Of the series “Cuerpo a cuerpo/El incendio y las vísperas”, Graciela Sacco – courtesy of the artist
Workshop (April 2018, date TBC) & Symposium (18th May 2018)
2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the incorporation of the Spanish & Latin American Studies section to the University of Leicester’s School of Modern Languages (now part of the School of Arts), and half a century since the events of May 1968 shook up the world, generating the establishment of interesting, if short-lived, synergies between different groups (industrial workers, students, academics, feminists). Underlying these partnerships was a shared understanding of the personal as political; a recognition that imagination and lived experience should play a role in shaping the political agenda, and that politics, in turn, had a direct and tangible impact on individuals’ everyday lives.
Exploring these socio-political shifts, as well as key cultural responses to them, these events will examine manifestations of the personal as political in various artistic productions from Latin America over the past 50 years. Papers will be presented by colleagues working on Latin American Studies in the Midlands and beyond, on a range of topics to include, though not limited to:
The cultural legacy of the 1968 events in Latin America
Gender, the body, and its interplay with political discourses
The personal versus the collective
First person accounts/autobiographies and their connections to socio-political contexts
Narratives exploring the somatic effects of political change
The embodied dimension of memory and memory politics
WORKSHOP
A key aim of this event is to facilitate articulations of the ways in which academia, and the critical thinking that resides at its heart, touch base with the subjective and the personal. Therefore, a workshop for undergraduate and postgraduate students will facilitate discussion of their own lived experiences of the personal as political, with a focus on the role of gender in contemporary daily life, and, crucially, on how their engagement with the field of Latin American Studies as academic discipline enables socially valuable understanding about our own and others’ lives. The workshop activities will involve the collaborative creation of artistic artifacts in text and image formats, drawing upon the actions of the student movements of the time. Invited speakers (TBC) will participate alongside the student attendees, providing an extremely valuable point of exchange between research and pedagogy.
The planned workshop – free for the students of the existing ‘Midlands Three Cities’ partnership between the universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Birmingham – is intended to enable us to make sure that this event also promotes Latin American studies to future generations of scholars, providing both undergraduate and postgraduate students with the opportunity to engage their own understanding of the connection between the political and the personal – so important in the current global climate –, by applying their disciplinary knowledge and critical skills, but also bringing their personal experiences to bear in a vibrant collective activity
SYMPOSIUM
Confirmed speakers: Prof. Michael Chanan (Roehampton University), Dr James Scorer (University of Manchester), Dr Enea Zaramella (University of Birmingham), Dr Philippa Page (Newcastle University), Dr Cecilia Sosa (Conicet-Argentina/Nottingham University), Dr Dunja Fehimovic (Newcastle University), Dr Mariano Paz (University of Limerick), Prof. Sarah Barrow (University of East Anglia)
A CFP is now open until 22nd December 2017. Please send abstracts (max. 250 words) and queries to:
Dr Clara Garavelli – cg226@le.ac.uk
Dr Emma Staniland – els15@leicester.ac.uk
This event is sponsored by:
Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli 