Scholars on Latin American Literature, Languages and Cultures Gather for Colloquium

About 30 scholars, including many UC Davis graduate and undergraduate students, will present research at a two-day Department of Spanish and Portuguese colloquium titled “Digital Landscapes: Paths to Reparative Justice in a Technological World.” The 16th annual Samuel G. Armistead Colloquium in Latin American and Peninsular Languages, Literature and Cultures will delve into the relationship among the humanities, technological resources and social justice. The hybrid event, mostly in Spanish, takes place April 6 and 7 in person with virtual options.

About half of those presenting are UC Davis students, but others are coming from other UC campuses as well as colleges and universities in Peru, Spain, Canada, Wisconsin, Texas and Florida.

Keynote speakers:

Yolanda Chávez Leyva, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas, El Paso, will give a talk titled “Humanizing la frontera through digitized oral history,” April 6 at 4:30 p.m. PDT.

Lashon Daley, an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University, will present “Coming of (R)age: Black Girlhood + Media,” April 7 at 4:30 p.m. PDT.

Among the topics being presented on panels are:

• Teaching adult English through comics and political cartoons in Peru.
• Visual media coverage of protests.
• The literature of Twitter.
• Telling immigrant stories through writing and art.
• Migrant deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Human rights issues in Central American literature.

Learn more about the colloquium and all its offerings. It is open to everyone; no registration required.

About Samuel Armistead

The colloquium is named for Armistead: an ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, historian, literary critic and professor at UC Davis from 1982 until his death in 2013. His studies focused on medieval Spanish language and literature, Hispanic folk literature, comparative literature and folklore, and the ballads of Spain and North Africa. He was also well known for his research and writing on minority and archaic languages, including the Sephardic Jews' language Ladino, and Spanish language of the Isleño communities in Louisiana. He was author of a multi-volume series on the traditional literature of Sephardic Jews. Prior to coming to UC Davis, he was a faculty member at UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania.