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The 14th Annual Comparative Literature Symposium
Crossing Borders:
21st Century Writers in the Americas
in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
April 4, 2003
The University of Tulsa and the National Endowment for the Humanities
This Symposium brings together North and South American writers in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Invited writers read and discuss their own work; the
writers are followed by questions from the floor.
Organizing Committee
Eduardo Faingold (University of Tulsa), Chair
Donald Gilbert-Santamaria (University of Washington)
William Kupinse (University of Tulsa)
Lydie Meunier (University of Tulsa)
Bruce Dean Willis (University of Tulsa)
Participants
Sergio Chejfec was born in Buenos Aires in 1956. Since 1990 he has lived in Caracas, where he edits
Nueva Sociedad, a bi-monthly Latin American journal dealing with the social sciences, politics, and culture. The author of seven narratives and one poetry collection, Chejfec also writes essays and literary notes for
journals and magazines. His published works include:
Lenta biografía. Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1990.
Moral. Buenos Aires: Puntosur, 1990.
El aire. Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 1992.
Cinco. Saint-Nazaire (France): M.E.E.T., 1996. (Other editions: Buenos Aires: Simurg, 1998; Mexico City:
Ediciones Sin Nombre -Juan Pablos, 2000.)
El llamado de la especie. Rosario (Argentina): Beatriz Viterbo, 1997. (Other edition: Mexico City: UNAM,
Los confabuladores, 1998.)
Los planetas. Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 1999.
Boca de lobo. Buenos Aires: Alfaguara, 2000.
Tres poemas y una merced, in Diario de Poesía 62 (2002), Buenos Aires.
Susann Cokal is the author of Mirabilis, a novel about a miraculous wet nurse, her beguiling employer, and a vindictive dwarf negotiating the labyrinths of city life in
fourteenth-century France. In 2001, it was published in the United States (BlueHen/Penguin Putnam), Germany (Aufbau Verlag), and Australia
(Hodder Stoughton). She has also published short stories in anthologies and journals such as
The Bellevue Literary Review, Resurrecting Grace, Gulf Stream, and Hayden’s Ferry
Review. After earning her Ph.D. in English and creative writing from Binghamton University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 2001, she became an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at California Polytechnic University in San Luis
Obispo. Her academic interests include narrative theory and the history of the novel, and her articles about authors such as Marianne Wiggins, Georges
Bataille,
and Jeanette Winterson have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Critique and
French Forum, as well as in forthcoming anthologies. She is, however, much happier to be working on a new novel,
Breath and Bones, in which an artists’ model plunges into the Wild West of the 1880s, pursuing a cure for both a
broken heart and the tuberculosis eating away at her lungs.
José Carlos Limeira Marinho Santos was born in Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) in 1951. He has been writing and publishing stories, articles,
crônicas (like newspaper columns) and poems since the 1970s. His works have been translated into several languages and analyzed in theses and dissertations in Brazil and in
other countries. A militant in the Brazilian Movimento Negro (Black Movement), he has participated in the direction of organizations such as the IPCN: Instituto de
Pesquisa das Culturas Negras (Institute of Research in Black Cultures), of which he was Vice President for Culture, and the Coletivo de Escritores Negros
Brasileiros (Black Brazilian Writers’ Collective). He has been an active publisher of poems and stories in
Cadernos Negros since the series’ beginning. He founded the first Bloco Afro Cultural (Afro-Brazilian musical street performance group) in Rio de Janeiro—Afro Axé Terê Babá—and GENS: Grupo de Escritores Negros
de Salvador (Group of Black Writers in Salvador). A researcher of literature produced by descendants of Africans, he has given presentations on the topic in
universities throughout Brazil. He is listed in the Enciclopédia de Literatura
Brasileira, Quem é Quem na Negritude Brasileira (Who’s Who in Brazilian
Negritude), and continues to collaborate in anthologies and with several national and international journals and reviews such as
Callaloo (1980, 1995) and Quilombo de Palavras (1999, 2000). His published works include:
Zumbi...dos (Buzzing Zumbi). Rio de Janeiro: Author’s edition, 1971.
Lembranças (Memories). Rio de Janeiro: Author’s edition, 1972.
O Arco-Iris Negro (The Black Rainbow). In association with Ele Semog. Rio de Janeiro: Authors’ edition, 1978.
Atabaques (Drums). In association with Ele Semog. Rio de Janeiro: Authors’ edition, 1983.
Josh Russell was born Thanksgiving Day, 1968, in Carbondale, Illinois and grew up in Normal. His novel
Yellow Jack (W.W. Norton & Company) was a Borders New Voices selection, a BookSense 76 Pick, and a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. In his
Baltimore Sun review of Yellow Jack, Ben Neihart wrote, “Josh Russell’s electrifying debut is one the best first novels I’ve ever read.” In the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Diane Roberts said, “He is an heir to Poe not only in shifty narrative technique but also in his stark, unsentimental depiction of New Orleans’ plague and the citizens’ decadent
defiance of it.” Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag has published a German translation of the novel—Der Porträtist—and W.W. Norton has released an American
paperback edition. Josh Russell’s short fiction has appeared in the Antioch Review, Epoch, New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and the Oat City
Press limited edition Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York. He lives in New Orleans and teaches at Tulane University.
Roland Michel Tremblay is a French-Canadian author born in Quebec City in 1972. He has been living in London since 1995 and has a Masters degree in
French Literature from the University of London, Birkbeck College. He has four books published in French in Paris by iDLivre including novels
(Waiting for Paris and Denfert-Rochereau), poetry (The Anarchist) and a philosophical essay
(The Eclectism). Tremblay’s work appears in both French and English versions on his
website, The Crowned Anarchist Literature at www.crownedanarchist.com, which also highlights Tremblay’s interest in science fiction and theoretical physics.
Roland Michel Tremblay has recently become a science consultant and technical adviser to script writers and executive producers of American television series and
movies. For the last 6 years Roland Michel has also been producing and writing conferences in Telecoms and IT all over Europe.
Santiago Vaquera was born in a small agricultural town in northern California. His childhood was spent between the town of Orland, California, where he was
raised, and the Mexican border city of Mexicali, where many of his family members live. Moving frequently during his childhood, he grew up
traveling in many directions at once. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University. He has also taught at
Texas A&M University and has been a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. At Penn State he has offered courses in US Latino literature and culture and in
US/Mexico border literature. His academic work on US Latino and Latin American literature and culture has been published in journals and anthologies in Mexico
and the United States, and he has presented this work at various international conferences. Gallery exhibitions in Chico and in Santa Barbara, California have
featured his work. During his graduate career he was represented by the Santa Barbara Art Company. Paintings of his are currently in private holdings in Germany,
New York, Texas, and California. Aside from his academic and artistic endeavors, he has been a disc jockey and is also a creative writer. His short stories have
been published in international literary journals and newspapers (Tinta, Los universitarios, El País) as well as in major anthologies on contemporary literature in
the Americas (Líneas aéreas, 1998; Se habla español, voces latinas en USA, 2000). He has recently completed his first novel,
Una chava de ojos tristes, and is currently outlining a second one.
The 14th Annual Comparative Literature Symposium
Crossing Borders:
21st Century English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
Writers in the Americas
Conference Program
Friday, April 4, 2003
9:15 - 9.45
Welcome
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Thomas A. Horne, Dean, Henry Kendall College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tulsa
Opening Remarks: “English, French, Portuguese and Spanish in the Americas”
Eduardo Faingold, Associate Professor of Languages, University of Tulsa
9.45 - 10:45
Morning Session #1 (English)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Susann Cokal (United States)
Chair: Donald Gilbert-Santamaria, University of Washington
10:45 - 11:15 Coffee Break
11:15 - 12:15 Morning Session #2 (English)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Josh Russell (United States)
Chair: William Kupinse, University of Tulsa
12:15 - 2:00 Lunch Break
2:00 - 3:00 Afternoon Session #1 (French)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Roland Michel Tremblay (Quebec)
Chair: Lydie Meunier, University of Tulsa
3:00 - 4:00 Afternoon Session #2 (Portuguese)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
José Carlos Limeira (Brazil)
Chair: Bruce Dean Willis, University of Tulsa
4:00 - 5:00 Afternoon Session #3 (Spanish)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Sergio Chejfec (Argentina)
Chair: Eduardo Faingold, University of Tulsa
5:00 - 5.30 Coffee Break
5:30 - 6:30 Afternoon Session #4 (Spanish)
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Santiago Vaquera (United States)
Chair: Eduardo Faingold, University of Tulsa
6:30 - 7:00 Meet the Authors
McFarlin Library Faculty Study
Book Signing
7:00 Reception
Oliphant Hall 100 |
