The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences will host the Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literature Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 28-30.
Titled “The Past in the Present: Revolutions, Reactions, Transgressions,” the conference, co-hosted with the Office of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, will take place at the Crowne Plaza St. Louis-Clayton Hotel and in Eads and Wilson Halls on the Danforth Campus.
“Hosting this conference is important for many reasons,” says William Acree, PhD, assistant professor of Spanish in Arts & Sciences and one of the conference organizers.
“First, it gives students and scholars from the Midwest, as well as from across the country, a chance to experience firsthand our vibrant university community. It also allows WUSTL to showcase the cutting-edge work being done by our faculty and students in Romance languages and literatures,” Acree says.
Other conference organizers are Ignacio Infante, PhD, assistant professor of comparative literature and Spanish, and Claire Solomon, PhD, assistant professor of Spanish.
With three keynote speakers and more than 50 panels, Acree said he expects the conference to provide an ideal forum for reflection on critical issues in Hispanic literary and culture studies.
“We also hope that hosting the conference will be an opportunity for people from across the university and wider St. Louis communities to discuss aspects of the past and present of the Hispanic world,” he says.
The conference begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, at the Crowne Plaza with a keynote address by Cristina Moreiras-Menor, PhD, associate professor of Spanish literature and culture and of women’s studies at the University of Michigan, on “Militancia y Sujeto Politico.”
The other keynote speakers are:
- Martin Espada, JD, professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, on “The Republic of Poetry: A Reading” at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel; and
- Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, PhD, professor of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean studies and of comparative literature at Rutgers University, on “Neither Vassal Nor Patriot: Filibusterismo and Extended Colonialism in the Archipelagos in the Caribbean and the Philippines” at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, in Wilson Hall, Rm. 214.
For more information, visit artsci.wustl.edu/~machl/index.html.