Critical Disaster Studies in Latin American and Caribbean Literature (ACLA 2026)
Montréal
Organization: ACLA
Event: ACLA 2026
Our world is increasingly defined by the impact of disasters, but the specific terms of how we understand these events have varied over time and have often been framed by scientific, economic, or political discourses. Broadly defined, Critical Disasters Studies (CDS) emphasizes that disasters are not merely natural events. As Andy Horowitz and Jacob Remes have argued, “disaster, as a concept, is not just made in policy and politics; it is also made in personal and public imaginations” (4). Storytelling has and continues to play a crucial role in shaping our perception of those phenomena. Yet, fictional accounts have been overlooked in these debates, despite their significant philosophical and ethical contributions. This is particularly true about Latin America and the Caribbean, a region prone to disaster and experiencing some of the worst impacts globally.
This panel approaches CDS not merely as a subject matter, but as a lens through which to explore literature’s unique capacity to bear witness, process trauma, and critique power structures. Building upon Carlos Fonseca Suárez’s The Literature of Catastrophe (2020), this seminar seeks to highlight that catastrophes, as socially and historically constructed phenomena, are deeply intertwined with power relations and the formation of political systems in the region. We seek to foster an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue about the rich body of literature from Latin America and the Caribbean about disasters, from massive and recognizable events such as earthquakes and hurricanes to environmental degradation and technological failures. We invite proposals that engage with how literary and cultural texts from the region interrogate, reinforce, or subvert conventional understandings of catastrophe, particularly in dialogue with CDS’ concerns with power, inequality, and historical legacies.
Possible guiding questions could include (but are not limited to):
- In what ways have Latin American and Caribbean literatures depicted disasters as outcomes of long processes of colonialism? In what ways are disasters entangled with the coloniality of power in literary representations of the region?
- How does literature from the region contribute to the collective memory of catastrophic events, and what role does it play in shaping different post-disaster identities and communities?
- “Elsewhere catastrophe” has been defined by Anna Brickhouse as the conviction that calamity primarily affects non-US regions or racialized bodies, and how it reveals the “unseeing” or “willful forgetting” of domestic cataclysms. How does Latin American and Caribbean literature challenge and dialogue with Brickhouse's “elsewhere catastrophe” narrative?
Please send an abstract of 250 words maximum by October 2nd, 2025. For any queries about the seminar, please contact the organizers, Sahai Couso Díaz (cousodiaz1@kenyon.edu) and Danielle Dorvil (ddorvil@sarahlwrence.edu).
https://www.acla.org/seminar/df88549e-0dfa-482e-b53d-fc884e463266
Sahai Couso Díaz