Forum on U.S. Hispanics in Madrid

The Trans-Atlantic Project, an academic initiative to study the cultural interactions between Europe, the U.S. and Latin America has been invited by Casa de América, Madrid, to present a May 3 forum on “Spanish in the United States: The Cultural Practices of the Hispanic Migration.” An open dialogue between American and Spanish professors will take place the following day at the same research center.

Harvard’s Doris Sommer is expected to participate, together with Carlos Fuentes, Julio Ortega, and Enric Bou, from Brown’s Hispanic Studies, Beatriz Pastor and Dwight Lahr from Dartmouth College, Alicia Borinsky from Boston University, and Juan Luis Cebrián from the Royal Spanish Academy. According to Ortega, director of the Project, the conference seeks to establish a research agenda on trans-Atlantic issues with Spanish experts.

The Project is based at Latin American Studies, included professors from Hispanic, French, American Civilization, Latin American Studies, English and Sociology. It is open to faculty and students interested in cross-departmental conversation and research.

Experts from seven other universities are also part of the Project, and are organizing other conferences in their own institutions. A meeting on the Caribbean Trans-Atlantic is expected to take place at the Universidad de Puerto Rico April 4; Dartmouth College, with support of the Dickey International Foundation, will organize an October conference on Latino culture.

Ortega has received a donation from Fundación Santillana for the next three years, and has also the support of the Instituto Cervantes, New York, and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. He announced that a Seminar on Trans-Atlantic Memory, with invited experts from different disciplines, will look to build this new area of cultural history and cross-disciplinary inquiry.