The Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies (FHIS) invites you to attend the FHIS Research Seminar—an opportunity to delve into the latest research surrounding the languages, literatures, and cultures of the Romance language-speaking world. The seminar will feature presentations from guest speakers, faculty members, and graduate students. Enjoy coffee, tea, and light snacks while you engage with our vibrant academic community. Please RSVP in advance.
January 22, 2025 *** COMPLETED ***
Pensamiento Liberacionista Latinoamericano: Sujeto y Naturaleza
Presented by Prof. Carolina Pizarro Cortes (Universidad de Santiago de Chile) and Prof. José Santos-Herceg (Universidad de Santiago de Chile)
Date: January 22, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:00 - 4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
Latin American liberationist thought ("pensamiento liberacionista") has an extensive tradition. At the center of its reflections is the status of the “other” subject within the context of Eurocentric modernity, whose origin is located in the period of the conquest of the South American continent. From this point of view, colonial domination – which manifests itself to this day as coloniality – produced an oppressive value hierarchy in which American subjects, as well as their natural world, were left in a situation of inferiority that made them "available" for the Westerners. Starting from this premise, we would like to address some of the most relevant milestones of Latin America’s “pensamiento liberacionista,” whose critical diagnosis constitutes a contribution to contemporary debates on the relationship between the human and non-human and on nature as a subject of rights.
Sponsored by: Latin American Research Cluster, Dorothy Dallas Fund
February 5, 2025 *** COMPLETED ***
Return Migration across the Black Atlantic: The “Brazilians” in Francophone West Africa
Presenter: Dr. Antje Ziethen, Associate Professor of French (FHIS)
Discussant: Dr. Marco Schaumloeffel, Lecturer of Portuguese (FHIS)
Date: February 5, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, 3000-8000 Africans and African descendants mainly from Brazil relocated to the Bight of Benin and developed extensive urban settlements in what is today Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Two Francophone African authors have drawn attention to the Brazilian returnee communities and their immense legacy in Togo and Benin. In their novels Les Enfants du Brésil and Les Fantômes du Brésil, Kangni Alem and Florent Couao-Zotti retrieve an obscured chapter of transatlantic history and reimagine the establishment of an economic, political, and cultural elite whose influence can still be felt in cities such as Lomé and Ouidah. Both authors infuse their novels with historical and ethnological elements that are transformed by literature through what Alem calls “material imagination”. I will read the novels through the lens of what Russell King and Anastasia Christou call “return mobilities”, a term that describes a wide variety of migratory counter-currents and thus enables me to discuss the novels’ complex returnee identities and notions of home. I particularly draw on Christin Hess’ concept of “reverse diaspora”, originally used in the European context.
February 13, 2025 *** COMPLETED ***
Stories of Loss: Tourism, Gender and Precarity
Presenter: Anna Casas Aguilar, Associate Professor of Spanish (FHIS)
Respondent: Mirta Roncagalli, PhD Student of Hispanic Studies (FHIS)
Date: February 13, 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
Description coming soon!
February 27, 2025 *** COMPLETED ***
Defeat and Development: Fragmented Identities, Betrayal, and the City in the early Works of Roberto Marcallé Abreu
Presenter: Dr. Ramón Antonio (Arturo) Victoriano-Martinez, Assistant Professor of Spanish (FHIS)
Respondent: Paul Haase, PhD Student of Hispanic Studies (FHIS)
Date: February 27 (Thursday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
This presentation explores the early works of Roberto Marcallé Abreu, a Dominican author known for his critical portrayal of urban life and political transitions in Santo Domingo during the post-1965 period. Focusing on Las dos muertes de José Inirio (1972) and Cinco bailadores sobre la tumba caliente del licenciado (1978), the analysis reveals Marcallé's engagement with themes of fragmented identities, political betrayal, and urban alienation under Joaquín Balaguer’s authoritarian regime. Employing fragmented narrative structures, Marcallé captures the psychological disorientation of characters grappling with the socio-political upheavals of 1965 and their aftermath. His portrayal of Santo Domingo as both a symbol of modernization and a site of displacement underscores the paradoxes of urban growth and social inequality.
March 13, 2025
Stanislavski’s Method of Physical Actions for the Study of Plays by Ana Caro and Maria de Zayas
Presenter: Natalia Soracipa Ortiz, PhD Student of Spanish (University of Calgary)
Respondent: Elizabeth Lagresa-González, Assistant Professor of Spanish (FHIS)
Date: March 13, 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
The Method of Physical Actions, proposed by Stanislavski in the last years of his career and further developed by Jerzy Grotowski, provides tools to help actors achieve organicity and veracity in their performances. These tools aim to “teach not just my mind, but the whole of my being,” as Thomas Richards mentions in At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions (3). In Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the study of Golden Age texts, implementing this method in the classroom becomes a dynamic source for learners to connect with language and the character’s fictional world from their personal experience while creating connections between their contemporary world and the author’s. In this speech, I will explain how I have implemented Stanislavski’s method in the teaching of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio, y mujer, and Maria de Zayas’ La fuerza del amor and La más infame venganza as part of my thesis project in the creation of a new teaching model. I will also give an overview of how implementing physical movement to study the student/character’s impulses and inner voice has taken the learner to break stereotypical conceptions of the characters and has raised discussions about gender, race, and other sociocultural topics.
March 19, 2025
Thinking Through Food in the Global Hispanophone: Heritage, Identity, Foodscapes
Presenter: Rosi Song, Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures (Durham University)
Date: March 13, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
Rosi Song discusses the burgeoning field of Food Studies and their intersection with History, Cultural Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies. While the ever-evolving study of food and nutrition has contributed to the understanding of societal debates as recipes and food practices were passed down from generation to generation, new interest in food traditions as linked to specific geographic territories and as intangible heritage artifacts offer us a valuable opportunity to interrogate some common perceptions about the food we consume and our relationship to them. How has the study of food been utilized to address larger issues relating to cultural heritage and identity, especially in the present when food consumption and food expectations have become increasingly global? How can we understand foodways as the embodiment of change and the movement of people amid environmental and social transformations under duress and violence yet at the same time engage with pseudo essentialist discourses entangled with emotions about belonging and subjectivities? How can developing an understanding of food practices address or help us envision common ties while protecting cultural heritage, or how can we conceive geographic mobility through food in an increasingly connected but also fragmented world? Can food culture be part of this conversation and what should it contribute? Thinking about food through the linguistic, geographic and material boundaries that traditionally define the fields of Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies, this talk explores how social and cultural values that are sustained by ideas of tradition and conservation can teach us about our ever-changing multicultural foodscapes.
Sponsored by Latin American Studies
March 27, 2025
“Silent Poetry”: How Enlightenment Literature Redefined Deafness
Presenter: Dr. Flora Amann, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (FHIS)
Respondent: Joël Castonguay-Bélanger, Associate Professor of French (FHIS)
Date: March 27, 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
Coming soon!
April 2, 2025
“Claiming the River: Québécois and Innu Narratives of the Romaine River Hydro Project”
Presenter: Isabella Huberman, Assistant Professor of French (FHIS)
Respondent: Sarah Henzi, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies (SFU)
Date: April 2, 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Location: Buchanan Tower, Room 726
About the talk:
Coming soon!
If you have questions, please contact Dr. Katharina Piechocki (katharina.piechocki@ubc.ca).
UBC Vancouver is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People.
