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 papers in Portuguese, Spanish or English 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.

 

 

Papers and Proposals

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. Papers can be given in Spanish, Portuguese or English.

 

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.

 

 

Invited Keynotes and Speakers

Mariano Siskind, Harvard University

Fernanda Peñaloza, The University of Sydney

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

 

 

Registration

Registrations will open in late February 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.

 

Conference organisers

Dr Thomas Nulley-Valdés

Dr Fabricio Tocco

A/Prof Robert Mason

 

If you have any issues with registration or questions about the event, please contact ailasa@ailasa.org.