T U C S P S

The 2^nd Annual Temple University Conference on Spanish and Portuguese Studies is an academic conference organized by the graduate students of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese which will be held at Temple's Main Campus on October 23-24, 2009.

(Registration: Galina and Lorena Santos Quinones, Kellye Hawkins)

This conference gives us the opportunity to present our investigations about the Spanish and Portuguese language, literature and linguistics. The subject areas include, Hispanic-American Literature (Colonial, 19^th and Early 20^th Century and Contemporary periods); Spanish

Peninsular Literature (Medieval, Early Modern (Golden Age), 18^th and 19^th Centuries and Contemporary periods (including Castilian, Galician, Basque and Catalan works)); Spanish Linguistics (in the areas of Sociolinguistics and Dialectology, Historical and Applied Linguistics); Portuguese Studies (which includes Literature of the Portuguese Speaking world (i.e. Portugal, Brazil, Africa, Asia, etc.) and Portuguese Linguistics (in the areas of Sociolinguistics and Dialectology, Historical and Applied Linguistics).

Graduate students are welcome to submit abstracts related to any of the fields above. Comparative literature & linguistic contrast presentations are especially attractive because we would like our conference to be open to as many graduate students as possible.

The 1^st Annual Conference on Spanish and Portuguese Studies was very successful and, in fact, exceeded our expectations. We expected and received approximately 100 attendees who, to our surprise, came from countries as diverse as Georgia, Portugal and Venezuela representing more than 30 institutions.

This year we expect to increase the number of panels about Portuguese Studies and will promote the interdisciplinary nature of the conference in order to entice scholars in related fields to attend and participate.