Join graduate students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for their annual symposia on Hispanic Linguistics and Languages and Literatures.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Christina García is an associate professor of Spanish at Saint Louis University whose research focuses on phonetics & phonology and sociolinguistics. Her main areas of research include sociophonetic variation in Ecuadorian Spanish and L2 acquisition of phonology. She also engages in developing community outreach and service-learning curriculum.
Dr. Meghan Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at UMass Amherst whose work centers on intonation. Her main areas of research are intonational meaning in Spanish, Catalan, and English in both adults and children. More recently, her work involves caretaker and child interactions through a decolonial lens.
Dr. Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte is an Associate Professor of Luso-Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian Literature at the Vanderbilt University. Professor Oliveira-Monte’s research interests include Afro-Brazilian literature, race relations, race in comparative perspective, the Afro-Diasporic experience, the relationship between politics and literature, literature of human rights, as well as Brazilian Cinema and Popular Culture.
Dr. Elizabeth Monasterios is Full Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Pittsburgh and co-editor of the Bolivian Studies Journal. Her current research explores post-humanism and post-anthropocentric theories intersecting with Andean epistemologies, multispecies worlding, and feminist philosophy. She is currently preparing critical editions of Churata's unpublished manuscripts and an English translation of her award-winning book.
Schedule & Registration
Schedule
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM – Registration
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Keynote speaker 1
Elizabeth Monasterios Pérez (University of Pittsburgh) - Ser and Estar in El Alto: Or How a New Generation of Aymara Intellectuals Challenge Conventional Ways of Being Indian in the 21st Century
Location: Suzanne M. Scharer Room (Ohio Union)
10:00 AM – 10:15 AM – Coffee-break
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM – Parallel Panels
Session 1
Location: Suzanne M. Scharer Room (Ohio Union)
César Ruiz Ledesma (University of Pittsburgh) - Voces del interior: la naturaleza como personaje en la narrativa de Manuel Scorza y Gamaliel Churata
Nathan McBride (Miami University) - Pastoral Transcendence in Platero y yo and Matute’s Ecological Echo
Yuri Belloube (The Ohio State University) - Uma flor nasceu na rua: novas possibilidades urbanas
Jack Foppiani (The Ohio State University) - Reframing and Reclassifying City Planning Paradigms in Curitiba, Paraná
Roberto Xavier (Universidade Estadual Paulista) - Despertar crítico: contrastes entre infância e trabalho infantil e a subversão em Chupim, de Itamar Vieira Junior
Session 2
Location: Hagerty Hall 255
Isadora Teles de Oliveira Gouveia (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) - “Nunca Mais Te Vi”: Uma Leitura de Raça e Poder Dentro de Casais Interraciais em “Nina” (1974) de Orlanda Amarílis
Caroline Daniel (Brigham Young University) - “Grudada de sangue seco”: Environmental quilombismo, anti-colonialism, and identity in Mata Doce (2023)
Adriana Aparecida de Jesus Reis (Universidade Estadual de Campinas) - Cartografias e afroperidade: escritas de Igiaba Scego e Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida em diálogo
Daniel Patricio-Agosto (The Ohio State University) - Guillermo Gómez Rivera's Use of Colonial Tools as Decolonial Weapons
Mohamed Gabal (The Ohio State University) - Intellectual Liberation and Colonial Language Regimes in Africa: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Alfredo Margarido on Linguistic Decolonization
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch time
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Keynote Speaker 2
Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte (Vanderbilt University) - Where Evil Lurks: Monstrosity, Possession, and Patriarchy in Contemporary Southern Cone Horror Film
Location: Suzanne M. Scharer Room (Ohio Union)
2:00 PM – 3:45 PM – Parallel Panels
Session 3
Location: Suzanne M. Scharer Room (Ohio Union)
Charles Édouard St-Georges (Denison University) - Ghosts, Possession(s), and the Logic of (Re)Productivity in Los inocentes (2015)
Jean Carlos Carniel (The Ohio State University) - O gótico e a violência de gênero em A febre (2023), de Marcelo Ferroni
Maria Vitoria de Rezende Grisi (The Ohio State University) - Mapping Medieval Poetic Legacies: From Al-Andalus to the Brazilian Northeast
Maged Talaat Mohamed Ahmed Elgebaly (Aswan University) - Intercultural memory, translation, and reception of The Book of Disquiet of Fernando Pessoa in the Arab world
Robin Cabral (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) - Purrforming Purrsonas: Pessoa's Sensationalism and the Non-Human Subjectivity
Session 4
Location: Hagerty Hall 255
Edwin Guillermo Pérez Flores (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa) - “Decimos: no camina bien / para decir parálisis cerebral”: discapacidad e interseccionalidad en La arista que no se toca (2022), de Zel Cabrera
Manca Toporišič Gašperšič (University of Ljubljana) - Experimentos con inoculación deliberada de enfermedades de transmisión sexual en Guatemala (1946–1948): ochenta años de impunidad
Robert Barnes (Virginia Tech) - Liminality in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Insensatez: Guatemala in Transition
Juan Romero Vinueza (University of Michigan) - "Con mi corazón en Yambo" by Fernanda Restrepo Arismendi: Childhood Memories, Living Archives, and Impossible Mourning
Daniel Lopez (University of Michigan) - Volver a fundar Chile. Constituciones especuladas en el proceso constitucional chileno (2019-2023)
3:45 PM – 4:00 PM – Break
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM – Parallel Panels & Event “Colombian Community Cinema”
Session 5
Location: Hagerty Hall 042
Bianca de Oliveira Picaccio (Universidade Estadual Paulista) - Eça, Delacroix e Delaroche: os estudos interartes em "O primo Basílio"
Marla Santos (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) - Juliana, a bisca: O Primo Basílio (1878) de Eça de Queiroz
Pedro Schacht Pereira (The Ohio State University) – “Aquela legenda de sangue e negros”: Negritude, espectros e o projeto realista-naturalista em Os Maias
Miranda Bartira Tagliari Sousa (University of Pittsburgh) - Music and the Written Word: Machado de Assis and the Framing of Racial Discourses as Class Issues in Nineteenth-Century Brazil
Session 6: Asociación de Escritores de Ohio
Location: Hagerty Hall 045
Onexi Alvarado, Marisbelia Tomodo, Daisy OyolaJorge Luis Gaviria, Juan Armando Rojas, Robinzon Lizano
Event: Colombian Community Cinema
Location: Hagerty Hall 180
This event brings together three community cinema collectives from Colombia through a program of screenings and conversation that highlights the power of locally rooted audiovisual practices. We will showcase short films by Playoniando (Medellín), Carabantú (Medellín), and Kuchá Suto (San Basilio de Palenque), each offering a view into how filmmaking strengthens social bonds, reclaims memory, and affirms territorial identity. After the screenings, the leaders of each collective will join a live discussion to reflect on their creative processes, the challenges and possibilities of community-based production, and the role of cinema in fostering collaboration and cultural continuity. Free and open to all. In Spanish.
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM – Dinner Banquet
Location: Faculty Club
Schedule
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM – Registration
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Keynote speaker 1
Christy García - Community relevant linguistics: Exploring the linguist's role outside academia
Location: Rosa M. Ailabouni Room – The Ohio Union
10:00 AM – 10:15 AM – Coffee-break
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
10:15 AM – 12:00 PM – Parallel Panels
Pragmatics I
Location: Creative Arts Room – The Ohio Union
Affirmation, Alignment, and Abruptness: The Pragmatic Functions of Response Particle Ya – Isabelle Leimkuhler
Pragmatic Functions of Non-Canonical Será in Brazilian Portuguese – Victoria Cataloni
The extravagance of the Argentinian Spanish conditional progressive – Scott Schwenter & Martín Fuchs
Syntax & Semantics I
Location: Rosa M. Ailabouni Room – The Ohio Union
Theory of Mind, Executive Function and the Subjunctive in Child Spanish – Zayra Marcano Chiquín
Variation in the First-Person Plural Syntactic Imperative in Spanish - Jeyra Vargas Sarmiento and Phillip Rogers
Semantics and Compatibility of Nominal Tense-like Markers in Mojeño Trinitario – Losha Baklanov
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch break
Location: Outside Hagerty Hall 298
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM – Parallel Panels
Phonetics
Location: Creative Arts Room – The Ohio Union
Rhotacism, Lambdacism, and the In-Between: An Acoustic Study of Liquid Production and Neutralization in the Dominican South – Josmary Medina Heredia
Investigating Long-Term Formant (LTF) Analysis Methodologies – Tara Hazel
Local Speech, National Standards: The Changing Sound of Spanish in Seville – Lucas Rubin
Pragmatics II
Location: Rosa M. Ailabouni Room – The Ohio Union
Terminé mi ensayo horita: The temporal implicatures of horita in Puerto Rican Spanish – Jasmine Upchurch
Evaluating the use of “Pero like” as a discourse marker signaling epistemic commitment – Valeria Giffin
Beliefs around language in high proximal care communities: Evidence from Chuquisaca Quechua mothers and grandmothers - Carlos Flores Quispe & Meghan Armstrong
3:00 - 3:15 - Coffee Break
3:15 - 4:45 - Parallel Panels
Sociolinguistics
Location: Rosa M. Ailabouni Room – The Ohio Union
From Spain Back to Ecuador: Contact Intonation – Esteban Benalcázar Cepeda
Between Erasure and Embrace: Navigating Conflicting Attitudes Toward Blackness in the Spanish as a Heritage Language
Classroom – Lauren Miranda
Bilingual Practices and Everyday Connections in Proyecto Mariposas – Ileana Pérez
Syntax & Semantics II
Location: Hagerty Hall 259
Lexical Variation in the Semantic Field of Popular Diseases and Non-conventional Healing Practices in Colombian Spanish: A
Comparative Study of Bogotá and Cali – Miguel Ángel Ramírez Sarmiento
Functional Convergence in Andean Spanish: Evidentiality and Immediacy in the Perfective – Jeyra Vargas Sarmiento & Alan Juffs
Reevaluating Learnability as a Motivator for System-Level Morphological Change – Spencer Poggemann
4:45 - 5:00 Break
5:00 - 6:00 Keynote Speaker II
Meghan Armstrong - A biological codes perspective on infant-directed speech
Location: Rosa M. Ailabouni Room – The Ohio Union
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM – Dinner Banquet
Location: Faculty Club