Exploring the New Zealand-Latin America link
victoria-university-of-wellington
Mon Aug 16 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Exploring the New Zealand-Latin America link
Monday, 16 August 2010, 1:15 pm
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
Exploring the New Zealand-Latin America link
The stereotypes of stoic New Zealanders and passionate Latin Americans don’t appear to have much in common, but our parallel histories are fascinating, according to the organisers of an international conference in Wellington next month.
Open to the public, and hosted by Victoria University, Parallel Pasts, Convergent Futures? Comparing New Zealand, Iberia and Latin America, is a joint venture between the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies and the Victoria Institute for Links with Latin America (VILLA).
The conference will cover 500 years of history and explore comparisons, connections, and convergences between New Zealand and the countries of Iberia (which includes Spain and Portugal) and Latin America.
Director of VILLA Professor Warwick Murray says the conference is unique in its comparison of these places.
“The Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles are the two leading producers of overseas settler societies in the history of the modern world. Yet the pasts and presents of these diasporas, which made and remade Latin America and 'neo-Britains' such as New Zealand, are seldom compared.”
Themes explored in the conference will include indigenous societies and their relations with settlers, the politics of reparative justice, relations between the old metropolis and new society, and comparisons of economic and political trajectories.
“The conference will ask questions such as why New Zealand and Latin American countries like Argentina and Chile have responded in different ways to common challenges arising from their similar beginnings as European settler societies focused on the export of primary products,” says Professor Murray.
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One of the five keynote speakers, Professor Alfredo Martìnez Expósito of the University of Queensland, will discuss comparisons between New Zealand and Spanish filmmakers, and how each country has created a national “brand” on screen.
The conference will bring a line-up of about 30 internationally respected academics to Victoria University, some of whom are Latin American.
Co-organiser Dr Nicola Gilmour, a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at Victoria, says Latin America is one of New Zealand’s most important trading partners, but such links often go unnoticed—with most New Zealanders more aware of our rugby relationship with Argentina, for example.
“Latin America and New Zealand had similar beginnings, but then developed quite differently. They now have an increasingly convergent future, as their economies and politics become more aligned in a globalising world,” says Dr Gilmour.
The conference opens on the evening of Thursday, 2 September with a keynote address delivered by Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith, University of Otago: Polynesian-American connections: How Long Has This Been Going On? The address will be followed by a welcome function.
What: Parallel Pasts, Convergent Futures? Comparing New Zealand, Iberia and Latin America. A Stout Research Centre/Victoria Institute for Links with Latin America (VILLA) conference
Where: Victoria University of WellingtonWhen: 2-4 September 2010
For more information, including a full list of speakers, visit http://www.victoria.ac.nz/stout-centre/about/events/conferences.aspx
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