NEWS RELEASE

Office of External Communications

Houston, TX 77204-5017 Fax: 713.743.8199

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 14, 2005

Contact: Angie Joe
713.743.8153 (office)
713.617.7138 (pager)
ajoe@uh.edu

CREATIVE LATINO LITERATURE FEATURED
DURING UPCOMING LACASA GRADUATE CONFERENCE

The Latin American Cultural Activities & Studies Arena (LACASA) Graduate Student Editorial Group will sponsor the Conferencia de Estudiantes Graduados de Español (Conference of Graduate Students of Spanish) at the University of Houston Feb. 18.

The Spanish-language graduate student conference will feature student speakers from UH’s Modern & Classical Language (MCL) graduate program. Presentations are from books and essays from a writing workshop last summer. Student essays from the MCL’s Recovering Hispanic Heritage Project, MCL Linguistics Section, the MCL/Latin American Studies Cultural Studies Program and LACASA Board Members will also be presented. Several professors will chair the panels.

Discussion will cover current problematic issues for Latinos and Latin Americans and their representations in literature and the arts. The focus is primarily on theme, critique, writings and languages.

“The purpose is to showcase student work, but above all, the conference will give them the experience to present papers at other, larger grad student and professional conferences,” Marc Zimmerman, professor and chair of the department of MCL, and director of Comparative, Critical & Cultural Studies (CCC) and LACASA said. “We hope to see some of the papers in developing LACASA publications.”

LACASA Publications and this program help to launch the cultural studies wing of the Latin American Studies minor and to project the recently developing Latin American Cultural Studies emphasis within the MCL Spanish Graduate Program.

The conference, conducted in Spanish, is open to the public at no charge. For more information about the conference, visit http://www.class.uh.edu/mcl/.

WHO: LACASA Graduate Student Editorial Group
WHAT: Conferencia de Estudiantes Graduados de Espanol (Conference of Graduate Students of Spanish)
WHEN: 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 18
WHERE: Agnes Hall Building Room 444

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