Toward an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists

FAIN: AC-253204-17

Texas A & M University, Kingsville (Kingsville, TX 78363-8202)
Susan Louise Roberson (Project Director: June 2016 to September 2019)

A two-year study and curricular development project on the theory and works of South Texas women artists and writers, for Texas A& M University faculty and Kingsville school teachers.

"Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists,” seeks to study and listen to the underrepresented voices of women writers and artist from South Texas. Part of a larger regionalist project that “call[s] into question numerous cultural assumptions about literary history, poetics, thematics, genres, and reading strategies . . .” (Fetterley and Pryse 2), our proposal aims to recover and analyze regional artistic productions as modes of discourse about location (Fetterley and Pryse 11). We propose further to articulate a paradigm by which to discuss and characterize South Texas women’s art and literature in relation to the area, the larger traditions of women’s regionalist writing and art, and national discourses of nationhood.

Associated Products

Public Presentation (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Public Presentation
Author: Dr. Maria Cotera
Abstract: Searching for Margaret: The Ambivalent Politics of Collaboration in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero
Date Range: February 27, 2018
Location: Texas A&M University-Kingsville

Mini-Conference, "Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Mini-Conference, "Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists"
Author: organized by Susan Roberson
Abstract: The one-day conference brought in speakers not only from the grant participants and colleagues at TAMUK, but artists and poets from San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley. There was a rich diversity of academic papers, readings, performances, and art displays conference with
Date Range: October 11, 2018
Location: Texas A&M University-Kingsville

“Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Writers: Negotiating Dichotomies”: (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Writers: Negotiating Dichotomies”:
Author: Panel organized by Susan Roberson
Abstract: 1. “The Nepantla Poetics of Jovita González”—Joshua Thompson 2. “Removing the Dichotomy of English and Spanish in Texas: Spanglish as a Third Space Location, Language, and Cultural Experience in Texas”—Jody Marin 3. “The Dichotomy of Agnes Grimm and Her Transgressive Tales of Reality in South Texas”—Criag A. Meyer 4. "The South Texas Gender Dichotomy in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh's Caballero"-- Stephanie Salazar-Amaro 5. “Coming of Age on the Borderlands and A Feminist Aesthetics”—Susan Roberson
Date: 03/02/2019
Conference Name: Texas College English Association Conference

“Excavating the Borderlands: South Texas Women Writers,” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Excavating the Borderlands: South Texas Women Writers,”
Author: Susan Roberson
Abstract: Using Norma Cantu's novel Canicula and Roberta Fernandez's novel Intaglio, I examine the extent to which South Texas women writers participate in a “women’s” tradition, employing such theoretical tools as feminist standpoint theory to postulate an epistemology that begins with women’s “’direct experience of the everyday world.” I also seek to examine the ways that “geographical borders create psychic and epistemic structures for the person who straddles worlds on both sides of the border . . .” (Fetterley and Pryse 252, 257). With a history fraught with tensions between Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos, South Texas is a borderland location that as Gloria Anzaldúa claims, “es una herida abierta where Third World grates against the first and bleeds” (25), a location that asks its writers to explore its multiple borderlands. Indeed, excavating the gaps and borders, the third space, the “decolonial imaginary” (Perez xvi) that women who live in the borderlands straddle provides a way of thinking about person, place, and identity, and the connections between geography and poetics.
Date: 09/06/2017
Conference Name: American Literature Symposium on Regionalism and Place in American Literature”

“Decolonizing the Borderlands: Emma Perez’s Forgetting the Alamo, or Blood Memory as a Decolonial Queer Gaze of the US Southwest” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Decolonizing the Borderlands: Emma Perez’s Forgetting the Alamo, or Blood Memory as a Decolonial Queer Gaze of the US Southwest”
Author: Jody Marin
Abstract: Uses Emma Perez's novel, Blood Memory, to deconstruct and decolonize the history of South Texas and its representations in literature and culture.
Date: 11/04/2018
Conference Name: South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference

The Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: The Aesthetics of South Texas Women Artists
Author: Susan Roberson
Abstract: Using literary and theoretical texts this course will explore the characteristics of South Texas Women Writers. Doing so, students will read key literary texts, some critical essays about the borderlands and women's writing. They will write reflection papers on the texts and construct a cultural project that demonstrates their understanding of the culture from which the literature arises.
Year: 2019
Audience: Undergraduate

Chicana/o Literature (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Chicana/o Literature
Author: Jody Marin
Abstract: This course contextualized the Chicano Movement and explored issues of subjectivity, identity, and agency as they pertain to Chicanidad through the study of Chicana/o literature.
Year: 2018
Audience: Undergraduate

South Texas Women Artists (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: South Texas Women Artists
Author: Stephanie Salazar-Amaro
Abstract: • In her high school Humanities class, Stephanie Salazar-Amaro used poetry from the Entre Malinche y Guadalupe collection, art from Carmen Lomas Garza, and passages from La Frontera/Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa. She did some cross curricular work with the Spanish teacher to help the students understand the Spanish language portions of the passage and was able to guide the students through an analysis of the texts/art pieces. The students enjoyed looking at familiar scenes, and those who were unfamiliar with the material asked questions. As a class, they were able to discuss the family traditions in South Texas and how they were portrayed in art. Stephanie intends to use more poetry and passages in her AP Literature class next six weeks
Year: 2018
Audience: K - 12

Canicula, Intaglio, and a Feminist Aesthetics of South Texas (Article)
Title: Canicula, Intaglio, and a Feminist Aesthetics of South Texas
Author: Susan L. Roberson
Abstract: By looking at novels by Norma Cantu and Roberta Fernandez, the essay tackles questions of regional literature and the characteristics of South Texas women's aesthetics.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://www.txstate.edu/cssw/publications/sal.html
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Southwestern American Literature
Publisher: Southwestern American Literature

"The South Texas Gender Dichotomy in Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh's Caballero (Article)
Title: "The South Texas Gender Dichotomy in Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh's Caballero
Author: Stephanie Salazar-Amaro
Abstract: By questioning the division between genders and even within genders the novel, Caballero suggests ways to understand the function and purpose of imposed gender roles within the South Texas patriarchy.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://cctetx.org
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: CCTE Studies
Publisher: Conference of College Teachers of English of Texas

“Representations of Otherness in 19th and 20th Century Narratives from the Borderlands.” (Article)
Title: “Representations of Otherness in 19th and 20th Century Narratives from the Borderlands.”
Author: Michelle Johnson Vela
Abstract: This study analyzes the ambivalent representations of race and region by Cora Montgomery and Jovita González in their respective works: Eagle Pass: Or, Life on the Border (1852) and Dew on the Thorn, written in the 1930s, published in 1997.
Year: 2019
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of South Texas
Publisher: Journal of South Texas

---