Language and Space: Call for Papers

The graduate students of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida cordially invite submissions for their 4th Annual Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Spanish and Latin American Literatures, Linguistics, and Cultures. The colloquium will bring together graduate students and professors from a wide variety of disciplines whose work explores the concepts of "Language & Space: Lenguaje y espacio".

Open to all relevant topics, with thematic emphasis on the following: Language Contact; Transmutations of Art; Cities and Spaces; Literary and Film Space; Globalization; Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Race and Ethnic Relations; The Other / The "Outsider"; Biculturalism; Second Language Acquisition; Picturing Women's Voices and Silences; Code-Switching; Memory; Language Change and Variation; Syncretism / Hybridism; New Technologies and Literary Communication; Language and Gender; Migration; and Exile and Diasporas.

Please send your one-page, single-spaced abstract attached as a Word documento to coloquiouf@gmail.com by December 12th, 2008. Specify in the subject line whether your abstract is intended for Linguistics, Literature, or Culture Studies. With your submission, please make sure you include: the title of your paper, your name, institutional affiliation, and email address. The selection committee will respond to proposals as soon as possible. Papers being read will have a limit of 20 minutes. There is a donation fee of $30. For further information, click here.

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Kinderbauen

I remember reading somewhere years ago that regardless of variant sociocultural backgrounds, young children will represent "house" in very similar ways.

I wonder if that is really true?

To read list: Martin Krampen, Children's Drawings: Iconic Coding of the Environment. New York: Springer, 1991.

Krampen analyzes and compares iconic representations of buildings drawn by Turkish and German children.

Above are drawings by three children (one colorblind) raised in North Dakota, two from the early 1970s and one from the early 1980s. Maybe that's why it looks as though a strong wind is blowing from the Northwest.