The 2024 MELUS Conference is proud to feature Frederick Luis Aldama, Chang-rae Lee, Claudia Rankine, and David Roediger as our keynote speakers.
Frederick Luis Aldama
Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor Latinx, is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin, where he is also founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab and is Editor-in-Chief of the Latinx Pop Magazine. He is an award-winning author, co-author, editor, and co-editor of over 50 books, including an Eisner award for Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. He is editor and coeditor of a dozen book series, including Biographix, Latinographix, and Brown Ink. He is author of children’s books, including The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie (published in English and Spanish) and Con Papá / With Papá and co-creator of the award-winning animation short, Carlitos Chupacabra. He is the author of several comic books, including Pyroclast, Through Fences, and The Steampunkera Chronicles (forthcoming), and the novel The Absolutely (Almost) True Adventures of Max Rodriguez. He has been inducted into the National Cartoonists Society, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Ohio State University’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion Hall of Fame, and serves on the board of directors for The Academy of American Poets.
Chang-rae Lee
A deeply influential writer about race, class and immigrant life in America, Chang-rae Lee has built a dazzling reputation as “a spellbinder” (The Hartford Courant), “a master craftsman” (The Washington Post), and “an original” (the Los Angeles Times). His debut novel, Native Speaker, which was published in 1995 and awarded the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, explores themes of alienation and betrayal that mark the experiences of many immigrants and first-generation citizens. He is also the author of A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, which received the Dayton Peace Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Lee’s latest novel, My Year Abroad, was an instant national bestseller and examines a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure that provides insight into the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, mental health, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs.
Lee’s previous novel, On Such a Full Sea, was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award. His other numerous accolades include The New Yorker’s “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” the 2021 Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an Asian American Literary Award. He is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Oregon and currently teaches creative writing at Stanford University.
Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine is the author of five books of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric; three plays including HELP, which premiered in March 2020 (The Shed, NYC), and The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/ American Repertory Theater) and was published by Graywolf Press in 2019; as well as numerous video collaborations. Her recent collection of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. She is also the co-editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, Rankine co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine joined the NYU Creative Writing Program in Fall 2021. She lives in New York.
David Roediger
David Roediger is the Foundation Professor of American Studies at University of Kansas where he teaches and writes on race and class in the United States. Educated through college at public schools in Illinois, he completed doctoral work at Northwestern University. His books include Class, Race and Marxism, Seizing Freedom, The Production of Difference (with Elizabeth Esch), The Wages of Whiteness, and Working toward Whiteness.