In a society where urban life recreates otherness, dissolves geographical and social borders, creates transnational spaces and crafts new identities, how do Latinos and Hispanic immigrants of various Latin American regions living in cities in the US (re)build the local and global from inter- and cross-cultural perspectives: language, history, sense of belonging, conflict, territorializing, mobility? This session intends to bring together research from different theoretical and methodological perspectives in the humanities and social sciences on Latino/Hispanic communities in US cities. Submissions comparing two (or more) Latino/Hispanic groups in urban settings in terms of language, identity and space will be of special interest since this session also seeks to broaden the discussion on the use of Spanish(es) in real and fictionalized contexts from more than one perspective such as sociolinguistics, literary theory, discourse analysis, cultural studies and other related disciplines. In particular, studies that challenge the traditional categorizations of language, identity and/or space, and show their relevance to community-building for US Latinos and Hispanics will be considered for inclusion in the panel.

Send abstract in English or Spanish to Gerardo Augusto Lorenzino, galorenz@temple.edu, by September 30, 2018