Transnational Textures, the XVI Biennial Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA) conference

Date & time

Wed 29 May 2024, 9am – Fri 31 May 2024, 5pm

Location

Sir Roland Wilson Building, Australian National University

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Transnational Textures, the XVI Biennial Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA) conference

29 - 31 May 2024

Conference organisers:

Dr Thomas Nulley-Valdés, Dr Fabricio Tocco, A/Prof Robert Mason

Invited Keynote Speakers:

Mariano Siskind, Harvard University

Fernanda Peñaloza, The University of Sydney

Special guest author invited for the Festival Benengeli 2024 (author TBC)

Proposals due by the 14th of February 2024 to conference@ailasa.org

See more details under 'Papers'

The conference will take place at the Australian National University, on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present. We acknowledge First Nations’ struggles for Sovereignty and Country.

Texts are at the centre of all our academic disciplines. Texts are central in the study of ancient papyri and their palimpsests, or in the textual evolution of languages evident in historical manuscripts through to text messages, from the study of literature to screen ‘texts’ such as film and television, from maps, corpora and archives, to transcriptions, hypertexts, and data, including codices, political speeches, AI-generated texts, manifestos, and paratexts.

Our very academic fields, despite their apparent distinctions, ultimately share the use of text. We all take these texts and contexts using them as raw products to transform them into new texts, in the form of academic articles, chapters, reports, and books (both printed and digital) that we all use to communicate and disseminate research with people across the globe.

The rise of globalization discourses led to a renewed focus on the international dimensions to society, language, and culture. Texts, read and misread, are translated and transmitted in different historical, geographical, aesthetical and linguistic contexts, within the regional, the national, transnational, and international. Of late, a synthesis of the old dichotomy between the global vs. the local has emerged, attesting to the porosity of national boundaries, the flux and circulation across political territories, and the consideration of new worlds with different boundaries, that is: a study of the transnational textures of our modern societies and cultures.

When we speak of textures, we can consider the characteristics of any particular thing such as its constitutions, its structures, its qualities, its patterns, or trends. Etymologically linked to weaving, textures are a potentially useful way to consider how local and global dynamics contribute to the transnational linking and delinking, as well as structuring, deconstructing and restructuring of our peoples, societies, languages, politics, art and cultures in the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds.

As scholars who engage with Iberoamerican cultures, we are involved in and contribute to these textual conversations. We need only think of the enigmatic case of the quipus. Despite the generalised understanding of Indigenous civilisations in terms of illiteracy, in the Andes, at the center of the Incan cultural tradition, we can still find textures: the quipus, those Pre-Columbian recording devices of knotted strings, used, much like texts, to send messages, to communicate.

The XVI Biennial AILASA Conference in 2024 will be hosted by the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics (SLLL) at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Reflecting on these transnational textures of the Latin American and Iberian Worlds, we welcome panels (of max three presentations) and individual conference presentations on any discipline, historical period, topic, theme, theory, performing art, methodology and pedagogy that are relevant to Iberian and Latin American Studies.

Below is a list of indicative topics:

Transindigeneity across multiple languages, lands, and times and comparative Indigenous studies.
Transnational studies of genre, such as crime fiction, fictions of childhood/youth, etc.
Transmedial studies of World Literature/Screens/Music as an approach, taking into account the international and transnational textures, Colonization, and dynamics of production and capital, prestige and influence, inequality and gatekeeping, and so on.
Translation into specific linguistic, literary, and other contexts, and their reception.
Transgender identities within LGBTQI+ experiences in society, cultural representation, history.
Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific analyses of Latin American, Caribbean, Hispanic, and Lusophone texts.
Transdisciplinary concepts such as metaphors and ideas with a textual basis that have generalised applications (e.g., translation of research into social outputs).
Trans-hemispheric studies: South-South/North-South/North-North global connections.
Analyses of texts and their contexts, subtexts, pretexts, hypertexts and paratexts.
Memory and testimony textures and Diaspora studies: migration, exile, displacement, refugee crisis, war, dictatorship, climate disasters,
Political movements, political theory, political science.
Linguistics, language acquisition, education, pedagogies, student mobility and experience.

File attachments:

- Transnational_Textures_Poster_1.png (PNG, 2.08 MB)

We welcome proposals for individual papers and panels of 3 presenters on the above areas of interest and others that engage with the broad theme of the conference.

Each proposal should be sent as a Word document (.doc, .docx) and include the following

Title(s)
Abstract(s) (max. 200 words)
Affiliation (if applicable)
Bio (max. 100 words)
Personal or institutional website’s url (if applicable)
Email address(es)

Please submit proposals, including a title and a brief abstract (150-200 words), your name, contact details and institutional affiliation to conference@ailasa.org by 14 February 2024.

Applicants will receive confirmation of their acceptance within two weeks of final submission date. Please note, if you require early confirmation of acceptance in order to apply for funding from your institution, please advise us in your email.

Registrations will open in late February 2024 and close on 30 April 2024.

The conference fees for AILASA members* are as follows:

Professorial Academic (Levels E, and D) – AUD $180

Salaried Academic (Levels A, B, and C) – AUD $150

Non-salaried/sessional/retired academic – AUD $80

HDR Candidate/students – AUD $80

2024 AILASA Competitive Travel Bursaries valued at up to AUD $500 (per applicant) are available. These are designed to assist with the travel costs of HDR members and others with due consideration given to those travelling great distances to attend the AILASA conference. When submitting your abstract, please provide a clear statement with an explanation of your circumstances to be considered for the 2024 AILASA Competitive Travel Bursaries.

*Conference presenters who are not AILASA members will need to renew their membership through the AILASA website prior to registering for the conference.

Keynote Speakers

Mariano Siskind is Smith Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

Born in Buenos Aires, Professor Siskind worked as a journalist in the Argentine capital after earning his B.A. in Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Following this, Professor Siskind completed his PhD at New York University in 2006.

Professor Siskind’s Cosmopolitan desires: Global Modernity and world literature in Latin America (Northwestern University Press, 2014), which received an Honourable mention from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) at the Southern Cone Section Book Prize, has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese and is a key text in discussions on World Literature theories. His most recent published works include The Routledge Companion to Latin American 20^th and 21^st Century Literatura and Cultural Forms (2022, co-edited with Guillermina de Ferrari), and World Literature, Cosmopolitanism, Globality (2019, co-edited with Gesine Müller).

In addition to his scholarly work, Siskind has also published a collection of poetry The Modernist Songbook (2021) and the novel History of Abasto (2007).

Central to Professor Siskind’s scholarly works are theories of cosmopolitanism and globalisation, and critical articulations of literature and philosophy, often explored through the lens of nineteenth and twentieth century Latin American Literature. His next book is Dislocaciones y fin de esto que ya no es mundo: crisis, transiciones e imposibilidades cosmopolitas (forthcoming in 2024).

Dr Fernanda Peñaloza is senior lecturer in Latin American Studies and Chair of the Spanish and Latin American Studies Department at the University of Sydney.

Prior to undertaking this role, Dr Peñaloza completed her MA and PhD at the University of Exeter, and spent four years lecturing in Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. Among Dr Peñaloza’s important works are Mapping South-South Connections: Australia and Latin America (2019, co-edited by Sarah Walsh) and Patagonia: Myths and Realities (2010, co-edited by Jason Wilson and Claudio Canaparo).

Dr Peñaloza also founded the academic research network Sydney University Research Community for Latin America (SURCLA). Involving members from a number of social science related disciplines, it provides a space which fosters discussion and debate, as well as a range of cultural activities such as film screenings and talks by prominent Latin American writers and thinkers.

In addition to this, Dr Peñaloza is co-chair of the University of Sydney’s Mosaic Network, which promotes inclusion and diversity, and was a cultural consultant and screenwriter for the Australian television series Bump, which explores the experiences of Latin American families in Australia.

Currently, the main research interests of Dr Peñaloza surround the relationship and interconnections between Latin American cultures and Australia, through explorations of diaspora, Latin American identities, film circulation, and mainstream discourse on indigenous people.

Campus facilities

Useful links below provide details on:

Accommodation

HOTEL	ADDRESS	DISTANCE FROM ANU	WALK TIME	PROMOTIONS *subject to change
QT Canberra	1 London Circuit, Canberra 2601	550M	10 min	10% discount: Code: ‘AILASA’ (select BLOCK CODE)
Ovolo Nishi	25 Edinburgh Ave, Canberra 2601	300M	5 min	15% discount + complimentary breakfast & mini bar: Code: ‘OVOLOXBIZ’
Pavilion on Northbourne	242 Northbourne Ave, Dickson 2602	2.3KM	30 min	20% discount if booked before: 01/05/24