Asturian Studies Newsletter, Fall 2022
Society for the Analysis of cultural Topics and linguistic Identities N'Asturies
Welcome to our first newsletter! If you are not familiar with the Asturian Studies academic initiative, you can find more information in our webpage.
What We Did This Summer
Diaspóriques: Conversaciones con la diáspora
Diaspóriques is a series of conversations focused on the dialogue between academics and cultural creators interested in Asturias who reside inside and outside of Asturias. During the summer of 2022, it was hosted by the Laboral, Ciudad de la Cultura, with the support of the Consejería de Cultura, Política Llingüística y Turismo de Asturias. We worked in close collaboration with the Seminariu de Filoloxía Asturiana from the Universidad de Oviedo for their organization.
The first one was entitled “El asturiano dentro y fuera de Asturias” and featured a conversation between Covadonga Lamar Prieto, from the University of California Riverside, Ramón D’Andrés, from the Universidad de Oviedo, and Imanol Suárez Palma, from the University of Florida. There was a very interesting debate -in which multiple members of the public participated- about the notion of “heritage speaker” and “falante”. Do you need to correctly speak a language to be considered a speaker of that language? While some of the participants defended that you need to be sufficient in your use of language to be “a speaker” of a language, others argued that there is a gradient of knowledge, familiarity and cultural ties that needs to be considered. There is an ocean between those two perspectives!
The second of the round tables developed the topic “El asturiano y las redes sociales” and included Miriam Villazón Valbuena, from the University of California Riverside, Isabel Álvarez Sancho, from Oklahoma State University, and Claudia Elena Menéndez Fernández, from the University of Oviedo. They discussed how social media can be useful for the maintenance and transmission of a minoritized language. There was some agreement on the social aspect of social media: whom we block, and how we do it, can have social, cultural and linguistic elements tied to it!
Our concern about the increase of covid cases in Asturies during the month of July made us stop the conversations for the Summer. We’ll be back next year with more fascinating topics.
ASTURIAN STUDIES IN ALCES XXI
On July 12th-15th, 2022, we participated in the V Jornadas ALCES XXI. We met in the University of Oviedo to share our research on Asturian Studies and discuss the future of the field. Our seminar, organized by Isabel Álvarez Sancho (Oklahoma State University) and Covadonga Lamar Prieto (University of California Riverside), included Eva Álvarez Vázquez (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Luke Bowe (New York University), Luis Cuesta (University of Albany), Llorián García Flórez (University of Oviedo), Darío Sánchez González (Gustavus Adolphus College), Miriam Villazón Valbuena (University of California Riverside) and Nataliya Shestakova (University of Castilla-La Mancha).
We discussed strategies to consolidate Asturian Studies as a field capable of creating knowledge from what is considered the periphery, highlighting the importance of international collaborations. We had productive conversations about representations of modernity, emigration, trauma, lieux de mémoire and postmemory, tradition, activism, and environmental concerns.
The topics we reviewed included:
How Asturian language is used in social media inside and outside Asturias,
How first-generation Asturian emigrants express their identity and strategies for survival in their letters,
Asturian films that represent the flourishing and later decay of industry in the region, masculinities, and the Revolution of October 1934,
Asturian contemporary music and its intersections with tradition and activism,
Asturian mythology in relation to Asturian and Celtic history,
The culture that comes from cuchu in Asturies.
We are grateful to the grupo motor of ALCESXXI for their fantastic work with the organization of the Jornadas.
During this seminar, we also announced the call for papers for the volumen we are editing on Asturian Studies in the 21st century…
What We Are Doing
CFP: Asturian Studies in the 21st Century
Send us your proposal by September 15th! 📪 📖
📢 Save the date!
SAnTINA Conference (2023)
Society for the Analysis of cultural Topics and linguistic Identities N’Asturies
Inside and Outside Asturies
We welcome papers related to the field of Asturian Studies, understood in the broader sense of examining the language, culture and history of Asturias and Asturian people from the perspective of the social sciences and the humanities. Topics might include, but are not limited to, Asturian language, linguistics, literature, cinema, music, visual arts, history, activism, migration, sports, industry, health, and the environment.
This second iteration of the SAnTINA conference will be hosted by Oklahoma State University and led by Prof. Isabel Álvarez Sancho, Associate Professor at Oklahoma State University and vice president of the academic initiative Asturian Studies. It will be held completely virtually on May 3rd and 4th, 2023, and is free of charge for participants.
SAnTINA 2023 is coordinated in collaboration with the Asturian Studies working group, whose president, Prof. Covadonga Lamar Prieto, and community manager Miriam Villazón Valbuena, both from University of California-Riverside, hosted the first SAnTINA conference in 2021. Asturian Studies/SAnTINA is an academic initiative aimed to continue developing the field of Asturian Studies as well as disseminating Asturian culture internationally.
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts and participants' information must be submitted through this google form by December, 31st, 2022.
Authors may submit up to two abstracts, one individual and one jointly.
Contributions may be in Asturian, Spanish, English or a combination of them.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 31st.
Summary of Important Dates and Information
Conference Dates: May 3rd and 4th, 2023
Modality: Zoom
Abstract Submission Deadline: January 15th (extended deadline)
Notifications of acceptance/rejection: starting January 31st.
Submission link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe1ypsNN6n2A7-SlG_la-ZjN3l6A7xh_WYsUs3lOv1rapHvQg/viewform
Contact
Please direct any questions to: santinaconference@gmail.com
Last but not least, dende SAnTINA, ¡Bon día d’Asturies a toos y toes!
