The University of Arizona Press

Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Time: 4:30 – 6:30 p.m., EST

Where: Paul Cadario Conference Centre, University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Pl, Toronto, ON

Alan Pelaez Lopez, editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent  will give a lecture at the University of Toronto titled, “Rehearsals and Refusal: notes on the trans* imagination.” The lecture weaves North American Indigenous epistemologies with Black trans* theory to think about who we might be outside settler nations, genders, and sexualities. Pelaez Lopez says, “I talk through the radical activism of undocumented / illegalized trans* migrants in the United States to argue that the imagination is the first thing that empires take from us when we cross settler border.”  The event is presented by the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and is free and open to the public.  (Note: As of Feburary 27, 2024, this event is sold out).

About the book:

When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community.

By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas. The volume offers up three central questions: How do queer and/or trans Black writers of Latin American descent address memory? What are the textures of caring, being cared for, and accepting care as Black queer and/or trans people of Latin American descent? And how do queer and trans embodiments help us understand and/or question the past and the present, and construct a Black, queer, and trans future?

Date: Friday, February 16, 2024

Time: 6 p.m., PST

Where: Portola Community Center, 45480 Portola Ave, Palm Desert, CA

William L. Bird Jr., author of In the Arms of Saguaros, will speak at the Historical Society of Palm Desert. He will show slides and explore the saguaro’s growth into a western icon from the early days of the American railroad to the years bracketing World War II, when Sun Belt boosterism hit its zenith and proponents of tourism succeed in moving the saguaro to the center of the promotional frame. Bird is a curator emeritus of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. His interests lie at the intersection of politics, popular culture, and the history of visual display.  

About the book:

In the Arms of Saguaros shows how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteenth century to the tourism boosters in our own time, saguaros and their images have fulfilled attention-getting needs and expectations. This book explores how the growth of tourism brought the saguaro to ever-larger audiences through the proliferation of western-themed imagery on the American roadside. The history of the saguaro’s popular and highly imaginative range points to the current moment in which the saguaro touches us as a global icon in art, fashion, and entertainment.

When: February 6, 2024

Time: 1 p.m., EST

Where: Southbury Public Library, 100 Poverty Rd., Southbury, CT

Registration recommended: Register for event here

Lucianne Lavin will speak on Our Hidden Landscapes edited by Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas at the Southbury Connecticut Library. The event is co-sponsored by the Library and the Southbury Land Trust. Lavin will talk about built stone cultural features. The idea of Native Americans designing stone structures that represent sacred landscapes is fairly new to some Northeastern researchers, as it was historically–and erroneously—thought that local Indigenous peoples did not build in stone and all such structures were the result of European-American farming activities. Some of it is, but some of it is not.

This event is free to attend and open to all. Register here.

About the book:

Native American authors provide perspectives on the cultural meaning and significance of ceremonial stone landscapes and their characteristics, while professional archaeologists and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving them. The chapters present overwhelming evidence in the form of oral tradition, historic documentation, ethnographies, and archaeological research that these important sites created and used by Indigenous peoples are deserving of protection.

This work enables archaeologists, historians, conservationists, foresters, and members of the general public to recognize these important ritual sites.