Spanish Professor Presented at International Conference

Dr. Camila Bari de López, Westminster College associate professor of Spanish, presented at the Symposium on History and Gender in the Independence of Latin American April 27-29 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

López presented "Historical truth in the textual interstices of a fiction with different perspectives including gender, ethnical minorities and marginal patriots: On Conspiración contra Güemes: una novela de bandidos, patriotas, traidores by Elsa Drucaroff."

Scholars from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom presented papers on the participation of women of Spanish, indigenous, or mixed ethnicity in the battles for independence of Latin American countries.  According to López, this participation is usually forgotten in the canonical historical texts.

Prior to the symposium, the book Las mujeres en la Independencia de América Latina was presented.  The collection, edited by Sara Beatriz Guardia, includes a chapter by López, "Gender, Independence and Access to the Ocean in Juan de la Rosa: Foundational Historical Novel of the Bolivian Nation-State."

"Connecting history, sociology, and gender studies with literature gives me a very useful perspective to motivate students to have an in-depth reading of Latin American texts," López said.  "This applies not only in my Latin American culture and history courses, but also in my Spanish language courses."

López, who joined the Westminster faculty in 1997, earned an undergraduate degree from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina, and Ph.D. from the University at Albany.

Contact López at (724) 946-7258 or email baridec@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Camila Bari de Lopez