Américo Paredes: A Life Between Two Worlds

The exhibition Between Two Worlds draws its title from a book of selected poems written by Américo Paredes (1915–1999) in which the author reflects on his experiences growing up along the Texas-Mexico border. A writer, journalist, and ethnographer, Paredes was a foundational figure in Mexican American and Chicano studies and taught literature and anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin for several decades. In this lecture, literary scholar Ramón Saldívar (professor of English and Comparative Literature, Stanford University) discusses Paredes’ life, work, and legacy.

Between Two Worlds is organized by Jesus Treviño with Center Space Project. The exhibition is on view September 25 – November 20, 2020. 
 

BIO

Ramón Saldívar is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2012, and in 2013 was appointed to a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His teaching and research focus on the areas of literary criticism and literary theory, 19th, 20th and 21st century literary studies, the history of the novel and other narrative forms, issues concerning transnationalism and globalization, critical race theory, comparative studies in race and ethnicity, and U.S. Latinx Studies. He is the author and editor of four books and numerous other scholarly publications. In 2006, he was awarded the Modern Language Association Prize in US Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies for his book, The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary (Duke, 2006). He is currently working on a new project, tentatively titled “The Racial Imaginary: Speculative Realism and Historical Fantasy in Contemporary American Fiction.”