The XIX annual interdisciplinary Diálogos conference, organized by the Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC) of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University-Bloomington, was held in-person and virtually on March 4-5, 2022. Due to the success of the previous year’s virtual format, which for the first time brought together participants from other geographical areas that were unable to travel to Bloomington, this format was adopted while also offering in-person participation.

The conference was honored to have the participation of three guest keynote speakers: Dr. Samuel Steinberg, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Dr. José Ignacio Hualde, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Rodrigo Lopes de Barros, assistant professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at Boston University. Dr. Steinberg hosted a workshop titled “Literature, Restitution, and Inheritance,” before delivering his keynote presentation “Ghostscripts: Inheritance of Juan Rulfo.” Dr. Lopes de Barros presented his short film Chacal: Proibido Fazer Poesia (Forbidden to Write Poetry) and hosted a workshop titled “From Proto-Punk Poetry to Hardcore Punk Music: Marginal Politics in Brazil.” His keynote address was titled “Vagabondage, Sports, Protest: Photography and Video in Brazil (2013-2016).” Dr. Hualde conducted a virtual roundtable on Spanish phonetics/phonology along with professors Manuel Díaz-Campos and Erik Willis, which allowed conference participants to ask questions relevant to the state of the field. Dr. Hualde’s keynote presentation was titled “How is Lexical Stress Cued in Spanish?”

Seventeen Indiana University graduate students studying Hispanic Literatures and Cultures, Portuguese, and/or Hispanic Linguistics presented original research along with fifteen graduate students from other universities, both national and international, such as the University of Florida, Syracuse University, University of Alabama, The Ohio State University, the University of Vienna, and the Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais. Topics included Caribbean literature, contemporary Latin American narratives, Spanish second language acquisition, Spanish pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and Portuguese literature. Four undergraduate students also presented their papers written for an upper-division class in Hispanic literature at IU. The conference was a great success allowing critical discussions and networking between graduate students and scholars.