The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley announces their Annual Lecture Series
Alejo Carpentier’s Radio Broadcasts: From Surrealism to the Cuban Revolution
Anke Birkenmaier , Indiana University-Bloomington (Friday, October 25 th , 2024 )
Alejo Carpentier’s novels continue to be translated and published widely, making him one of Latin America’s most enduring writers of world literature. Before that, however, he worked in the 1930s and 1940s for radio producers in France, Cuba, and Venezuela and collaborated with composers and music folklorists. This talk proposes that radio broadcasting and more broadly Carpentier’s knowledge of and exposure to mechanically reproduced sound shaped Carpentier in decisive ways, allowing him to position himself as a writer vis-à-vis those other media. His involvement with radio broadcasting became the basis for a unique poetics of sound that would inflect his relationship with media and modernity in general. It would also become the cornerstone of his commitment with the Cuban Revolution, leading Carpentier to become the Director of the country’s first national publishing house, and a prime mover in the country’s emerging mediascape.
Lo político del lenguaje: travesía por el español y sus malestares
José del Valle, CUNY (Friday, April 4 th , 2025)
Esta charla ofrece una serie de reflexiones sobre la relación entre lenguaje y poder. En ese sentido, atraviesa temas como el uso público del insulto por parte de figuras prominentes de la política, la relación entre el lenguaje y la resbaladiza verdad, la historia y memoria de la lengua y las gentes que la hablan y, por último, la manifestación del principio de autoridad en las luchas por el control del idioma.
Staging History: New Spain and the Theater of the World
Nicole Hughes, Stanford (Friday, April 18 th , 2025)
In the sixteenth-century Americas, conquistadors, missionaries, and Indigenous elites and commoners organized spectacles for religious feasts and civic celebrations. This presentation centers on those that mixed plot elements from the Siege of Tenochtitlan with plot elements from battles taking place in the greater Mediterranean. It argues that by envisioning conflict in this corner of the world and relating it back to the invasion of the Valley of Mexico, participants created foundational narratives of New Spain.
