Join us for a full-day interdisciplinary conference titled Aesthetics of Joy and Refuge in Contemporary Culture, hosted by The Latinx Project. Featuring presentations by a range of scholars and cultural producers, each transforming contemporary visual culture, creative industries, and scholarship. Please RSVP for the conference via Eventbrite for campus access. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Please RSVP here

Aesthetics of Joy and Refuge in Contemporary Culture

Friday, October 10, 2025

9:00am Breakfast & Registration

9:50am Welcome

10:00am-11:40am Panel: Media and New Technologies

• Arcelia Gutiérrez (University of California, Irvine): The Case for Media Reparations

• Harold J. Leonard Navarro (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras): Beyond Recognition: Black Bodies, AI, and the Aesthetics of Recognition

• Michael Anthony Turcios (Northwestern University): Experiments with Burning ICE: Rage as Joy and Refuge

• Nathan Rossi (Northwestern University): Digital Mestizaje, the Datafication of Latinx Identity, and the Political Economy of Brownness on TikTok

• Ramón Resendiz (University of Oregon): Visualizing Archival Resistance: Producing Refuge & Justice through Documentary Media across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

• Moderator: Sharon De La Cruz (New York University)

11:50am-1:30pm Panel: Perspectives on Visual Art

• Armando Perla (University of Montreal): Diasporic Aesthetics of Resistance: Indigenous Mesoamerican Museologies and the Visual Politics of Memory

• Deanna Ledezma (University of Illinois Chicago): Lineages of Labor: Contemporary Latinx Artists at Work

• Debbie M Duarte (Pitzer College): Alien Toy Takes a Joyride: Sensing Borderless Futurities

• Joanne Gil Rivera (La Calle Loíza, Inc.): Somos Cangrejos: Mapa, Arte, Foro

• Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet (Howard University Gallery of Art): Africana Kairibe Malungaje: Futurist Reversed Memories

• Moderator: Robert Hernandez (Fordham University)

2:30pm-4:10pm Panel: Joy and Embodiment

• Andy Rafael Aguilera (Western Washington University): “It Means Good”: Resistance and Refuge in Latinx Streetwear Brands in the Age of Trump

• Gabrielle Vazquez (Curator): Diasporican Queens

• Jose Ferrufino (Industrial designer): Al mal tiempo, buena cara: The Making of Beauty

• Odalis Garcia Gorra (University of Texas at Austin): Dancing at the Threshold: Joy, Resistance, and the Counter-Archives of Diasporican

• Orquidea Morales (University of Arizona): Excess and Monstrosity: The Freedom and Pain of La Gordita

• Moderator: Gabriel Magraner (The Latinx Project)

4:20pm-6:00pm Panel: Migration and Border Culture

• Daniel J. Vázquez Sanabria (University of Texas at Austin): Return is/as Refuge: Crip Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Puerto Rican Cultural Productions

• Jose Alaniz (University of Washington, Seattle): Out of the Chispaverse: Chispa Comics as ‘Militarized Border Visuality’

• Kiri Avelar (University of Utah): Transnational Family Dance Lineages of the U.S./Mexico Bracero Program

• Mikayla Hernandez Guevara (School of the Art Institute of Chicago): What a Border to Cross: Domesticana, Material, and Aesthetics of Migration in Shaping a Transcendent Chicana Identity

• Taylor Seaver De La Fuente (University of Michigan): Lo Que Le Pasó al Valle

• Moderator: Cristina Beltrán (New York University)

6:00pm-7:00pm Community Reception

REGISTER

Join the NYU Migration Network for a full-day conference exploring detention and deportation from multiple angles—past, present, and future. Through four panels with scholars, journalists, policy experts, and activists, we’ll examine how these practices shape US politics and immigration policy, from the historical roots of detention to the latest technologies of enforcement, and the on-the-ground organizing happening in New York City today. This event is co-sponsored in part by The Latinx Project and other centers and institutes.

NYU campus access guidelines: This is an in-person event, open to the public. Registration is required.

Accessibility note: If you have any access needs, please email migration-network@nyu.edu.

Panel 1: The politics and policy of detention and deportation under Trump 2
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. EDT

This panel sets the stage for a discussion of detention and deportation in the context of today’s politics and policies. Together, the panelists will help us make sense of the impact of this administration’s policies on the lives of immigrants and the way that a politics of detention and deportation is reshaping the United States of America.

Featured Panelists:
Adam Cox (New York University)
Muzaffar Chishti (Migration Policy Institute)
Tanya Greene (Human Rights Watch)
Miriam Jordan (New York Times)
Moderated by Natasha Iskander

Panel 2: History of detention and deportation
12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m.

This keynote discussion will situate this unprecedented moment in the context of the contemporary history and geography of detention and deportation in immigration enforcement.

Featured Keynote Speaker:
Alison Mountz (University of Toronto)
Moderated by Radha S. Hegde

Panel 3: Technologies of detention and deportation
1:30pm-3:00pm

This panel focuses on the technologies and infrastructure of detention and deportation, from digital surveillance to the bureaucratic structure of ICE, to the financial institutions embedded in the business of detention.

Featured Panelists:
Kimberly Morgan (George Washington University)
Matthew Guariglia (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Nancy Hiemstra (Stony Brook University)
William Turton (Propublica)
Moderated by Aisha Khan

Panel 4: Activists in NYC
3:15pm-4:00pm

This panel brings together activist organizations and student groups to discuss the work that they are doing on the ground to support New Yorkers who are vulnerable to detention and deportation. The discussion will include a know-your-rights training.

Photograph source: Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange

The Latinx Project is excited to launch a brown-bag luncheon series to continue building the Latinx Studies community here at NYU. Join us October 15 at noon at 20 Cooper Square Room 101 for the first presentation: "Taíno Timbres: Dreaming Afrofutures, Sounding Indigenous Presence in La Sista's 'Anacaona'" by Dr. Cloe Gentile Reyes (Faculty Fellow, CAS Music).

This event is open only to NYU faculty, students, and staff. Please use your NYU ID to enter the building.

Please RSVP via Google Form

Abstract

La Sista's music video for her song "Anacaona" acts as an entry point to recall the often-forgotten history of Boricuas in U.S. Indian Boarding Schools, as well as the implementation of these genocidal assimilationist educational models on the island through U.S. colonial rule. My paper ruminates on how this living history impacts Indigenous modes of sounding, as well as how, in La Sista's case, rap and drums act as modes of language and music revitalization that open portals to the Dreamspace and in effect queer time. Through a decolonial and ancestral listening praxis, I hear La Sista's voice undoing what Maria Lugones calls "the coloniality of gender," ultimately enabling the reggaetónera to engage in resuscitative labor that conjures the Taíno Kasika, Anacaona, in the present moment. 

About

Dr. Cloe Gentile Reyes is a Boricua writer, educator, and songkeeper. She is currently a Faculty Fellow in the CAS Department of Music at NYU. Her writing and teaching center Indigenous epistemologies of sound and embodiment at the intersections of race, gender, and disability. Her first book project, Sounding Sucia: Disabling Coloniality through Rap & Reggaetón, navigates how queer Indigenous peoples are disabled by coloniality but engage with rap and reggaetón as forms of ancestral memory to disarm coloniality in return. 

Please join us on Wednesday, October 22, 2025 at 6:30pm for "Photographers in Conversation: Vernacular Images." This panel discussion features the artists of Escenas--Andina Marie Osorio, Ashley Peña, Damon Casarez, Diana Guerra, José Ibarra Rizo, and Steven Molina Contreras--and will be moderated by the co-curators Orlando Ochoa, Jr. and Xavier Robles Armas.

"Photographers in Conversation" will take place online via Zoom and will explore the making of vernacular contemporary photography.

Please RSVP via Evenbrite 

Escenas is made possible with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the New York University Office of the Provost.

Nomination for The Latinx Project Honoree (Spring 2026)

We would love to hear from you as we identify honorees to be recognized at our next Spring Party in April 2026. Please use this form to nominate one individual across regions, generations, or fields who excel in areas of arts, scholarship, criticism, or activism. Please feel free to self-nominate. Each person can only submit one nomination. Deadline Please submit nominations by November 1, 2025.

Submit: https://airtable.com/appmZ49Q1tPoKVUxE/shrg6fLAYTzrfy6G7

Past Honorees

2025: Edra Soto, C. Ondine Chavoya

2024: Juana Valdés, Tomás Ybarra Frausto

2023: Black Latinas Know Collective, Lorgia Garcia Peña, Amalia Mesa Bains, E. Carmen Ramos, Shellyne Rodriguez

Questions? latinxproject@nyu.edu

Join Alex Santana and Yara Simón, editors at Intervenxions and freelance writers, for this guide on how to pitch publications. This virtual discussion will cover how to write an effective pitch, find your niche, and target publications. We will present sample pitches, break down what Intervenxions is looking for, and offer tips and tricks to help you stand out to any publication.

Please RSVP via Eventbrite

Alex Santana is a writer, editor, and curator with an interest in conceptual art, political intervention, and public participation. Currently based in New York but originally from Newark, NJ, she has held positions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Joan Mitchell Center, Mana Contemporary, and Alexander Gray Associates. Her interviews and essays have been published by Hyperallergic, CUE Art Foundation, Terremoto Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Precog Magazine, NXTHVN, and Artsy. She is currently Associate Editor for Intervenxions, a publication of The Latinx Project at NYU.

Yara Simón is a Nicaraguan-Cuban-American editor, journalist, and author who has worked in Latinx media for more than a decade. Currently the deputy editor at Intervenxions, she is particularly passionate about covering topics that explore the Central American diaspora. She resides in Los Angeles with her daughter and husband.

Save the date! The Latinx Project is excited to launch a brown-bag luncheon series to continue building the Latinx Studies community here at NYU. Join us November 12 at noon at 20 Cooper Square Room 101 for the second presentation by Melissa Aslo de la Torre (Librarian for Latin American, Caribbean, Spanish, and Portuguese Studies at Bobst Library).

This event is open only to NYU faculty, students, and staff. Please use your NYU ID to enter the building.

Please save the date! Join us December 4, 2025 from 5-7pm for the closing of the exhibition.

Click to learn more about Escenas.

Save the date!

Writing Fashion explores the dynamic field of Latinx fashion through the lenses of cultural studies and visual culture. Bringing together scholars and writers, it examines how fashion has been approached as a site of identity formation, resistance, and cultural expression. Panelists will discuss key trends, influential texts, and emerging theoretical frameworks—ranging from decolonial critique and embodiment to gender, race, and class analysis—that shape the study of Latinx fashion today. By foregrounding fashion as a powerful mode of visual storytelling, this conversation highlights its role in both challenging and reimagining dominant narratives within and beyond the fashion industry.