2008 Conference - Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference

University of Houston

Joint Conference with Rice University

Crowne Plaza, Houston, Downtown

November 14-15, 2008

This year, there will be two general themes for the conference:

1. 1. Mapping the Contact Zone(s) of Nuestra América.

Rather than revisit “contact zones” as initiated and dominated by European travelers, merchants and conquistadors, we seek to investigate later evolutions of the “contact zone” with its potential as a space for a multiplicity of diverse cultural clashes and/or syntheses. The conference advocates for a more thorough mapping of cultural, political, linguistic, gendered and historical connections or disconnections between individuals and groups of any particular “contact zone.”  The evolving metropolis, as found in New York City, Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Antonio, Albuquerque and San Francisco, among others, should be the ideal place to imagine the mutability and multiplicity of the “contact zone,” but so are places visited by violence and forced displacement.

2.   The bicentennial of Hispanic newspapers in the United States.

In September 1808, the first issue of El Misisipí was published in New Orleans. It was the first Spanish-language newspaper to be published north of the Rio Grande and was soon followed by others in the Northeast, Texas and Florida. Since the beginnings of Hispanic publishing in all areas that became part of the United States, Latinos have made of the newspaper, as well as other types of periodicals, the most important and prolific medium for their political, social, literary and religious expression, even more so than books. In the process recovering our written legacy, thousands of texts worthy of preservation and study have been found in newspapers, many more than in books.

As always, studies on the following themes will be welcome:

• Analytical studies of recovered authors and/or texts
• Critical, historical and theoretical approaches to recovered texts
• Curriculum development
• Religious thought and practice
• Folklore/oral histories
• Historiography
• Language and linguistics
• Library and information science
• Social implications, cultural analyses
• Collections and archives

Deadline for submissions of abstracts

May 31, 2008

Submit a 150-word abstract and curriculum vitae via e-mail to:

Carolina Villarroel, Project Manager

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage  §  University of Houston

256 Cullen Performance Hall  §  Houston, TX 77204-2006

Tel: (713) 743-3128  §  Email:  carolina@central.uh.edu

See Call for Papers (PDF File): here