Hall Center to hold 'Critical Approaches to Hispanic Poetry' seminar in June, July

LAWRENCE -- A summer seminar funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities at the University of Kansas will test how various methods of literary criticism contribute to the interpretation of selected poems by 20th-century Spanish and Latin American authors.

The seminar, June 16 to July 25, is aimed at helping college and university teachers focus on the lyric in an age when narrative and other forms of communication are marginalizing poetry as a genre worthy of serious consideration. By considering works of both Spanish and Spanish-American authors, the seminar aims to cross boundaries between these traditions and to attract diverse teachers and scholars from Europe and the Americas. It is intended for teachers and researchers of Spanish, Spanish-American and comparative literatures who have a good command of Spanish and wish to develop or expand their knowledge of poetry and poetic practices.

Andrew Debicki, distinguished professor of Spanish and Portuguese at KU, and Jill Kuhnheim, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, are directors of the seminar.

Debicki has held two Guggenheim fellowships and two National Humanities Center Research fellowships, as well as fellowships from the NEH and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has written eight books, the most recent of which, "Spanish Poetry of the Twentieth Century: Modernity and Beyond," considers many of the authors who will be included in the seminar.

He has directed NEH seminars for college and university professors on the application of theory to poetry in 1976, 1978 and 1989 and has mentored many younger scholars, as graduate students or seminar participants, in the study of poetry in Spanish. He also has developed undergraduate literature courses that introduce students to the study of Hispanic literature.

Kuhnheim's area of expertise is contemporary Spanish-American poetry, and her first book, "Gender, Politics and Poetry in Twentieth Century Argentina," linked poetry to the historical context of one country during a 40-year period (roughly 1940s-1980s).

She recently received a fellowship from the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU to support research for her new book project, "Textual Disruptions: Spanish-American Poetry at the End of the Twentieth Century." She focuses on late 20th-century texts that redefine the parameters of poetry, examining the relationship between poetry and technology, poetic and visual images, and poetry and film.

As directors, Kuhnheim and Debicki will rely on the Hall Center to administer the seminar, and participants will be chosen through a selection committee composed of the co-directors and an outside reader from among their colleagues.

The seminar will meet for six weeks, and each week's meetings will be supplemented by informal gatherings at lunch and sometimes in the evenings, when directors and participants can share research with the group. Each participant will work on a research project.