Dr. Osuna will discuss desert distortion, a technique rooted in experimentation and play. The theoretical work of desert distortion is to provide an inexhaustive set of lenses for engaging with histories, boundaries, bodies, cultures, and languages that reveal the abundance and value of desert places.

Osuna’s research offers distortion as a generative mode of engaging desert agency to unsettle old understandings of them as alien or static and allow for experiencing dynamic deserts anew. This is an invitation to inhabit the deserts of literature and other cultural productions in order to create new collaborations of thought and practice in times of ecological emergency.

Dr Celina Osuna is an artist and assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research examines indigenous and Latinx environmentalisms and aesthetics in desert literature.

Join in person or via Zoom.
https://ucr.zoom.us/j/98268998684