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Secrets and Lies –Latin American Studies conference 11 and 12 March

9 March 2011

What happened during Roger Casement’s two voyages into the frontier region bordering Peru, Colombia and Brazil in 1910/1911? Can daily routine be reduced to a series of descriptions about wild sexual encounters? Or does this explicit sexualised narrative conceal a paradigmatically different voyage in the Amazon?

The first plenary session of the Third Conference of the Society of Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS), Secrets and Lies, hosted by the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) at Dublin City University might unveil many secrets, and discuss many lies existing between Ireland, Latin America and Iberia.

Papers will be presented from the fields of Intercultural Studies, Comparative Literature or Social History. Scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.A. will meet on Friday March11 and Saturday March 12, in the Purcell House Conference Centre, All Hallows (DCU).

Amongst other topics, we might talk about the following:

What secrets does the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann unveil about Spain and Ireland? What about O’Brazeel, this imaginary XIVth century island, which wandered along the Atlantic coast of Ireland in over two hundred maps? Did it become the Elysium of the Pagan Celt, or the Promised Land that St. Brendan set out to find? Did it lead to the naming of what is today South America’s largest state, Brazil?

What truly happened during the possible Cromwellian transport of 1000 Irish boys and 1000 Irish girls between Ireland and the Carribean? Did they arrive in Jamaica in 1655/6?

What is the role of forgetfulness in the the literary construction of female characters in the fiction of Claire Kilroy (Irish) and Juan José Delaney (Irish-Argentine)?

These and many others secrets and lies could be revealed…