LAIGN Third Annual Conference in Mexico City

On Friday, December 2, the Latin American Interdisciplinary Gender Network (LAIGN) held its third annual conference in Mexico City. The conference was titled “Irrupciones feministas anti-sistema en América Latina” and was the first large in-person conference of this international network of activists and scholars. The various workshops and panels featured speakers from across the Americas and were viewed by both in-person attendees and an online audience. The encounter brought together scholars from diverse disciplines and critical perspectives on pressing topics such as critical masculinities, HIV prevention, and Women’s Leadership. 

The conference opened with welcoming remarks from several of LAIGN’s coordinators and sponsors. Marisa Isabel Belausteguigoitia Rius, Director of CIEG-UNAM, started by thanking all of the staff and volunteers who made the in-person conference possible. Claudia Valeggia, Director of Yale CLAIS, offered an overview of LAIGN’s seven working groups. She explained that LAIGN is an international network of faculty, scholars, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral students from across the United States and Latin America. LAIGN members work within the broad field of gender studies, including – but not limited to - feminist, queer, and decolonial theories. The Network’s main objective is to produce bilingual academic and cultural scholarship to create knowledge and provide solutions to gender-related issues from a variety of perspectives in the following focus areas: Gender and Education, Gender and Feminism Theory, Gender, Economy, Poverty, and Health, Gender in the Arts and Humanities, Gender in Science, Technology, and Innovation, Gender and Human Rights, Gender and Policy.

Benjamín Juárez Echenique, Campus Director of UNAM-Boston, reflected on the growing relationship between UNAM and Yale and emphasized the importance of U.S. institutions’ participation in conversations about issues affecting Latin America. Finally, Guadalupe Valencia García, Coordinator of Humanities at UNAM, emphasized the urgency of this conference and its mission of combatting gender-based violence and discrimination.

Following these opening remarks, attendees were invited to watch the day’s first panel, “Hombres y masculinidades desde una perspectiva de género.” The conference was moderated by Amneris Chaparro of CIEG-UNAM and featured several speakers whose work focuses on masculinity and violence. Mauricio Zabalgoitia of UNAM spoke about men’s emotional reactions in response to conversations about gender and emphasized “complicity between masculinity, subjectivity, and gender.” Next, Martín H. González discussed men’s roles in research about histories of gender and sexuality. Finally, Alí Siles, also of CIEG-UNAM, spoke about how men at UNAM negotiate violence and “the mandate of masculinity.” The panel ended with a lively Q&A featuring a variety of questions from Chaparro and members of the audience. 

The main event was the keynote by Yale Professor Moira Fradinger. Her presentation “Nuestras Antigonas: De Madre Patria a Asamblea Revuelta” focused on contemporary appropriations of Sophocles’s Antigona. The presentation gave an overview of the myriad of Latin American re-writings of the Greek Myth. Fradinger framed this appropriation as a tradition that challenges enduring colonial structures in the present, in particular by cannibalizing and “ruminating” the European myth. The presentation is a brief overview of Fradinger’s forthcoming book in Oxford University Press, an extensive study of these re-adaptations. Find more about the event here.

By Alan Mendoza-Sosa & Charlie Mayock-Bradley