Contact Zones: Afro/Diaspora, Indigeneity/Mestizaje, and Translation/Traslado

This year’s theme is Contact Zones, with three sub-themes: 1) Afro/Diaspora, 2) Indigeneity/Mestizaje and 3) Translation/Traslado.  Afrodiasporas, mestizajes, indigenismos, cultural translation, and migrations are all instances of improvisation occurring in the contact zones throughout the Americas.  The conference this year will consider how these particular contact zones have developed in ways that exceed, evade, or precede the nation. Mary Louise Pratt coined the term "contact zones" in her 1992 book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, borrowing from the linguistic concept of "contact languages," or "improvised languages that develop among speakers of different native languages who need to communicate with each other." "Contact zones" supplants the more traditional term "frontier" by considering social, political, cultural, economic, and linguistic interactions from multiple perspectives rather than just from the perspective of the conquerors. As Pratt explains, "contact zone" refer "to the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict." "Contact zones" also foregrounds "the interactive, improvisational dimensions" of social encounters.