Language and Space / Lenguaje y espacio

http://oege.weebly.com/coloquio.html

Welcome

The Spanish Graduate Student Organization (OEGE) of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida invites you to participate in an Interdisciplinary Colloquium that will explore cultural and linguistic productions.

This conference welcomes papers in the field of Latin American, Peninsular and U.S. Latino Literatures, Linguistics, and Cultures.

Call for Papers
2009

The graduate students of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida cordially invite submissions for their 4th Annual Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Spanish and Latin American Literatures, Linguistics, and Cultures. The colloquium will bring together graduate students and professors from a wide variety of disciplines whose work explores the concepts of "Language & Space: Lenguaje y espacio".

Open to all relevant topics, with thematic emphasis on the following: Language Contact; Transmutations of Art; Cities and Spaces; Literary and Film Space; Globalization; Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Race and Ethnic Relations; The Other / The "Outsider"; Biculturalism; Second Language Acquisition; Picturing Women's Voices and Silences; Code-Switching; Memory; Language Change and Variation; Syncretism / Hybridism; New Technologies and Literary Communication; Language and Gender; Migration; and Exile and Diasporas.

The colloquium will feature three outstanding Keynote speakers:

Nydia Flores-Ferrán
Linguistics
Rutgers Univeristy

Elena Gascón-Vera
Spanish Literature and Culture
Wellesley College

Milagros Peña
Latin American Studies
University of Florida

Please send your one-page, single-spaced abstract attached as a Word documento to coloquiouf@gmail.com by January 11, 2009. Specify in the subject line whether your abstract is intended for Linguistics, Literature, or Culture Studies. With your submission, please make sure you include: the title of your paper, your name, institutional affiliation, and email address. The selection committee will respond to proposals as soon as possible. Papers being read will have a limit of 20 minutes. There is a donation fee of $30.

Stop Day Colloquium - University of Kansas Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Stop Day Colloquium

A GRASP y los miembros de la facultad nos complace anunciar el primer congreso del Departamento para nuestros estudiantes graduados. Esperamos que haya bastante interés en participar en el congreso que podamos planear uno por semestre o año. Abajo se puede leer el anuncio original. Recuerden que la fecha límite para las propuestas es el 3 de diciembre.

Call for Participants

Are you preparing to make a conference presentation and want to practice your delivery with a friendly audience? Are you considering submitting a paper for a conference and seeking constructive feedback on your work? Do you want to have the professional experience of presenting your work to a scholarly audience without incurring the costs of conference travel?

GRASP and the department's faculty invite you to submit a brief description and title (no more than 100 words) to participate in the Stop Day Colloquium, an informal forum for sharing your work with your colleagues and professors. We hope to make the colloquium a regular event in the future, but first we need to gauge the interest of the department's graduate students in participating in this new initiative. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes (normally the equivalent of 9-10 pages of double-spaced text), the standard allotment for conference presentations. Whether you're exploring the experience of reading a paper to an academic audience for the first time or looking to polish your skills before your next conference performance, this event is meant to foster this important aspect of professional development. Feel free to contact your GRASP representatives (graspku@gmail.com), Professor Rivera (ijrivera@ku.edu) or Professor Bayliss (rbayliss@ku.edu) for further information. Proposals are due by Wednesday, December 3.

(Re)Writing History: Text as Monument to Memory - University of North Carolina

15th Annual Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures

(Re)Writing History: Text as Monument to Memory

Papers or panels on all aspects of literature in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, and Comparative Literature will be considered. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. Deadline for submission of abstracts is December 20, 2008.

Abstracts are limited to 250 words and may be submitted online only. For abstract submissions, last year’s program, and further information, visit our website at: http://ccrl.colloquia.com and see the "Submit a Proposal" link in the top left corner of this page for further instructions.

Exceptional papers by both graduate students and professors will be considered for publication in Romance Notes.
Inquiries:
• Spanish: María del Carmen Caña Jiménez, canajime@email.unc.edu
• French: Robert Sapp, rsapp@email.unc.edu
• Italian: Cale LaSalata, lasalata@email.unc.edu
• Portuguese: Contact any of the above


KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Esther Bendahan
She is a Jewish Spanish writer. She has published several novels such as Soñar con Hispania in 2000, Deshojando alcachofas in 2005 and Déjalo, ya volveremos in 2006. She received the “Premio Tigre” in 2007 for her last novel La Cara de Marte published that same year. She has also published short stories in different newspapers such as “La Razón” (2005),“Progresa-Prensa regional” (2006), “Cinco Días” (2006) and magazines such as “Revista Ñ” (2006). Esther Bendahan is also the director of the cultural radio program “Casa Sefarad-Israel” and director and host of the Spanish TV program “Shalom”. She has worked at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. She is currently working on writing the script for a documentary on the relationship between exile and memory; and a program on Sephardic culture in Istanbul.

Régine Robin
She is Professor Emerita at l'Université du Québec à Montréal. She was a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard in 1988, visiting professor at l'École des Hautes Études en sciences sociales de Paris in 1989 and in the Department of Sociology at NYU in 1991, a member of L’UER at l’Université de Paris III in 1995, visiting scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard in 2003. She was awarded the Prix du Gouverneur général from Canada in 1987 for her work Le Réalisme socialiste:une esthétique impossible (Paris, Payot, 1986), the “Prix Jacques-Rousseau” from the French-Canadian Association for the advancement of science, “le Prix Spirale” for her work Le Golem de l’écriture in 1999 as well as “Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal”, for her book Berlin Chantiers in 2001. She has recently published La Mémoire Saturée (Stock 2003). She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Robert Viscusi
He has published the novel Astoria (Guernica, 1995; American Book Award, 1996), the long poem An Oration Upon the Most Recent Death of Christopher Columbus (VIA Folios, 1993), a poetry collection entitled A New Geography of Time (Guernica, 2004), a critical history entitled Buried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing (SUNY Press, 2006), and numerous essays on Italian American literature and culture. Viscusi is Broeklundian Professor and executive officer of the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities at Brooklyn College, where he teaches American and Italian American literature. He is president of the Italian American writers association and has held fellowships from the NEH and the Calandra Italian American institute. Among his awards are the “Pietro Di Donato” and “John Fante Award” of the New York State Order Sons of Italy (2006) and the “Premio Speciale per la Critica of the Fondazione Giuseppe Acerbi” (Castel Goffredo Mantovano, 2008).


Special Spotlight Presentation:

Gioconda Belli
Born in Managua, Nicaragua, Gioconda Belli, known for her sensual poems that celebrate the feminine, continues the poetic tradition of her country. Taking stance against the Somoza regime, her poetry adopts an insurgent tone. After the “Sandinista” revolution, Belli explores her own narrative writings with the 1988 novel La mujer habitada which has been translated into more than eleven languages. Her narrative work includes Sofía de los Presagios (1990), Waslala (1996), the children’s book El Taller de las Mariposas (1994) and the autobiographical El país bajo mi piel (2001), and El pergamino de la seducción (2005). Her most recent novel, El infinito en la palma de la mano (2008) won the “Premio Biblioteca Breve de la Editorial Seix Barral” in Spain. Her poetic work includes Sobre la grama (1972), Línea de fuego (1978) Truenos y arco iris (1982) De la costilla de Eva (1987), Apogeo (1994), Mi íntima multitud (2003) y Fuego soy apartado y espada puesta lejos (2007). Belli won the “Premio Mariano Fiallos Gil de la UNAN” in 1972, the “Premio Casa de las Américas” in 1978, the “Premio Anna Seghers” in 2003, the “Premio Generación del 27” in Spain for her book of poems Mi íntima multitud, in 2007 she won the “Premio Internacional de Poesía Ciudad de Melilla.”

Microcosms and Macrocosms: Inner and Outer Spaces in Texts - University of Miami

Microcosms and Macrocosms:

Inner and Outer Spaces in Texts

Keynote Speakers: Dr. Jean Michael Dash (New York University) and Dr. Marc Brudzinski (University of Miami)

Co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund

University of Miami, Coral Gables

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

March 27th-28th, 2009

The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami and the Program of Latin American and Caribbean Studies are pleased to announce its Spring Graduate Conference (March 27th -28th, 2009) to engage in a dialogue on the significance, meaning, and consequences of spatial tropes in "texts". We will accept proposals on any world texts. Papers must be written in French, Spanish, or English.

Among the themes of interest are the following:

* Trans-national boundaries
* Cosmopolitan/urban vs. rural spaces
* Memory as a historiographical space
* Use of space in comics, films, television, and theater
* Digital and virtual spaces (Internet, video games, and archives)
* Literary spaces: Avant-garde vs. Traditional literature
* Migration/crossing borders
* Spaces of exile/ Asylum (home away from home)
* Psychological spaces (dreams and the unconscious)
* Spaces of belonging
* Real/Fantastic spaces
* Identity and the creation of intimate/personal space
* Space within nationalist discourse
* Queer space (s)
* Gendered space (s)
* Space within postcolonial discourse
* Mapping or charting spaces
* Artistic spaces (visual and plastic arts)

Proposals should include a 250-word abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address, and institutional affiliation. Please submit abstracts via email to: mllconference2008@gmail.com by January 26th, 2009. Acceptance of proposals will be notified via e-mail by February 10th, 2009. Each conference attendee is required to pay a registration fee of $40.00.

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr. Jean Michael Dash:
Professor of French, Social and Cultural Analysis. Research Interests: Francophone/Caribbean Literature; literary theory; translation French to English. Selected Works: Culture and Customs of Haiti (Greenwood Press, 2001), Libete: A Haiti Anthology, Ed. with Charles Arthur (Latin American Bureau, 1999), The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (University Press of Virginia, 1998), Haiti and the United States (MacMillan, 1997), Edouard Glissant (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Literature and Ideology in Haiti: 1915-1961 (MacMillan, 1981), Jacques Stephen Alexis (Black Images, 1975).

Dr. Marc Brudzinski:
Assistant Professor Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean Literature. Research Interests: Current research interests concern theories of the Caribbean culture and literary imaginations of networks of communication within and beyond the nation. Interests also include postcolonial theories of space and the relationship between lived space and literary sensibility in the Caribbean. He is currently finishing a manuscript on the literary and cultural dimensions of secrecy in the French and Spanish Caribbean from the 19th to through the 20th centuries. Publications: Sargasso, Small Axe, and Nepantla. He has also contributed to the edited volume Post Colonial Politics of Identity (Rodopi 2009). His book, Island Secrets, is forthcoming from Lexington Books.

Reflections on Optimism - University of Maryland

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures University of Maryland, College Park Announces The Seventh Annual SLLC Graduate Student Forum
Reflections on Optimism

March 26-27, 2009

“Although the world is not perfect, it is yet the best that is possible.” Centuries have passed since Leibniz made this much-debated statement, but the discourse on optimism and its role in our daily lives remains as relevant. Academic fields from literature to psychology, from the visual arts to applied linguistics have examined the effects of optimism on the Self. Political scientists have analyzed the consequences of trust and optimism on foreign and domestic policy. Yet the value of a literary work with an optimistic outlook is often questioned, and a jaded worldview has become a trademark of intellectualism. The questions surrounding the function and character of optimism seem especially pressing during times of rapid change, upheaval, and crisis. What role does optimism play in the world today? What role does it have in contemporary global cultural production? How have various cultures perceived and represented optimism across the centuries? To what extent can optimism deceive, motivate, placate, desensitize? What is optimism?

With these and other questions in mind, the graduate students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland cordially invite the submission of papers that offer new reflections on optimism.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
o Crisis and Optimism
o Utopia, Dystopia, Escapism, and Elsewhere
o Staging Hope, Staging Despair
o Free Will vs. Determinism
o The Language of Optimism
o Motivation in Education
o Rebirth, Reconstruction, Resilience, and Healing
o Globalism and Identity
o Gender and Sexuality
o Faith and Doubt

Abstracts are encouraged from all fields and all papers should be in English. Please submit a 250 word abstract by December 20, 2008 to:

SLLC Graduate Student Forum
Sllc2009.umd@gmail.com
University of Maryland
SLLC, 3215 Jiménez Hall, College Park, MD 20742