Conference to feature feminine Hispanic literature and culture

The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Grand Valley State University will host the 22nd Conference of the International Association of Feminine Hispanic Literature and Culture (AILCFH) from November 7-10, at Eberhard Center, on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus. This year’s topic is “Between the Earth and Cyberspace.”

Participating will be 140 scholars hailing from Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, Norway and Sweden, as well as 38 states. Throughout each day, there will be panels, workshops and roundtables on approaches to women’s literary and cultural production, but also on a variety of related topics, such as memory and history, political violence and activism, art, sexuality and Chicanafuturism. Panel presentations will be in Spanish and English.

Four keynote speakers include:
- Lola López Mondéjar, a Spanish novelist who works with gender studies and psychoanalysis
- Belen Gaché, an internationally known cyberpoet from Argentina and Spain
- Cecilia Vicuña, a poet, visual artist and filmmaker born in Santiago de Chile, whose work deals with the interactions between language, earth and the symbolic function of textiles
- Regina José Galindo, a Guatemalan performance artist who uses her own body to denounce the injustice and violence committed against her people

The AILCFH fosters the study of Hispanic (Spanish, Spanish American, Brazilian, Afro-Latin American, U.S. Latina) literary and cultural production by women. The annual conference is the association’s main forum for professional exchange. The AILCFH has been in existence since the mid-1970s, and now has approximately 525 members, mostly hailing from the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Spain.

The cost of the conference is $100; admission is free for all students. For more information call Zulema Moret, GVSU Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at (616) 331-2286,