ZONES OF CONTACT / ZONAS DE CONTACTO
17th Annual Columbia/NYU Graduate Student Conference on Hispanic and Lusophone Literatures and Cultures

Friday, April 4 & Saturday, April 5, 2008

In this conference we seek to explore zones of contact both within spheres that are normally thought of as homogeneous and between those generally considered separate and distinct, such as geographical spaces, identities, cultural strata, modes of expression, disciplines of knowledge, and so forth, in the fields of Hispanic, Lusophone, and North American Literatures and Cultures. We understand zones of contact to be sites of cultural activity where various types of encounters, confluences, disjunctions, and negotiations result in contaminations, transgressions of borders, transformations, and potential manifestations of resistance. It may also yield cultural products that do not directly align themselves with existing categories and which in some cases may defy classification. Examination of these zones implies the recognition not only of the nature of "contact," but also of the historical circumstances and the recurring processes that give rise to conflict, schisms, alliances, and the establishment of hierarchies among spheres of production. Zones of contact, then, are the spaces in which it is possible to question borders, limits, lines of demarcation, categories, classifications, and trends.  read more »