Healing and Dialogue

I want to thank Alicia, Georgina, Allison and all the co participants in the symposium for creating this incredible space of healing. It's been a long time since I felt that "love" in academic space. I felt very nostalgic for my years as a graduate student, when I would see the Generation ChicanA and Xicana at conferencias speaking their truths. This was before my "fall" into the reality of everyday life as a Chicana feminist in the academy.

One of the things I had hoped for, was more dialogue about some of the questions that Alicia posed about influential theorists, questions of methodology, archival work and projects. Maybe we can have some of this conversación via bloga?

In my notes, I stated a concern about continuity. Specifically at times it feels like "women of color" and "Chicana feminisms" or "Third World feminisms" are viewed as 1980s phenomenon to the more 2000s terms such as transnational: On that point, I loved Antonia Castañeda's statement that "our bodies are transnational." This calls to mind Norma Alarcón's essay, "In the Tracks of the Native Woman." I wonder if there is a need to revisit or find ways to anthologize some of the key articles in a reader, something like the Chicana Feminist Thought collection, but one that features key writings by Chicana feminist theorists? I would love to have that for my Chicana Feminisms course (for which I am endlessly creating course readers, etc.)

I would also love to hear dialogue on the concept of "third space feminism" (found in Sandoval and Perez's work). I had a student (que en paz descanse) who was writing a genealogy of third space feminisms drawing from the 1960s & 1970s, then Bridge, to Sandoval/Perez to the present. More and more of my students use this term. Is there a way to elaborate this concept and think it through some of our research? Is there current work that uses this term that I have missed (since I'm teaching 24-7 and unfortunately not always able to read...)

Mucho mucho corazón,
Dionne