On behalf of the Recovery of the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, its board members and Researchers, from East to West coasts, I would like to recognize the collegial spirit of the ASA and its leaders for making this unprecedented collaboration a reality. Gracias por todo.
Begun in 1990, the specific goal of the Recovery Project has been to locate, preserve, and publish literary sources by Hispanic writers from the colonial period to 1960. The project defines "literary" broadly to include histories, diaries, memoirs, prose, poetry, fiction, and newspapers. The theme for our portion of the annual meeting, "Nuestra América: A Transnational Perspective on 'The Local and the Global,'" takes its lead from ASA's own conference title, with a broad emphasis on comparative analyses.
Our goal is to present the evolving significance of the "local and the global" for Latinos/as as represented, debated, and contested in writings from the 1500s to 1960. Here notions of place, home, country, citizenship, and nation necessarily dialogue with geographies of colonial power that are locally and globally expressed. We in the Recovery Project look forward to not only sharing with you the findings of an enterprise now into its second decade, but also inviting you to think out loud about how our findings might affect your field interests and vice versa.
We envision a "nuestra américa" not just in language, but also as the outcome of new social relations made possible by intellectual and cultural border-crossings at this conference. While these crossovers might happen at Recovery panels, they are just as likely to happen at events organized by the site committee such as salsa and meringue music at the president's dance, tours of Houston's museum district, and reading by diverse ethnic writers from Houston and other points.
We thank you for coming to Houston. We mean to make your visit memorable.
José Aranda
Arte Público Press,
Recovery of the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project
English Department, Rice University