Chicano Context on Spanish Colonial Text Focus of Talk

Read­ing a Span­ish Colo­nial epic from a Chi­cano per­spec­tive is the focus of a talk on Wednes­day, March 28, at noon in Hibben Cen­ter, Room 105. The epic is Villagrá‘s His­to­ria de la Nueva Méx­ico, 1610; and the speaker is Gen­ero Padilla.

Padilla offers a read­ing of Gas­par Pérez de Villagrá’s 1610 colo­nial epic as a work that stages the future, that con­tains a poet­ics of colo­nial mendacity—yet also a dis­sent. He argues that Villagrá’s epic projects a dystopian con­cep­tion of his­tory rec­og­niz­able in the cur­rent cul­tural debates of New Mex­ico, and that it under­mines the Juan de Oñate project in its first moment.

Padilla is pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish and asso­ciate dean in the Col­lege of Let­ters and Sci­ences at Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley. He is the author of sev­eral books, includ­ing The Dar­ing Flight of My Pen: Cul­tural Pol­i­tics and Gas­par Perez de Villagra’s His­to­ria de la Nueva Mex­ico, and My His­tory, Not Yours: The For­ma­tion of Mex­i­can Amer­i­can Auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

This event is spon­sored by the depart­ments of Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Anthro­pol­ogy, Span­ish & Por­tuguese, the CHMS pro­gram, and the Col­lege of Arts & Sci­ences Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Association.

Media Con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les (505) 277‑5920; email: cgonzal@unm.edu