Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies Newsletter
A Fresh Look at Human Rights
Spanish & Portuguese symposium examined issue from across disciplines
On April 23 and 24, 2008 the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies hosted the symposium Human Rights in Latin American and Iberian Culture. The event addressed the complexity of literature, culture, and international law resulting from the turn to authoritarianism in the 1970s and the issues encountered in the transition to democracies since the late 1980s. The symposium was particularly beneficial for the development of new research agendas since it fostered an interdisciplinary dialogue on human rights with scholars from anthropology, comparative literature, cultural studies, law, migration studies, political science, and gender and sexuality studies. This exchange of ideas helps us to incorporate in our work diverse forms of knowledge. Working across disciplines allowed us to devote time to conduct research by not only summarizing existing knowledge, but also by bringing together fresh research from different disciplines that will suggest new directions in the field. The symposium contributed to our research in several ways. First, it allowed us to incorporate a diversity of theoretical approaches on human rights that exemplify recent advances in cultural studies and critical legal studies. Second, it allowed us to devote special attention to the study of law and culture, while opening future research collaborations with ethnic studies, migration studies, and religious studies. Eight distinguished scholars took part in the symposium: Hugo Achugar, University of Miami; Idelber Avelar, Tulane University; John Beverley, University of Pittsburgh; Barbara Frey, University of Minnesota; Joan Ramón Resina, Stanford University; Ileana Rodríguez, Ohio State University; and Hernán Vidal, University of Minnesota. 02/11/09