Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

While Chicana/os and Latina/os—or Latinx—traveled throughout Europe in the 20th century primarily due to warfare and related Cold War contexts, contemporary Latinx travelers and expatriates in the new millennium have returned to Europe in a new era of globalization that inevitably involves radical transformations of Latinidades, or Latinx epistemologies and ontologies. This paper explores select case studies of Latinx cultural workers—primarily playwrights, poets and musicians—who have traveled to various southern and eastern European nations to participate in complex consumptions and performances of culture. I submit that the multiple gazes and reverse gazes, as well as dialogues and transculturations, have undergirded new post-Latinx formations, that is, transversal syntheses of Europeanized Latinx identities, cultures, and knowledges. Several questions guide this inquiry. Why did Latinx artists and travelers travel to select countries during the Cold War and post-millennium? What impact did their European encounters have on their work? How were notions of Latinidades transformed in the process of their encounters and performances? How did the different eras of contact zone encounters impact framings of the “end” of Latinx Studies at different times?