Event Coverage Highlight

From June 20 to 23, 2018, press freedom research groups will hold an international conference, titled “Freedom of Speech: dialogues and reflections from Law and Literature,” at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito campus, in Quito, Ecuador.

The research groups “Intertexts between Law and Literature” and “Freedom of Speech” from the Faculty of Law of Universidad San Francisco de Quito are hosting the coference with the support of Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas; the research group “Body and Textuality” from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; the Law and Literature degree from Universidad Autónoma de Málaga; the open course on Human Rights and Art from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar; the Internacional Research Network on Literature and Human Rights; the Rede Brasileira Direito e Literatura; and Freedom House, invite to the international conference called “Freedom of Speech: dialogues and reflections from Law and Literature.”

The conference will try to articulate an open and heterogeneous Latin-American platform in which academics, students, and artist form different disciplines (such as Law, Literature, Cultural Studies, Sociology, History, Journalism, etc.) coming from the region and other latitudes, meet to exchange ideas around freedom of speech and the linkage between law and a broader conception of literature, including art and cultural studies. The groups are calling for individual papers/addresses or proposals of roundtables in Spanish and Portuguese until March 15, 2018 around the following topics, among others.

• Literature as a complaint and protest tool against censure.
• Freedom of speech violations in dictatorships and Latin-American democracies within literature, theater and cinema.
• Copyrights as a base of freedom of speech.
• Latin-American intellectuality: complaints and silences about freedom of speech State violations.
• Feminine resistances: about women’s freedom of speech in the patriarchal cultural canon.
• Cyber-culture, cyber-literature and freedom of speech.
• Censorship and legislation: the effects on literature and art.
• Literature in Courts: books and copyrights taken to the Courtroom.
• Process and theater: freedom of speech violations on scene.
• Persecution and exile: preliminary responses to freedom of speech.
• Editorial markets and literary awards: freedom of speech manipulations?
• Ideologies vs. freedom of speech Latin-American writing.
• Historical memory and legal redress through literary and cultural texts.
• Theater and political complaints: resistance and freedom of speech.
• Literary magazines and their defense to freedom of speech.
• Silenced bodies’ expressions: sexual dissidents (LGTBI and queer) in literature and art.
• Oral-literatures and other ancestral textualities: afro and indigenous people’s forms of expression.
• Para-literary (letters, diaries, etc.) and journalistic genres: their importance defending freedom of speech.
• Literature on the Inter-American System for the protection of human rights.
• The Cold War and its cultural impact on freedom of speech in Latin-America.
• Disabilities, functional diversity and new ways of exercising the right of freedom of speech.
• Freedom of speech in scenic, musical, cinematographic artistic demonstrations.
• Literature and bioethics: ways of thinking on the body’s free expression.

Key Dates

Due date for sending individual papers or round-table proposals: March 15th, 2018.
Notification for accepted/not accepted papers or proposals: March 30th, 2018.
Preliminary program sending: April 15th, 2018.
Definitive program sending: May 15th, 2018.