“The Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA)
announces its
XVI International Research Conference
University of Texas at Austin
June 9-11, 2013

Call for Papers

The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin invites researchers to participate in the XVI International Research Conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), to be held at the University of Texas at Austin, June 9-11, 2013.

Every two years, LAJSA organizes its International Research Conference with the intention of bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions whose work focuses on the lives, experiences, cultural production, and representations of Jews in/from Latin America.  The conferences, then, provide a stimulating and friendly environment for presenting work and for establishing interdisciplinary conversations.

Besides engaging in academic and professional discussions, participants in the XVI Conference may join special guided visits to the Judaica Collection of the University of Texas Humanities Research Center, which includes the papers of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, and Leon Uris, as well as the Jewish Studies resources of the Benson Latin American Collection. The keynote speech, by Bryan E. Stone, will be on the history of Jewish life in Texas.

For this XVI International Research Conference, we are particularly interested in encouraging participation in a variety of formats.  Besides the usual formal Panel Session (3-4 participants with chair and optional commentator), we would like to see Round Table Discussions (on “State of the Field,” “Teaching the Latin American Jewish survey” etc.), and invite those with Creative Works to submit proposals to read from their texts (time limit 20 minutes), or to showcase their material in other ways (films, paintings, sculpture).  For those of you who have published books recently (or will publish before the meeting), we are expecting to organize informal book presentations.  Graduate students working on Jewish Latin American topics are also welcome to participate (read below for graduate-student specific events).

LAJSA will make every effort to provide a certain number of small travel awards to enable the participation of junior scholars with interesting proposals and insufficient financial support. Information concerning scholarships, hotel accommodation in Austin, and Conference fees will be sent soon after the deadline for submissions.

All presenters at the congress must be paid-up members of LAJSA; no one will be scheduled on the program until it has been determined that s/he enjoys this status. The LAJSA membership form is available at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/orgs/lajsa/membership/

Deadline for Submissions: October 31, 2012.

Submissions: The Program Committee is seeking submissions of new material that has not been previously published or presented at conferences. Participants may appear on the program twice, so long as they do so in different roles (for example, paper presenter on a formal panel and member of a round table or moderator of one panel and discussant on another). Submissions may be in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, and should be emailed to ambrodsky@smcm.edu

Panel Sessions:  Panels should be organized with 3-4 papers around a common theme.  Each paper, when presented, should not exceed 20 minutes. Please submit a title, a brief summary of the proposed session (not to exceed half a page in length single space), including the conveners’ name(s), academic affiliation and e-mail addresses. As well, include the names, affiliation, contact details of the presenters –including e-mails-, and the titles and short abstracts (150-200 words) of the papers.

Round Tables:  Please send a title, a brief summary of the proposed session (not to exceed half a page in length single spaced), including all participants’ information: topic each participant will discuss, academic affiliation, and contact details.  Round Tables usually begin with a short introduction to their topics by the participants followed by discussion and audience participation.  This is NOT a formal panel.

Creative Works: If you would like to propose showcasing your creative work, please send a brief description of the material you would like to present, and how you wish to accomplish that presentation.  Send along your information and contact details, too.
Please remember that presentations of literary works must be under 20 minutes.

Dissertations in Progress: If you are a graduate student working on (or getting ready to start working on) your dissertation, send us your prospectus, along with your contact details.  We hope to organize a session for briefly presenting the prospectus (or ideas) and get feedback from those already in the field.

Individual Papers: We strongly encourage the submission of complete Panel Sessions.  If you would like to present at the Conference, but don’t know others working on similar topics, we recommend that you use the LAJSA list-serve, lajsa-list@utlists.utexas.edu, to contact other potential presenters in order to form a panel and submit the proposal together.  We will still accept submissions for individual papers, though.  These should include a title, a 150-word abstract, name, academic affiliation, and contact details of the proposer.

The Program Committee
Adriana M. Brodsky (Program Chair)
Naomi Lindstrom (Local Arrangements Chair)
Sandra McGee Deutsch, Florinda F. Goldberg, Liz Hamui”