This event is part of the Literary Mews 2016: PEN World Voices Festival at NYU. See http://as.nyu.edu/object/literarymews… for updates

Please RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/displace…

This event will feature a conversation and performance by renowned artists Mark Gonzales and Bocafloja. The event will be moderated by Laura Torres-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University

Presented by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Bocafloja – Multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and founder of Quilombarte collective. In addtion to five professionally edited music albums and having toured internationally throughout 20 countries, Bocafloja in 2008 published his first book ImaRginación. Prognosis is his second literary project. Race relations, decolonial narrative, and the African diaspora in Latin America studies are fundamental topics addressed in his body of work. His most recent documentary; Nana Dijo / Irresolute Radiography of Black Conciusness, has been recognized as a brilliant contribution in the anlysis of the body of the oppressed. He has been featured in BBC, NPR, and MTV, among other media outlets globally. Among Bocafloja’s distinguished performances and academic presentations are” Casa de las Américas (Cuba), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Brazil), and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (US).

Mark Gonzales – Described as ‘Khalil Gibran meets Pablo Neruda,’ Mark is a HBO Def Jam poet who has shared his writing on stage around the world, including the first TEDxRamallah talks held in Palestine, which led him to trend worldwide on Twitter. As a community builder he was an invited speaker at the United Nations tribunal on Social Exclusion. Mark’s work breaks borders to wage beauty across continents of language and culture, which has earned him respect for his creative approaches to suicide prevention, human rights and human development.

Laura Torres-Rodríguez – Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures. She is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico and holds a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico (2006). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (2012). Torres-Rodriguez’s work studies the role of cross-cultural investigation in the development of Latin American aesthetic and political discourses, primarily in nineteenth and twentieth century Mexico. Her current book project, Asian Designs: Orientalism and Modernity in Mexico, 1900-1968, proposes that Mexican Orientalism was a key discursive practice in the consolidation of post-revolutionary cultural nationalism. Other research interests include forms of inter-peripheral thought in the Mexican left and the relationship between popular culture and aestheticism in turn of the century Latin America. Torres-Rodriguez has published on Orientalism and translation and diary writing in Latin America. She has received awards from the Ford Foundation and the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn.