More than 70 scholars from across the United States and Canada will be in attendance when the Department of Foreign Languages hosts the 33rd Annual Colloquium on Literature and Film Oct. 8-10.

The theme of this year’s colloquium is The Global and the Local in Contemporary Literature and Film. Presenters taking part in the three-day academic event include faculty and graduate students from the University of Kentucky, University of Chicago, Bennington College, Wake Forest University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, among others.

The keynote speaker for the event will be Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, PhD.

Herrero-Olaizola is a professor of Spanish at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His talk, scheduled on Friday, Oct. 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the Blue ballroom of the Mountainlair, is entitled “Consuming Localities: Latin America and Global Cultural Production.” In it he will explore how the global cultural market has exploited the stereotypes of Latin American violence, using examples from Colombian, Mexican, Cuban and Chilean films and literary works.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Herrero-Olaizola’s primary research interests are 20th-century Latin American literature, critical theory, comparative literature and cultural studies. He is particularly interested in the points of contact between Latin American and Spanish literary and cultural traditions. His most recent book, “The Censorship Files: Latin American Writers and Franco’s Spain,” received glowing reviews and deals with the politics of publishing (printing laws, literary prizes, editorial intrigues, literary agents, etc.) and cultural currents in Spain and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

He is currently working on a book on Latin American cultural production in the global context, writing a monograph on Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almod�var’s ties to Latin America, and preparing a co-edited volume titled, “Teaching the Latin American Boom.” He is the recipient of this year’s Fulbright Scholar grant to Colombia, and will be affiliated with the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota.

Two films will be screened for colloquium participants on Thursday, Oct. 8: Entre les murs and Extranjeras.

Entre les murs (The Class) is a French film about a high school French teacher’s experiences in a multi-racial, inner-city school. The movie won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Extranjeras (Foreign Women) is a Spanish documentary about the experience of various immigrant women living in Madrid.

The Colloquium is sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages, Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information contact one of the event co-organizers, Jennifer Orlikoff, assistant professor of foreign languages, at jennifer.orlikoff@mail.wvu.edu or �ngel Tuninetti, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at angel.tuninetti@mail.wvu.edu.

—WVU—

ds/10/06/09

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