Comparative Iberian Studies Conference

Santiago Morales-Rivera
Spanish and Portuguese
UC Irvine

Robert P. Newcomb
Spanish and Portuguese
UC Davis

The Comparative Iberian Studies working group, which brought together twelve UC faculty members representing seven campuses (Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Merced, San Diego, and Davis), engaged in a year of dialogue, culminating in a two-day public conference in Spring 2017 at UC Irvine on how peninsular literary and cultural studies might be reimagined – and reinvigorated – “from the Iberian margin”. The group aimed to bring Spanish/Castilian literature, which has historically formed the core of the peninsular studies canon, into dialogue with writers, texts and cultural documents from the Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Basque, and North African-immigrant traditions. The organizers hoped to facilitate discussion across Iberian languages and literatures between group members, to stimulate dialogue with colleagues, students, and California-based Iberian-American community organizations, and to model a form of peninsular studies that is multilingual, multifocal, and driven by dialogue.