Department Conferences

Pan-Americanism: Myths and Realities

Principal organizers: Margarita Vargas, José Buscaglia, Jorge Guitart and David E. Johnson. November, 2001

The Buffalo Pan-American Exposition of 1901 was to have marked a turning point in the history of hemispheric relations. Since the previous fifty years saw the US making its presence felt from the halls of Moctezuma to the top of San Juan Hill and beyond, a new era of peace and progress was to be launched in Buffalo under the banner of transcontinental unity. However, at the time of the Exposition, conditions did not allow for a serious exchange of ideas about Pan Americanism itself. The Latin American discourse on the Americas, dating from the early 19th century, was fundamentally incompatible with Manifest Destiny and Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. Today the nations and the nationless peoples of the Americas are no closer to hemispheric understanding, as the myths of Pan-Americanism continue to diverge from transcontinental realities. At the centennial of the Exposition, the Department's conference proposed an examination of those myths and those realities.

International Hispanic Studies Conference "Convergencias Hispánicas"

Principal organizer: Elizabeth Scarlett. April 9-11, 1999

Fourteen sessions with forty-seven presentations, two keynote addresses (Rosario Ferré and Diana de Armas; open to the public), and a conference banquet in honor of Edward Dudley and Mireya Camurati.