Call for panels
The Norwegian Association
of Latin America Studies (NALAS) invites scholars from Norway, the Nordic
countries and the rest of the world from a broad range of disciplines and
theoretical perspectives to present proposals for panels for the 1st NALAS Conference.
The panels will be organized in parallel sessions.
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2020 will be recorded in
the memories of world history as the year marked by the COVID-19 virus. Its
appearance and spread throughout the world have led to a profound
reconceptualisation of our ways of perceiving not only public health and
biopolitics, but also the economy, democracy and culture, the forms of social
interaction and the aesthetic languages we knew until then. The world, since
then, has manifested itself as a unit where none of its components is immune to
the ups and downs of the whole. But, at the same time, in the face of the
imaginaries of universal confraternity, the material and symbolic frontiers
have been reaffirmed and have acquired a thickness that seemed to have been
overcome since the Fall of the Wall and the end of the Cold War. The whole
spectrum of views, from the most apocalyptic to the most optimistic, from those
that foresaw an unprecedented spread of authoritarian regimes to those that
announced the beginning of a new era free from the violence of world
capitalism, has been expressed through the beacon thinkers of our times, from
Giorgio Agamben to Judith Butler, David Harvey or Byung-Chul Han.
In Latin America, the
COVID-19 pandemic has added further complexities and uncertainties to a
scenario marked by a chronic economic crisis and a political instability which,
after the fracture of the progressive (“pink”) period, has taken the form of
major often youth-led protests in countries all over the continent
(particularly in Nicaragua, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and more recently in Peru),
the isolation of the Bolivarian Venezuela, the breakdown of constitutional
order and the subsequent return of the MAS in Bolivia, and a reactionary turn
in Brazil where president Bolsonaro ignores the public health, the mass
unemployment as well as the ongoing destruction of the Amazonas rainforests.
The deep economic and legitimacy crisis in Cuba, where the final departure of
the historic generation from leadership positions is expected in 2021, should
also be included in this panorama, along with violence and natural disasters
making life almost untenable in Central America.
A short review of the
region’s past, however, shows that gloomy scenarios, even with health crises,
have been repeated at different times in history. Infectious and contagious
diseases have been a constant in Latin America throughout its history and, in
an exemplary manner, since the first colonisers acted as importers of measles
and smallpox. In several cases, these diseases even became pandemics that
affected large areas of the region. Cholera, yellow fever, influenza, dengue,
malaria, hanta, tuberculosis, but also AIDS were and are present in the social,
political and demographic reality of the population of Latin America. They can
also be found in the every-day language of societies, in their memories and in
their literary productions, as in La
vorágine (1924), El amor en los
tiempos del cólera (1985) or Loco
afán: crónicas de sidario (1997).
The 1st NALAS Conference,
“Latin America before, during, and after the pandemic” invites to reflect on
the concept of pandemic in a broad sense, not least metaphorically. It seeks to
recall past experiences and the ways to face them, both from state policies,
civil society responses and from the symbolic and aesthetic domain, in order to
contrast it with the present and better illuminate the future. We welcome in
particular panels that propose both disciplinary and interdisciplinary
approaches on this theme.
Although we have chosen
the title “Latin America before, during, and after the pandemic” as
focus for the plenary sessions at the conference, any proposal related to Latin
America research is welcome.
Deadline to submit
proposals: March 7, 2021
When the panels are
decided, a call for abstracts will be announced.
Panel structure
A panel should comprise a
minimum of three and a maximum of five presentations.
A panel should comprise
presenters, chair, and convener. The chair and the convener might be the same
person. In addition, the panels are encouraged to include a discussant.
A participant can only
make one panel presentation at the conference. In addition, (s)he might hold
the role as chair/convener/discussant in one additional panel.
The panels may be
organized in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Each panel should be held in one
language only.
Requirements for proposals
Panel proposals should
include:
· the title
· a description of max 250
words
· names of minimum three
presenters and the title of their presentations (abstracts can wait, but might
well be sent with the proposal)
· name of chair and convener
(might be the same person)
The chairs would be in charge of selecting the panels and organizing
them.
The proposal should be
written in the language to be used by the panel.
The proposals should be
submitted to conference2021@nalas.org by March 7, 2021.
The accepted panels will
be published on our website by 31 March 2021, together with the call for
individual abstracts. Additional contributors might later be added to the
panels, if room for it, from the incoming individual abstracts.
