Historian Douglas Baynton views “disability as a fundamental element in cultural signification, indispensable for historians who want to make sense of the past” (82). This panel responds to that call to examine how disability, disabled bodies, and the question of normality/abnormality was represented in historical and literary texts in the Hispanic world.

While some Hispanic Studies scholars have begun incorporating a Disability Studies framework into their research (to name a few, Aurélie Vialette, Benjamin Fraser, Violeta Ruíz, Akiko Tsuchiya, Erika Rodríguez, Susan Antebi), this is still a recent development in the field and one of our goals in proposing this session is to showcase current research on the topic.

Additionally, much of the current research on embodiment and disability in the Hispanic World is weighted to discussing contemporary film or the Early Modern period, and our focus on the 19th and 20th centuries invites expanding beyond those time periods.

We have selected four panelists to present for 10-15 minutes each with Q&A/discussion to follow. Because our session will encompass both Latin America and Spain, we chose two proposals focused on Spain and two on Latin America. Though selecting four panelists shortens the time that each presenter is allotted, we made this choice in order to maintain the balance between Spain and Latin America, as well as to build in a buffer in case down the line a participant is unable to attend the conference.

The first panelist is Halle Keane, whose paper "(Dis)figuring the Nation: Feminine Bodies, Literary Heritage, and Nation-Making in Lumpérica" analyzes Chilean novelist Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica, written in the context of Pinochet’s dictatorship. Keane will discuss how violence is enacted on feminine bodies as well as on the Chilean body politic in an authoritarian context.

The second panelist is Salvador del Ramo Zornoza, whose paper “Prosthetic Nationhood: Disability and the Myth of José Millán Astray in Francoist Spain” will examine the role of disability in ideological construction during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. Salvador argues that the literary figure of the mutilated veteran corresponds to the mutilated national body in Francoist Spain.

The third panelist is Jaime Hanneken, whose paper “Embodiments of fin-de-siècle Latin American Pan-Nationalism" dialogues with the danger of dismemberment in the context of U.S. imperialism by examining turn of the century discourses. Hanneken argues that these discourses present a rhetoric of embodiment surrounding the concepts of “people” and “population” in Latin America.

The fourth panelist is Carlos Varón González, whose paper “Curvas fugitivas: class, sex, and form in Pardo Bazán’s La Tribuna” analyzes 19th century Spanish writer Emilia Pardo Bazán’s novel La Tribuna. Varón González will focus on how women’s bodies are depicted as objects of desire and consumption, as well as responsible for producing workers’ bodies.

These presentations will highlight how bodies are presented in literary and cultural texts, in contexts where the health/appearance/performance of the body is connected to the stability of the nation as a whole.

Keeping in mind a diversity of voices, we have two graduate students representing the panel, as well as two professors. When it comes to specific panelists’ topics, two of the presentations (Keane and Varón González) will specifically focus on women’s bodies. While all four panelists come from institutions based in the United States, they represent diverse geographical locations. Lastly, both session organizers are PhD students at different universities who have presented at academic conferences (MLA, LASA, NEMLA, PAMLA) in the past three years. We feel confident that this session will facilitate an engaging discussion at the upcoming conference in Los Angeles and are excited to undertake this new experience as organizers.

Baynton, Douglas C. “Disability: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”. 1997, pp. 81-87.