Department of English
UCMLA Conference
Undergraduate Conference on Multiethnic Literatures of the Americas
California State University, Fresno
14th annual conference: Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4, 2023
Location: Online (Zoom)
Download 2023 conference program (PDF)
Registration links: Opening remarks (Fri 8 AM) • Session 1 (Fri 9 AM) • Session 2 (Fri 11 AM) • Nishime keynote (Fri 2 PM) • Session 3 (Fri 4 PM) • Hashmi keynote (Fri 7 PM) • Hashmi craft talk (Sat Noon)
Featured Speakers
Evening Keynote: Shadab Zeest Hashmi
Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the winner of the San Diego Book Award, Sable’s Hybrid Book Prize, the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for the Pushcart multiple times. Her books include two poetry collections Kohl and Chalk and Baker of Tarifa, a hybrid memoir Comb, and a volume of prose and poetry titled Ghazal Cosmopolitan which has been praised by Marilyn Hacker as "a marvelous interweaving of poetry, scholarship, literary criticism and memoir."
Zeest Hashmi's poetry has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Bosnian and Urdu, and has appeared in journals and anthologies worldwide, most recently in McSweeney’s In the shape of a Human Body I am Visiting the Earth and The Best Asian Poetry 2021. She has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State University as a writer-in-residence and her work has been included in the Language Arts curriculum for grades 7-12 (Asian American and Pacific Islander Women Poets) as well as college courses in Creative Writing and the Humanities.
Afternoon Keynote: Dr. LeiLani Nishime
Dr. LeiLani Nishime is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. She is also affiliated with the departments of Cinema and Media Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She received her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Michigan and began her career in the American Multicultural Studies department at Sonoma State University. Her research interests are mixed race Asian Americans, race and the environment, science fiction, technology, and gender. She is also the Grants Manager for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival.
She is the author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture, and the co-editor of East Main Street, Global Asian American Media, and Racial Ecologies. She has published over 25 articles and book chapters in journals such as the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and the Journal of Asian American Studies.
About the Conference
Founded in 2010, UCMLA has featured more than 100 undergraduate student presenters.
The Undergraduate Conference on Multiethnic Literatures of the Americas was founded in 2010 to provide undergraduate students with a professional venue in which to present their research and to foreground the increasingly significant study of multiethnic literatures, particularly the interconnectedness of those literatures across cultures, nations, and languages.
Undergraduate students gain experience in writing abstracts, presenting papers, and engaging in scholarly debate and discussion. The presentation of their research also serves to enhance the curriculum of Fresno State’s English Department.
The conference is organized by the department’s graduate students and faculty advisers.
In 2017, the 8th annual UCMLA conference was dedicated to the memory of Mireyda "Mia" Barraza Martinez and opened with a tribute to her.
Mia was a beloved student, scholar, poet, and activist who believed deeply in the UCMLA mission. As an undergraduate, she presented papers on Wendy Rose (2013) and Andrés Montoya (2014). As a graduate student, she volunteered her time and talent to design the conference programs, and she served on the conference organizing committee in 2015 and 2016.
Mia died in a car accident in November 2016, one semester away from graduating with her MFA in creative writing. She was 29. Her MFA was awarded posthumously.
2023 — Shadab Zeest Hashmi and LeiLani Nishime
2022 — Amparo Ortiz and Rajini Srikanth
2021 — Gerald Vizenor and Monica De La Torre
2020 — Erika L. Sánchez and Ishmael Reed
2019 — Maxine Hong Kingston and Elda María Román
2018 — Reyna Grande and Gary Y. Okihiro
2017 — Wendy Rose and Arturo Arias
2016 — Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and Michele Elam
2015 — Manuel Muñoz and Marilyn Chin
2014 — Roxane Gay
2013 — Samiya Bashir
2012 — Hayan Charara and Jorge Huerta
2011 — Cherrie Moraga
Call for Papers
Deadline to submit: Jan. 30, 2023. Download the 2023 Call for Papers.
This conference focuses on the multiethnic literatures of North America, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Students from any major may submit abstracts. We encourage analytical papers on any thematic or formal aspect of a text or group of texts, including film and other cultural productions. The argument should illuminate the work(s) in original ways while drawing on available scholarship to make its case.
We invite current undergraduate students and those who have graduated within the past year, as well as first-year graduate students, to submit a 250-word abstract (summary) of their papers. Students whose abstracts are accepted will present their papers at the conference.
We hope that by presenting at the conference or attending some of the panel discussions, many undergraduates will find themselves interested in the possibility of graduate school and that many others will discover the rewards of being part of a community of scholars.
Deadline for submission of your 250-word abstract is Monday, Jan. 30, 2023.
Submit your abstract to the UCMLA committee by email either uploaded as a Word document or copied and pasted in the body of the email.
For further details, please see the FAQs tab and our sample abstract.
Need help with your abstract? You can view our sample abstract. The UCMLA committee also offers the following opportunities.
Workshop on writing abstracts:
Friday, Dec. 16, 2022 from 1 to 2 p.m. Online. Email Dr. Melanie Hernandez for the Zoom link.
Faculty and graduate students will be available to provide advice and guidelines for writing abstracts, to answer questions, and to provide examples.
Early submission of drafts of abstracts:
If you submit a draft of your abstract by email by Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, you will receive feedback by email and will have time to revise and polish your abstract by the Jan. 30 deadline.
How to Present / What to Expect workshop:
Friday, March 4, 2022 from 3 to 4 p.m. Online. Email Dr. Melanie Hernandez for the Zoom link.
Previous UCMLA presenters will hold an informal chat to answer any of your last-minute questions about what to expect the day of the conference: how to deliver your paper, materials to prepare, what to wear, how to field questions, what their experience was like, helpful tips, how to deal with nerves, etc. It’s an open forum! Bring your questions.
14th Annual Conference Schedule
All online conference sessions are free and open to the public via Zoom.
Download 2023 conference program (PDF)
Speaker: Dr. Kathleen Godfrey, professor, School of Humanities and Communication, CSU Monterey Bay
Moderator: Dr. Melanie Hernandez, chair, English Department
Presenters:
- Cameron J. Baker, "The Physical Form and Forms of Capital in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street"
- Isaac Castro, "The Intersections of Latinx and Queer Identity in Young Adult Literature"
- Jenni Berrett, "Rendering Refugee Memory and History in GB Tran's Vietnamerica and Trung Le Nguyen's The Magic Fish"
- Lindsay Norton, "The Angel with Buzzard Wings: Religious Projection in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ and ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ ”
- Noah Reed Miranda, "Rotten Apple: Satire in Zitkala-Ša’s Impressions"
Moderator: Joseph LeForge, graduate student, M.A. English (Literature)
Presenters:
- Erica Lopez, “Resisting Cultural Tyranny in Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek”
- Beth Contreras, “The Decolonial Poetics of Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones"
- Brandon Xiong, “Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’: What it Means to be Different or Similar”
- Lillian Hammerstrom, “Sound Silence: Musicality in Nicolás Guillen's Motivos de Son”
Moderator: Mia De La Cerda, graduate student, M.A. English (Literature)
Lunch on your own
Register for afternoon keynote
Speaker: Dr. LeiLani Nishime, Professor of Communication, University of Washington
Moderator: Prof. Hector Tapía III, lecturer, Department of English
Presenters:
- Joshua Sagouspe, “Paving the Way for the Ones Who Come Next: Interconnectivity in Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo”
- Caitlin J. Brrady, “All Youth are Revolutionaries: Connection and Disconnection in Alonso
- Ruizpalacios' Güeros”
- Emily F. Peacock, “The Pulsing Drum in Joy Harjo's An American Sunrise and Tommy
- Orange's There There”
- Ernesto Ramirez, “Sandra Cisneros' Caramelo: What it Means to Love”
Moderator: Mia De La Cerda, graduate student, M.A. English (Literature)
Dinner on your own
Speaker: Shadab Zeest Hashmi, author
Moderator: Ashley Rivera-García, graduate student, M.A. English (Literature)
Speaker: Shadab Zeest Hashmi, author
Moderator: Joseph LeForge, graduate student, M.A. English (Literature)
Frequently Asked Questions
You can email the organizing committee if you have further questions.
Conferences such as this provide a way for scholars to exchange ideas and present their research. The conference offers you an opportunity to participate in scholarly conversation.
You will have the experience of writing an abstract, writing or revising a paper, reading or presenting your work in a panel with other scholars, and answering and posing questions. This is very valuable experience for anyone who plans to teach, engage in literary research, or go to graduate school. It is also good general experience in presenting information in a public forum.
The presence of many diverse voices also strengthens the conference.
This year's conference will be held on Friday, March 3, and Saturday, March 14, 2023. The sessions will be 100% online.
Academic conferences serve multiple purposes.
You share your ideas with a scholarly community and benefit from their feedback. You attend panels on authors or themes that interest you and learn from the perspectives of the panelists. Professional conference papers often lead to full-length articles appropriate for publication.
This conference aims to mentor undergraduates in the process of presenting their research, to involve graduate students as event organizers, and to foreground the field of multiethnic literatures of the Americas.
This conference welcomes presentations that critically engage “texts” in a variety of formats.
While literature certainly includes traditional forms (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama), cultural studies expands this definition to include other artifacts that prompt related critical reflections. Presentations on film, television, art, music, and other popular forms are welcome.
The term includes North, South, and Central America, as well as the Caribbean.
Yes. However, we ask that you present your paper in English.
Yes, if the writer’s whiteness is relevant to your analysis of the text, or if the work demonstrates a significant engagement with race or ethnicity.
An abstract is a summary of your complete argument. We ask that you keep your abstract limited to 250 words. Check out our sample abstract.
The conference is intended for current undergraduates (from any department) and students who graduated within the past year. Students enrolled in Open University courses may submit abstracts as well.
Yes. The UCMLA committee offers the following opportunities.
Workshop on writing abstracts:
Friday, Dec. 16, 2022 from 1 to 2 p.m. Online. Email Dr. Melanie Hernandez for the Zoom link.
Faculty and graduate students will be available to provide advice and guidelines for writing abstracts, to answer questions, and to provide examples.
Early submission of drafts of abstracts:
If you submit a draft of your abstract by email by Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, you will receive feedback by email and will have time to revise and polish your abstract by the Jan. 30 deadline.
How to Present / What to Expect workshop:
Friday, Feb. 24, 2023 from 3 to 4 p.m. Online. Email Dr. Melanie Hernandez for the Zoom link.
Previous UCMLA presenters will hold an informal chat to answer any of your last-minute questions about what to expect the day of the conference: how to deliver your paper, materials to prepare, what to wear, how to field questions, what their experience was like, helpful tips, how to deal with nerves, etc. It’s an open forum! Bring your questions.
The abstract is due Jan. 30, 2023. Please email it to us as a Word document or PDF file and paste it in the body of an email. If you have already submitted an abstract for feedback, please resubmit your revised version or a new abstract by this deadline.
The conference organizing committee will select from among the submissions and group the chosen abstracts into appropriate panels.
Check out our sample abstract to help guide you.
Absolutely. If the abstract is accepted, be sure to revise your paper to meet the criteria of the conference.
If your abstract is accepted, you will receive an email from the conference organizers by mid-February.
You will probably have until the day of the conference to prepare your paper. However, panel chairs sometimes ask panelists to submit their papers a few days earlier so that they can formulate their own remarks about the panel as a whole. Be prepared.
Your paper should be 6-7 pages long, or whatever you can read coherently in 12-14 minutes. It is vital that you rehearse your reading ahead of time and respect the time limit because otherwise the chair or moderator of your panel will have to cut you off abruptly.
Yes. What matters is not the number of sources consulted but how meaningfully your paper engages with them.
The conference program committee groups individual papers into panels based on general thematic connections. There are usually three or four presenters per panel.
Each panel has a moderator who introduces the panelists and invites them to come up, one by one, to present their papers. A Q&A follows, in which the moderator facilitates questions from the audience and the panelists respond.
There is usually a short break between panels.
Yes, most presenters at English conferences just read their papers. Occasionally, a presenter will speak to the audience or combine speaking with reading
You may also incorporate audio-visual material if you wish. In that case, let the organizers know of your technological needs in advance.
- Rehearse your paper in advance and be sure to time yourself.
- Stand up when you present. Your voice will project better and you will have more presence.
- Use the microphone if available.
- Project your voice and enunciate every word.
- Read slowly and clearly. Don't speed through your paper breathlessly.
- Look up from time to time and make eye contact with the audience.
- When you make eye contact, keep your finger on the page so as not to lose your place.
- Introduce quotations with the word "quote," and signal the end of the quotation with "unquote" or "end quote."
- End your presentation by looking up and saying "thank you."
Please do! We encourage everyone, including the community, to attend. The audience is also welcome to ask questions about the papers during each panel’s Q&A.
No. Your conference program will give you the panel titles and names of panelists, and you may choose which ones to attend. It is courteous to sit through a complete panel (usually 3 or 4 papers) and make your exit during the break between panels.
Feel free to bring a snack with you and eat it at any time while you are in the audience. Depending upon funds, we hope to be able to provide some refreshments. The idea is that you get a chance to mingle with presenters and attendees in a relaxed setting.
Yes! This conference is enriched by the presence and support of the English Department’s graduate students.
Once we have selected abstracts and placed them in appropriate panels, we will invite graduate students to serve as moderators. So let us know if you are interested. But just to have our graduate students in the audience, engaged with the presentations, makes the conference a more stimulating experience for all.
A moderator’s basic responsibility is to introduce the panel at the beginning and facilitate questions from the audience after all panelists have presented.
Most moderators ask for brief bios of their panelists ahead of time. Some also ask their panelists for their papers in advance so that they can read them, draw connections among them, and ask questions of the panelists to spark discussion.
Previous UCMLA conferences
The Undergraduate Conference on Multiethnic Literatures of the Americas is now in its second decade, after celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2019.
Dozens of graduate students have joined English Department faculty to successfully organize the conference, which has featured the scholarly work of 100+ undergraduate students.
Organizing committee: Dr. William Arcé, Elizabeth Bolaños, Prof. Joseph Cassara, Esmeralda Gamez, Nou Her, Dr. Chris Henson, Dr. Melanie Hernandez, Dr. Samina Najmi, Delaney R. Whitebird Olmo, Michael Ramirez, Ernesto Reyes, Hector Tapía III
Keynote speakers: Erika L. Sánchez and Ishmael Reed
10th anniversary alumni panel: Neama Alamri, Leila Alamri-Kassim, Erin L. Álvarez, Carrie Ayala, Jeremiah Henry, Cody Hoover, Lena Mahmoud, Zoyer Zyndel
Organizing committee: Dr. William Arcé, Shanell Contreras, Bryce Downing, Esmeralda Gamez, Angel Garduno, Michaella Gonzalez, Dr. Chris Henson, Dr. Melanie Hernandez, Dr. Samina Najmi, Tara Williams
Keynote spakers: Maxine Hong Kingston and Elda María Román
Organizing committee: Dr. William Arcé, Shanell Contreras, Bryce Downing, Esmeralda Gamez, Dr. Chris Henson, Dr. Melanie Hernandez, Christina Legler, Dr. Samina Najmi, Guadalupe Remigio Ortega, Tara Williams
Keynote speakers: Reyna Grande and Gary Y. Okihiro
Organizing committee: Dr. William Arcé, Mireyda Barraza Martinez, Jazmin Flores, Dr. Chris Henson, Dr. Melanie Hernandez, Dr. Samina Najmi, Guadalupe Remigio Ortega, Tara Williams
Keynote speakers: Wendy Rose and Arturo Arias
Organizing committee: Dr. William Arcé, Mireyda Barraza Martinez, Emily Beals, Jazmin Flores, Dr. Chris Henson, Gloria Hernandez, Dr. Melanie Hernandez, Kyle Hoover, Dr. Samina Najmi, Guadalupe Remigio Ortega, Tara Williams
Keynote speakers: Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and Michele Elam
Organizing committee: Eryn Baldrica-Guy, Emily Beals, Jeremiah Henry, Dr. Chris Henson, Gloria Hernandez, Kyle Hoover, Prof. Randa Jarrar, Prof. Samina Najmi
Keynote speakers: Manuel Muñoz and Marilyn Chin
Organizing committee: Dr. Chris Henson, Cody Hoover, Dr. Samina Najmi, Shane Wood, Lena Zaghmouri
Keynote speaker: Roxane Gay
Organizing committee: Prof. Randa Jarrar, Dr. Samina Najmi, Lena Zaghmouri
Keynote speakers: Samiya Bashir and Patricia Engel
Organizing committee: Prof. Alex Espinoza, Gilliann Hensley, Dr. Analola Santana, Lena Zaghmouri
Keynote speakers: Hayan Charara and Jorge Huerta
Organizing committee: Erin L. Álvarez, Prof. Alex Espinoza, Miriam Fernandez, Dr. Kathleen Godfrey, Cynthia Guardado, Maryam Jamali Ashtiani, Dr. Samina Najmi, Mario Rosado, Dr. Analola Santana, Dr. Bo Wang
Keynote speaker: Cherríe Moraga
Organizing committee: Prof. Alex Espinoza, Maryam Jamali Ashtiani, Dr. Samina Najmi, Mario Rosado, Dr. Analola Santana
2022 Organizing Committee
Luis Granados Torres
Jasmine Kaur
Joseph LeForge
Alvaro Lozano
Ashley Rivera-Garcia
Faculty Advisers
Dr. Melanie Hernandez
Prof. Melanie Kachadoorian
Dr. Samina Najmi
Dr. René Rodríguez-Astacio
Prof. Hector Tapía III
Contact
UCMLA
Fresno State, Dept of English
5245 N. Backer Ave., PB98
Fresno, CA 93740-8001
559.278.2553
Peters Business Building
Room 382