located in a periphery, unlike Victoria Ocampo, whose cosmopolitan visions are mediated from a “center” and related to a hierarchy of aesthetic and political values. Reyes’s seminal work, cautiously suspicious of “epistemological privilege, views from above or from the center” (as Rebecca L. Walkowitz referred to a cosmopolitan style), is ideally placed not only to map the future of Latin Americanism but also to trigger a debate on possible alternatives to globalization and global humanities under siege.
Dr. Gorica Majstorovic is Associate Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Stockton University. Her research concerns the intersection of comparative literary history and Latin American studies, with particular emphasis on translation, travel, visual arts, and the role cultural institutions and intellectual networks play in the construction of cosmopolitanisms across the Global South. She has forthcoming articles in Atlantic Studies: Global Currents and Studi Interculturali, among others. Her publications have appeared in Latin American Research Review, Symposium, Vegueta, ProFemina, MonTi, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Iberoamericana: América Latina, A Contracorriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America, and in several anthologies.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Florence Olivier
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France
Title of Lecture:
“Autorretrato y retrato oblicuo de Alfonso Reyes:
La correspondencia con Genaro Estrada entre 1927 y 1937”
La correspondencia entre los dos grandes humanistas y diplomáticos que fueron Alfonso Reyes y Genaro Estrada brinda a la posteridad del escritor regiomontano una suerte de retrato oblicuo y polifacético del primero por el segundo y viceversa a la vez que ambos corresponsales incurren en el autorretrato confidencial. El horizonte de la posteridad distaba de estar ausente puesto que Reyes había dispuesto que su correspondencia se publicase póstumamente aunque con el prudente plazo de espera de veinte años tras su muerte. Al hilo de los intercambios epistolares con su amigo, cómplice en el quehacer literario de toda índole, y superior jerárquico en la carrière, Alfonso Reyes aparece y se muestra en calidad de sujeto privado, de hombre de letras, de servidor del Estado mexicano e intelectual cosmopolita y, por ende, de mediador entre la literatura mexicana y la argentina durante los dos periodos en que fue Embajador de México en Argentina (1927-1930 y 1936-1937); entre la mexicana y la brasileña cuando asumió las mismas funciones en Brasil (1930-1936); y más allá de los intercambios entre literaturas latinoamericanas, entre la mexicana y la francesa o la española. La peculiar escansión de tal correspondencia, que ofrece momentos de gran intensidad alternados con otros de intensidad menor, arroja luz sobre la forma cómo a la distancia procura Alfonso Reyes, con la complicidad de Genaro Estrada, participar en la vida literaria e intelectual mexicana, cuando no en el proyecto cultural nacional, cuyas aventuras, percances y tensiones vive, y a veces sufre, sin cejar. Así es cómo puede leerse en ella un compendio de la biografía pública y privada de la revista Contemporáneos, o indagarse en los enfrentamientos ideológicos que regían la vida cultural mexicana del periodo y cuyas trampas sorteaba el humanista, cosmopolita y mexicanista.
Dr. Florence Olivier is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle where she has taught since 2009. She specializes in Latin American Literature and has published critical editions of the novel Los días terrenales, by Mexican writer José Revueltas, and the complete works of Juan Rulfo in the Colección Archivos (ALLCA-UNESCO). She is the author of Carlos Fuentes o la imaginación del otro (Mexico: Editorial de la Universidad Veracruzana, 2007), a translation of the French edition published in Paris by Aden in 2009 under the title Carlos Fuentes ou l’imagination de l’autre. She has published numerous articles in French and Mexican academic and cultural journals, and is a member of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Comparatistes (EA 172), and of the Board of Directors of Research Center at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she also co-edits the literary journal América. Recent issues include Violence d’Etat, Paroles libératrices (2006), Exils, Migrations, Création. Vol. IV (2008), both published by Editions Indigo, París, and Cultures et conflits/ cultures en conflit (Michel Houdiard, 2009), La littérature latino-américaine au seuil du XXIe siècle. Un parnasse éclaté, co-edited with Françoise Moulin-Civil and Teresa Orecchia-Havas (Aden, 2013). She has translated works by Diamela Eltit, José Revueltas, Nellie Campobello, Guillermo Samperio, Alain-Paul Mallard, Margo Glantz, and Rogelio Guedea.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Héctor Perea
Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México
Title of Lecture:
“The
Bronze Statue, in Flesh and Blood”
The lecture will
examine the profile and oeuvre of Alfonso Reyes from the perspective of his everyday
existence and thus from personal circumstances and situations. The interpretive
approach is not canonical nor with an institutionalized reverence toward a bust
cast in bronze; the critical entry into Reyes’s work, on the contrary, intends
to demystify, to re-think, and to examine the seldom-studied aspects of his
daily existence and the content and form of his most personal writings. The
proposed critical scrutiny into Alfonso Reyes’ identity traits in light of his
enormous work composed of concise and brief essays will reveal a seldom-seen
dimension of the creative character and sensibility of Alfonso Reyes, a
writer/poet who is essential and vital to the literature written in
Spanish.
Dr. Héctor Perea obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism at the Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México
(UNAM), and a Ph.D. in Information Sciences from the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain). He is Senior Researcher at
the Instituto de Investigaciones
Filológicas and Professor of Graduate Literary Studies at UNAM. He is a
distinguished member of the Sistema
Nacional de Creadores de Arte and was also member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores. He
was awarded fellowships by the Centro
Mexicano de Escritores under the mentorship of prominent and renowned
Mexican writers such as Juan Rulfo, Salvador Elizondo, and Francisco Monterde. A
world authority on Alfonso Reyes, Dr. Perea has published more than thirty
books, with titles that include: La
caricia de las formas: Alfonso Reyes y el cine (1988); España en la obra de Alfonso Reyes (1991); La rueda del tiempo: Mexicanos en España (1996); Los párpados del mundo (2009), and Ojos de Reyes (2009), to name a few. He
co-edited the volumes Alfonso Reyes. Iconografía (awarded the Pemio Nacional al Arte Editorial) and Curiose inquietudini. Sedici racconti del
Messico contemporaneo (2014). Dr. Perea has received many literary
and national awards, among the latter: “Rosario Castellanos de Periodismo
Cultural” (1989) y “José Revueltas de Ensayo Literario” (1994). In 2011 Brown
University (USA) and FONCA honored him with the Cátedra Cultura de México Award, and in 2012 he was elected to the
prestigious Seminaire Amérique
Latin-Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur les Mondes Ibérique
Contemporains (University of Paris-Sorbonne). Since 1999 Dr. Perea has been
an honorary member of the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society Sigma
Delta Pi, Chapter Mu Epsilon, University of Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Perea has
lectured and taught in several universities, including Sapienza Università di Roma, Universidad
de Salamanca (Spain), Universidad de
Buenos Aires (Argentina), Instituto
Cervantes de Sao Paulo, and other distinguished universities such as Brown,
Liverpool, Irvine (California), Louisville, Paris-Sorbonne París, London,
Chicago, and Alburquerque. He has lectured at IV Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española de Cartagena de Indias;
at the Mexican Embassy in Italy; at the Mexican Institute in Spain, and at Casa de México in París. The Instituto Cervantes elected Dr. Perea to
be the curator and editor of the
exhibition Alfonso Reyes: el sendero
entre la vida y la ficción (2006-2010), with eleven exhibits in Mexico,
Spain, France, Portugal, Brazil, the United States, and Cuba.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Sebastián Pineda Buitrago
Universidad Iberoamericana
Puebla, México
Title of Lecture:
Title of Lecture:
“A ‘Pragmatic Poet’ in the Interwar Period (1914-1939):
Alfonso Reyes and the Modern Anglo-American Essayistic Tradition”
Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959) was part of a liberal society founded in an ideology of revolution and progress. First as an exiled writer in Spain (1914-1920), due to the Mexican Revolution, and then as an ambassador of the Mexican Revolutionary State in France, Brazil and Argentina, Reyes dealt with several problems in a specific situation and in a reasonable and logical way instead of depending on ideas and theories. One could sense that sort of pragmatism in the practice of Reye’s literary criticism –a pragmatism which explicitly refers to the modern Anglo-American essayistic tradition that extends from Thomas Carlyle to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and from William James to G. K. Chesterton. Being an independent writer in Madrid, Reyes translated Chesterton’s short stories, essays, and the novel The Man who was Thursday (1908). One could even notice this literary influence also in Reyes´s poetry. In his prologue to Poesía en movimiento (México, 1915-1966), the generation-defining anthology of Mexican poetry, Octavio Paz said that Reyes introduced the poetic prose of the English tradition to the modern poetry in Spanish language. In my presentation I will illustrate the manner in which Alfonso Reyes found affinities with the Anglo-American pragmatist movement (Carlyle, Chesterton, Emerson, James), known for its stress on “action,” “practice,” and the “ethical,” and how he adapts pragmatism to his own ideas about a writer’s worldly tradition, individual conduct, and criticism. The reading of Reyes’s literary criticism and creative writing itself through the prism of an Anglo-American essayistic tradition can now break out of a narcissistic self-referentiality, and return to a consciousness of history.
Dr. Sebastián Pineda Buitrago is Professor of Literature and Philosophy at Universidad Iberoamericana in Puebla, Mexico. His research focuses on the relationship between intellectual history, narrative and essayistic tradition in the Hispanic World, with a particular focus on Alfonso Reyes. He is the author of La musa crítica: teoría literaria de Alfonso Reyes (2007), Breve historia de la narrativa colombiana (2012), Tensión de ideas: el ensayo hispanoamericano (2016), and of an anthology on Alfonso Reyes titled Comprensión de España en clave mexicana (2014). He has published several scholarly articles on Mexican, Colombian and Spanish intellectual history, and on literary and cultural theory.
Featured Speaker
Adela Pineda Franco
Boston University
Title of Lecture:
“Alfonso Reyes Facing Early Cinema
and the Fateful Years of the Mexican Revolution”
Humanism
and Latin Americanism are the two major trends which frame the work and
trajectory of Alfonso Reyes. As such, the majority of the studies dedicated to
this thinker revolve around his contributions to these fields. A less-studied
aspect of Reyes’ work is his relationship with popular and mass culture,
particularly to film. Reyes, like Walter Benjamin, perceived how film
inaugurated a new way of perceiving reality in which the register of emotions
and senses were implicated like never before. This talk will address Reyes’
reflections on early cinema, but it does so in connection with another
historical event, a mobilization of the masses which likewise altered the
distribution of the sensible: the Mexican Revolution. Both cinema and the
Revolution influenced Reyes thinking during the period of 1910-1920 about the
development of new forms of knowledge. This talk will also highlight the role
of Henri Bergson in Reyes’ thought from a phenomenological perspective.
Dr. Adela Pineda Franco is Associate Professor of Latin American
literature and film at Boston University. Her research focuses on the
transatlantic practices of writers from the Latin American modernista movement and from the Ateneo de la Juventud; the relationship between film and politics
in Latin America; and the impact of the Mexican Revolution around the globe.
Some of her key publications include her book Geopolíticas de la cultura finisecular en Buenos Aires, París y México:
las revistas literarias y el modernismo, and several volumes she has
coedited such as Alfonso Reyes y los
estudios latinoamerianos (Instituto Internacional de Literatura
Iberoamericana, 2004), Open Borders to a
Revolution (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press 2013) and Cinéma et turbulences politiques en Amérique
Latine (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2012). She has been a visiting
professor at the Université de Rennes, Brown University and the Universidad
Autónoma de Puebla. Currently she directs the Latin American Studies Program at
Boston University.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado
Washington University in St. Louis
“The Alphonsine Literary Form:
Idealism, Modernism and the Essay”
This
presentation proposes a theoretical reflection on the literary form as
practiced in the writings of Alfonso Reyes. It does not seek to systematize
Reyes’s own theory of literature, something that has been admirably done by
various scholars in the past. Rather, it engages Reyes’s literary writing
through three theoretical axes. The first one sustains the importance of the
literary ideologies of German idealism and romanticism to understand Reyes’s
literary forms. This will be argued in dialogue with one of his most important
contemporaries Georg Lukàcs, and his ideas on “soul” and “form,” as well as
through the readings of romanticism and idealism as developed by Slavoj Žižek
in Less than Nothing, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
and Jean-Luc Nancy in The Literary
Absolute. The second part of the presentation analyzes some of Reyes’s key
works from the lens of modernism, in dialogue with Audrey Wasser’s
groundbreaking work The Work of
Difference. Finally the paper will conclude discussing Reyes’s later pedagogical
turn in his large treatises, engaging the idea of philology as developed by
Werner Hamacher in Minima Philologica. In
following this path, the paper has three objectives: 1. Providing a reading of
Alphonsine form from a vantage point not theorized by Reyes himself; 2.
Bringing studies on Alfonso Reyes to a space of dialogue with contemporary
theory, and 3. Rethinking Reyes as a writer aligned with a long-durée tradition
of Western idealism and not just as a Latin American writer tied to Arielismo.
Dr.
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin
American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on
the relationship between aesthetics, ideology and cultural institutions in
Mexico, with a particular focus on literature and cinema. He is the author of El canon y sus formas. La reinvención de
Harold Bloom y sus lecturas hispanoamericanas (2002), Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria
mexicana (1917-1959) (2009, winner of the LASA Mexico 2010 Humanities Book
Award); Intermitencias americanistas:
Ensayos académico y literarios (2004-2009) (2012); and Screening Neoliiberalism. Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988-2012
(2014). He has edited and co-edited eleven scholarly collections, the most recent
of which are Democracia, Otredad y
Melancolía: Roger Bartra ante la crítica (with Mabel Moraña. 2015), and A History of Mexican Literature (with
Anna Nogar and José Ramón Ruisánchez, 2016). He has published over forty
scholarly articles on Mexican literature, culture and film, and on Latin
American cultural theory.
NAMEs of Panelists,
TITLES OF PRESENTATIONS, AND ABSTRACTS
“La idea de revolución
educativa en América Latina: Un diálogo intelectual y de vanguardia entre
Alfonso Reyes y Cecília Meireles”
Marcos Daniel Aguilar, Universidad Nacional Autόnoma de México
En
diversos ensayos y artículos periodísticos publicados entre 1930 y 1932,
Alfonso Reyes planteó la idea de transformación educativa como medio para
realizar una revolución social no solo para México sino para toda América
Latina. A partir de estos textos el escritor y diplomático mexicano sostuvo
largas conversaciones con la poeta y periodista Cecília Meireles quien expresó
ideas similares en los diarios brasileños para los que trabajaba. Esta idea de
vanguardia toca temas puntuales como el papel de la literatura y del
intelectual, la vida política de los estudiantes y las universidades, así como
el tema de la democracia en esta región.
“A Friend in Foreign Lands: Alfonso Reyes and Werner Jaeger”
Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles
In
March 1942 a package arrived at the Institute for Classical Studies at Harvard
University. The package was addressed to its director, Werner Jaeger, and
contained a copy of Alfonso Reyes’ La
critica en la Edad Ateniense. Jaeger’s response was positive and led to a
relationship that was conducted almost entirely by correspondence—they met only
once in 1943--that lasted until Reyes’ death in 1958. Their friendship
constituted a unique moment in the cultural history of the Americas. Alfonso Reyes and Werner Jaeger were among
the most distinguished humanists of the mid-twentieth century. Reyes’ massive
output included over twenty works devoted to Greek themes, and Jaeger was the
world’s most distinguished authority on Aristotle, and as the former professor
Greek literature at the University of Berlin, he was among the most high
profile refugees from Nazi Germany in the United States. Forty-four of their
letters survive: ten from Reyes to
Jaeger and thirty-four from Jaeger to Reyes.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary evaluation of the
evidence provided by these letters for the reaction of their authors to the
crisis of humanism during World War II and the post war period.
“Un hilo de Ariadna: Constancia poética y
el proyecto editorial alfonsino”
Raúl
Cruz Villanueva,
FFyL-UNAM
Las Obras completas de Alfonso Reyes son
vistas, al mismo tiempo, como herramienta y como escollo: es el trabajo de toda
una vida revisado, reunido y editado para conformar algo que no cuadra con lo
que podría entenderse como “antología de autor” o, ni siquiera, como “obras
completas” —pues, desde el primer tomo, Reyes deja claro que no son en realidad
obras completas, sino seleccionadas. El tomo en el que es más evidente este
juego doble (herramienta/obstáculo) quizá sea el décimo: Constancia poética no reúne varios libros cronológica o
temáticamente: queriendo compilar (casi) toda la poesía alfonsina, Reyes
propone una lectura simultánea de su trabajo editorial, teórico y crítico,
particularmente en la articulación de "Repaso poético”, apartado del libro
que, más que una antología, es una propuesta de lectura. En él, cada poema
tiene una relación profunda con el que va antes y después, cada apartado de
“Repaso” está, también, dialogando con los poemarios como Homero en Cuernavaca o Ifigenia
cruel, ¿pero qué tal si Constancia
es una clave de lectura para Obras completas,
si la forma como se imbrican sus elementos es, también, la forma como puede ser
leído El deslinde o las traducciones
(o ese medio camino que es la Ilíada, entre adaptación y traducción)? Más que
pensarlo un caos, mi lectura del tomo X es, de acuerdo a Georges Didi-Huberman
siguiendo a Walter Benjamin, una imagen dialéctica, un “caos controlado”, que,
dentro de sí abraza y proyecta lecturas e intereses estéticos, poéticos y
políticos que repercuten en la forma como pensamos no sólo la obra de Reyes,
sino su propuesta de país y del trabajo poético y político del intelectual
latinoamericano.
“Carlos Pereyra y Alfonso Reyes,
correspondencia y obra”
Aurora
Díez-Canedo F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
La
correspondencia entre el historiador coahuilense Carlos Pereyra y Alfonso Reyes
durante los años 1914-1933 trata sobre los años cruciales de la Revolución
mexicana vistos por dos exiliados que viven en la Europa de la primera guerra y
conviven en el Madrid neutral, relacionándose con los círculos intelectuales de
la época. El vínculo entre el historiador y el ensayista se estrecha debido a
las circunstancias, y se refleja sobre todo en la formación del polígrafo
neoleonés y en sus obras escritas en esos años; años de una intensa
productividad por parte de ambos. Visiones divergentes, la situación política y
la personalidad de cada cual, acabarán por distanciar definitivamente a estos
dos mexicanos pertenecientes a dos generaciones pero con un pasado común en el
que se encuentran claves para entender su respectiva obra posterior.
“A Reading of Alfonso Reyes’ Homero en Cuernavaca”
Fabián
Espejel, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Alfonso Reyes is
widely known in the Hispanic literary field as an exceptional essayist. The
poetic source of his pen, however, is always present in all of his short fiction
and prose writings. Less known, much less studied, is his poetry, in spite of
having achieved three milestones in the poetry of the twentieth century: for
instance, his best known poetical work, Ifigenia
cruel (Cruel Ifigenia, 1923),
along with Aquiles agraviado (Agrieved Achilles), and his translation
of the Iliad into Spanish--of Homeric
proportions-- and the sonnets written as marginal rhapsodies, collected under
the title Homero en Cuernavaca (Homer in Cuernavaca). During the time he
spent translating Homer, Reyes devoted himself to preparing a considerable
amount of notes and a character catalog for his Iliad, as well as to writing the thirty sonnets of Homero en Cuernavaca, between 1948 and
1951. Reyes published these poems a year later in his Obra poética (Collected poems)
after “considerations too hard to explain,” but ultimately relegated to the
category of a literary caprice. The proposed analysis offers an approach in
which reading, criticism, and writing converge on a study of Reyes’ Homero en Cuernavaca.
“Alfonso eyes y Carlos Fuentes: Linaje literario”
Georgina
García Gutiérrez Vélez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
La relación entre Alfonso
Reyes y Carlos Fuentes configura una cadena genésica cuyos eslabones vertebran las letras
mexicanas del siglo XX. Sin duda, Reyes marcó la poética de Fuentes. En este ensayo prosigo mi
aproximación a sus nexos literarios, vitales, intrínsecos.
“Modelo amoroso de nación: Alfonso Reyes antes de Octavio Paz”
Rosa María Hernández García, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
Este trabajo nace de la comunión entre Alfonso Reyes y Octavio Paz, sobre
temas literarios y mexicanos que aparecen en sus cartas centradas en la edición
de poemas y ensayos: Correspondencia Alfonso Reyes-Octavio Paz (1939-1959). La edición de Anthony Stanton da inicio a la
articulación de un espacio común público para interpretar los ensayos de Reyes
como obras de fundación cultural. Para construir el espacio común, utilizo
marcas textuales de un corpus de 24 ensayos de Reyes que tratan acerca de los
conceptos de amor y nación. Las marcas textuales, además, se vinculan hacia las
ideas de Paz en La llama doble. Amor y erotismo (1993). La
correspondencia entre Reyes y Paz, el corpus de ensayos de Reyes y La llama
doble, manifiestan que la creación y apreciación poéticas cambian la manera
de comprender de las personas, y con ello se puede incidir en el comportamiento
de los individuos y en el devenir de las sociedades. La labor de Reyes como fundador cultural define su integración a los
proyectos de restauración nacional posrrevolucionarios. Para mi análisis son
importantes las aproximaciones sobre la literatura como educadora sentimental
de Charles Taylor en Fuentes del yo (2006) y el concepto de “encuentro
textual” de Küisma Korhonen en Textual Friendship: The Essay as Impossible
Encounter (2006). Ambas propuestas sirven para estudiar la argumentación de
los ensayos bajo una luz nueva y llevan a la conclusión sobre la búsqueda “encuentro
textual”: a través del diálogo entre literatura y amor, el entendimiento
reforma al mundo.
“Beyond
Philosophy: Alfonso Reyes and the Modern Mexican Essay”
Robert Sánchez, Mount
Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles
In the history of twentieth-century Mexican
philosophy, Alfonso Reyes is often (though respectfully and backhandedly)
disregarded as un gran pensador, ensayista, or poeta,
and he was often at odds with the philosophical currents of his day,
particularly mid-century existentialism.
However, in this paper, I will argue that the philosophy/not-philosophy
binary, which was endorsed by several prominent Mexican philosophers, is
ethnocentric, imitative, and fails to fully appreciate one of the main Mexican
contributions to world philosophy—namely, a style of essay that explores the
intersections and tensions between the universality and particularity of
cultural identity. So, the extent that Reyes offers a model of what I call “the
Latin American essay”—which promises to enrich our contemporary understanding
of the aims and parameters of philosophy, and thus of “philosophy” itself—I argue
that there is a sense in which Reyes ought to be considered one of the most
important Mexican philosophers, that
is, one of the most productive representatives of the uniquely Mexican
contribution to philosophy. This paper, than, is a further attempt to enlarge a
contemporary, predominantly European conception of contemporary philosophy to
make room in the canon for Mexican philosophy in general and for los filósofos de lo mexicano in
particular
“Hacia
un deslinde de la literatura: Alfonso Reyes ante la crítica filosófica”
Aurelia Valero Pie, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México
Publicado
en 1944, El deslinde constituye una
obra pionera de teoría literaria, no sólo en México, sino en el mundo de habla
hispana. En identificar la especificidad que distinguía a las bellas letras,
por oposición a otras creaciones del espíritu, consistía, como es sabido, la
finalidad que Alfonso Reyes se impuso en aquellas líneas. Pese a la voluntad de
afirmar la autonomía del campo literario, no deja de resultar paradójico, sin
embargo, que la recepción inicial de la obra se verificara entre los
practicantes de otras disciplinas. Así lo muestra el “Symposion” que a la
ocasión organizó la revista Filosofía y
Letras, invitando a diversas personalidades a pronunciarse sobre el tema.
Con acierto, los editores justificaron la iniciativa, aduciendo que “la
excepcionalidad de esta obra en nuestra literatura —y en cualquier otra— y la
autoridad eminente de que goza su autor en este campo, pueden promover en los
distintos especialistas una conciencia reflexiva sobre los problemas formales
de la expresión literaria”. Resulta sintomático, en ese sentido, que al
convivio intelectual acudieran dos filósofos y un historiador —Gabriel Méndez
Plancarte, Juan David García Bacca y Edmundo O’Gorman— y que sus objeciones se
centraran en el pretendido fracaso de Reyes al momento de delimitar el terreno
de la literatura frente al de la filosofía. Estudiar esa controversia como un medio para
entender, tanto el estatuto de la teoría en ese momento, cuanto la progresiva
definición y especialización disciplinaria, conforma el propósito de la
presente propuesta.
Dr. Jeanine “Gigi” Gaucher-Morales
The Gigi Gaucher-Morales Memorial Lecture
Series has been established by the Morales Family Lecture Series Endowment in
memory of the late Dr. Jeanine (Gigi) Gaucher-Morales, who passed away on May
20, 2007. Born in Paris, France, Dr. Gaucher-Morales was a professor emerita of
French and Spanish at Cal State L.A. She taught from 1965 to 2005, thus
devoting four decades of her academic life to Cal State L.A., where her
friends, students, and colleagues knew her as Gigi.
During her long and productive tenure at
this campus, Gigi taught generations of students the literature and culture of
France, of the Anglophone world, and of Latin America, including the Caribbean.
With her husband, Dr. Alfredo O. Morales, also professor emeritus of Spanish,
she co-founded, directed, and served as advisor of Teatro Universitario en
Español for almost 25 years, bringing to Cal State L.A. annual theater productions
based on plays stemming from different traditions and languages, such as the
Maya (“Los enemigos”), Colonial Mexico (“Aguila Real”), Spanish (“Bodas de
sangre”), French (“The Little Prince”), and English (“Under the Bridge”). In
addition, Gigi was the founder at Cal State L.A. of Pi Delta Phi, the national
French honor society. She was recognized and honored by the French government
for her contributions to the knowledge of French civilization in Latin America
and the United States. Gigi was also honored by her peers at Cal State L.A.
with the 1991-1992 Outstanding Professor Award.
On March 7, 1997, Gigi was recognized by
the Council of the City of Los Angeles, State of California, with a resolution
that in part reads as follows: “Be it resolved that by the adoption of this
resolution, the Los Angeles City Council does hereby commend Dr. Jeanine ‘Gigi’
Gaucher-Morales valued Professor of Spanish and French at California State
University, Los Angeles for her vision and her gift to the people of Los
Angeles and for contributing to the richness of multi-cultural arts in Los
Angeles.”
Every spring quarter, the Gigi
Gaucher-Morales Memorial Lectures will honor Gigi’s academic ideals as a
teacher, colleague, and mentor. The lectures will respond to Gigi’s diverse yet
interconnected interests in civilizations of the world, such as Mesoamerica and
those of the Andes, Latin America, Asia, and Francophone America, from Canada
to Haiti. Gigi embodied the highest academic standards in a range of academic
fields that were truly global and interdisciplinary. The Memorial Lectures
shall serve as a forum for distinguished guest speakers who engage vital topics
of our age in a world setting, thus offering students, staff, and faculty at
Cal State L.A. an opportunity to be critically exposed to different areas of
study and artistic traditions that constitute the highest cultural aspirations
of humanity. On
April 6-7, 2018, the Gigi Gaucher-Morales Memorial Conference Series will
sponsor a conference on Chicano History, Historiography, and the Historical
Novel. For more information on this conference, visit: http://chicanohistoryatcalstatela.blogspot.com/
https://mexicanmuralsatcalstatela.blogspot.com
