International colloquium

Call for communications

Research group “Literature and intercultural dialogues” CITCEM – Faculty of Letters, University of Porto April 10 – 12, 2025

Meeting Room 1

Throughout history, the process of women conquering public space has been characterized by its slowness and difficulty. Although the present is much more satisfactory and the future is apparently more promising, it cannot be denied that there are still grey areas that need to be illuminated using critical postulates and legitimized theory, so that we can continue to move forward as a society that, on the one hand, values knowledge of the history and social and cultural realities of which we are heirs and, on the other, aspires to build a more inclusive and shared future. Although a priori it may seem that, apart from gender, there is nothing in common between a medieval European nun, a 19th century Latin American writer and a contemporary African artist, in fact they all belong to a space that is still considered “differential” today (Romiti, 2013): that of the culture produced by women as active subjects in society. Moreover, for centuries, the isolation experienced by women with cultural concerns, combined with the consequent lack of knowledge of their own genealogy and tradition, as well as the scarcity of referents of their own gender, caused the weakening of female communicative forces that could have contributed to the recognition of their productions, transferring them from the regions of invisibility through which they circulated to a more legitimized or even canonized public sphere. Therefore, considering as a starting hypothesis that there is a close relationship between the mechanisms of emancipation and gradual access to the public space (political, intellectual, labor, etc.) employed by women over the centuries and the mechanisms of emancipation and gradual access to the public space (political, intellectual, labor, etc.) employed by women over the centuries.) employed by women over the centuries and the construction of female identity, configured in a mainly collective way, it becomes necessary to offer an updated panoramic view of this crossed reality from the Academy which, adopting a diachronic, diatopic and intercultural approach, revisits women’s historical access to culture, as a “nomadic, intensive, multiple, embodied” subject (Braidotti, 1994). With this in mind, CITCEM’s “Literature and Intercultural Dialogues” research group is organizing a colloquium to be held at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto on April 10-12, 2025. With the theoretical framework of the geopolitics of knowledge as a backdrop, the main objective of this scientific meeting is to focus on historically marginalized women’s cultural traditions, affiliations and networks, namely on the triple geographical axis Africa-Latin America-Europe, thus bringing out intertextualities and dialogues that are often silenced. As the analysis of this polyhedral scenario calls for comparative and systemic studies that encourage the development of new critical perspectives, we would like to receive proposals for papers from the scientific areas of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, with particular emphasis on those from Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Art History, Sociology, Psychology and History.

Thematic lines

– Women and artistic creation in the Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary
– Construction of female identity: image and (self)referentiality
– Reading, writing, philosophy and female spirituality
– Cultural patronage, artistic production and memory
– Women’s cultural networks, travel and cross-correspondence
– Professionalization of women writers, journalists and artists
– Politicization of the female collective: exercising political power and militancy
– Women, gender transversality and sexual identity Colloquium languages
Portuguese, Spanish, French and English Submission of proposals
dinterculturais@letras.up.pt Deadlines
Submission of paper abstracts (max. 300 words) with biographical note (max. 150 words): January 7, 2025
Informing authors of the results of the scientific review: February 10, 2025

Organizing committee
Mirta Santos y Fernández (U. Porto/ CITCEM)
Pilar Nicolás Martínez (U. Porto/ CITCEM)
Francisco Topa (U. Porto/ CITCEM)
José Carlos Morais Teixeira (U. Porto/ CITCEM