The Turns of the Centuries: Irish and Latin American Literature and Culture. 2025 International Symposium
X SILAS Conference
XX ABEI Symposium of IS Studies in South America
Ireland and Latin America: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Connections
17, 18, and 19 September 2025
Casa Universitaria del Libro (CASUL), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Mexico City
The 2025 International Symposium The Turns of the Centuries: Irish and Latin American Literature and Culture will be hosted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, and jointly organised by the three major Latin American Irish Studies Chairs currently in existence —Argentina’s Extracurricular Free Chair of Irish Studies and the Irish Diaspora: Edna O’Brien and Colum McCann (UNLPam), Brazil’s W. B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies (USP), and Mexico’s Eavan Boland – Anne Enright Chair of Irish Studies (UNAM). Among the organisers are also the Embassy of Ireland in Mexico as well as the Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS) and the Brazilian Association of Irish Studies (ABEI), with funding from Ireland’s Emigrant Support Programme (ESP) and DGAPA-UNAM among others [Click on “Organisers”]. The Symposium will host panels in English, Spanish and Portuguese and will thus foreground the research on Irish Studies being done in these languages. Irish authors, artists, and scholars have had a major impact on their Latin American counterparts, who have found much to admire in Ireland’s vibrant cultural output of the past 200 years. Fertile multilingual dialogues are taking place as a consequence of these multifarious creative and scholarly activities.
Ireland’s culture and literature stand out as being some of the richest and most influential amongst the nations of the Western world. Even if this has been true for at least 1000 years, the last two centuries have witnessed a particularly powerful surge of Irish creativity and aesthetic influence. That is why this year’s Symposium is dedicated to probing the many ways in which Ireland has become one of the world’s cultural powerhouses, especially at the turns of the 20th and 21st centuries. By celebrating Ireland’s culture and literature in Mexico and at these historical periods, the Symposium seeks to honour that nation’s ever-increasing spirit of artistic zest and intellectual sophistication.
The Symposium is open to all kinds of contributions that address the culture and literature of Ireland and Latin America, directly or indirectly, in the form of scholarly papers as well as creative or multi-media presentations and installations. Comparative papers where a dialogue between Irish and Latin American art is explored are encouraged.
The symposium welcomes proposals for paper presentations, fully-formed panels, and roundtables, as well as exhibitions of artistic, multimedia, or digital work. Presenters are limited to one paper and one other type of participation (artist, panel-chair, respondent, etc.). We are particularly interested in contributions that engage with the transcendence of ‘the Irish turns of the (20th and 21st) centuries’, broadly conceived, such as those pertaining to nation, language, identity, race, religion, gender, class, psychology, artistic form, literary genre, avant garde movements, historical periods, or popular culture.
Proposals for online presentations will be welcome but restricted to three roundtables on the second day (Thursday, 18 september). A maximum of 12 papers will be selected for the online/hybrid mode and proposals from non-residents in Mexico will be favoured. If you are interested in this modality, please make it clear when you submit your proposal.
Given the multidisciplinary approach of our institutions, the suggested topics are categorized into the
following three main areas:
The Turns of the Centuries: Irish Literature and Culture
- The Irish fin-de-siècle poetry in dialogue with the arts
- Irish Gothic by the end of the 19 th century
- Irish short fiction in the early 20 th century
- Drama and the stage: its impact on the articulation of an Irish national identity
- Key women writers at the turn of the 19 th century: Jane Wilde, Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O’Brien
- Memoirs and biofiction at the turns of the centuries: the Irish case
- Maeve Brennan’s literary oeuvre by the end of the 20 th century: revival, posthumous editions,
translations, reception - Irish women writers in the 21 st century: microfiction, short stories, and novels
Ireland, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in Dialogue
- EPIC & DFA sponsored photo exhibit featuring Cristina Bendek (Salt Crystals)
- Irish, Latin American & Caribbean poetry & art in the 20 th & 21 st centuries
- Ecocriticism, Eco poetry, and creative approaches to environmental activism in Ireland and Latin
America, Latin America Solidarity in Ireland LASC - Cultural and historical approaches to social justice and gender studies in Ireland and Latin
America - Climate Action & Community Engagement – Irish – LAC experiences
- Bridge-building between Ireland and Latin America: Archives, story-telling, knowledge transfer
Multidisciplinary Studies
- Irish literature in translation in Latin America (Spanish and Portuguese editions)
- Digital Humanities and Irish Studies/Irish Latin American Studies
- Migration Studies: transdisciplinary perspectives between Ireland and Latin America
- Race, gender, and identity in the first decades of twenty-first-century
- Environmental/Climate justice
- Migration Studies, mobility, exile, and displacement
The Symposium invites proposals for individual papers, fully-formed panels, and roundtables, in English, Spanish or Portuguese, as well as multi-media/digital exhibitions, and roundtable proposals. If you wish to submit an individual proposal (20 minutes), please click on “register” and complete the form with the information that is required -First and last names, academic affiliation (if applicable), title of paper or panel, type of participation -in person or online- and a brief bio (maximum 250 words). Abstracts (maximum 300 words) must be included in the form as an attached Word file.
For fully-formed panel proposals, the panel chair should complete the form and submit the following information within an attached Word document:
Panel title, first and last names of all participants (no more than four), academic affiliations of all participants (if applicable), email addresses of all participants, titles for each paper, name and affiliation of chair (if applicable) and any respondents (maximum 2), a brief abstract for the panel as a whole (maximum 500 words), and a brief bio for each participant (maximum 250 words). Individual speakers on these panels need not submit abstracts or complete the form separately. The panel chair has the option to present a paper, but please note it is customary for the chair to be scheduled last. Panels must be entirely in English, Spanish or Portuguese.
Most panel sessions will last 90 minutes.
Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2025.
Should you have any further questions, please send us an email to turnsofthecenturies@gmail.com.