Brown and Down in Hyde Park: Wilfred Santiago’s In My Darkest Hour
William Orchard
This paper situates Wilfred Santiago’s graphic novel In My Darkest Hour (2004) in a growing body of work populated with depressed Latino protagonists. Latino depression provides an opportunity to track connections between political conditions and affective states. Approached from this angle, Santiago’s work differs from other representations because it reveals depression not as a symptom of a crisis masculinity that could refurbish group identity but as an affective interruption that allows for new kinds of aesthetic engagement with the world.
Continuing the Movement: Moctesuma Esparza’s Activist, Artistic, and Business Enterprises
Elda María Román
In the post-Chicano movement era, Chicana/os who were inspired by movement activism sought out ways to enact social change in institutional spheres such as education or through law and politics. This paper will focus on Moctesuma Esparza as an individual who exemplifies this phenomenon in the entertainment industry. Esparza is a Chicano activist, former Brown Beret, and notably one of the organizers of the 1968 East LA walkouts. After the 70s, he founded companies to produce, distribute, and exhibit Latina/o themed films and has served as a founder or board member of numerous philanthropic organizations dedicated to education and increasing the participation of Latina/os in the media. I will discuss how Esparza’s s life history might help us understand a broader cultural history of how 1960s activism has been translated in institutional and corporate settings.
Respondent: John Alba Cutler, Northwestern University