“I cannot overemphasize how important I consider these gatherings to be, and how important I consider the yearly format that has been developing.  I have long and continuously been engaged with U.S. Latina scholars in other formats and venues (professional organizations in various disciplines), many of them centering the feminist, queer, U.S. woman of color perspective.  Nothing has quite emerged in that centers cross- or comparative Latina research in a fashion quite as interdisciplinary and national, thus allowing for both a measurement of the state of the art, a kind of “Aha, here we are! and in so doing, simultaneously allowing for an important intellectual leap at individual and collective levels.

Laura E. Pérez, University of California, Berkeley