This conference took place on 28 April 2017 in the Research Beehive at Newcastle University. It was funded by the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and co-sponsored by the School of Modern Languages.

For more information, view the Bregando Programme (PDF: 204KB).

 International and UK Post Graduate Researchers attended the day and 19 speakers discussed issues such as post truth, deterritorialized testimonies, precarious films, indigenous education, pregnancy, the Caribbean diaspora, the Argentine chaco and intangible cultural heritage management. Our theme was the ‘art of bregar’ which was coined by Arcadio Díaz Quiñones (2000) to describe the constant sheer hard work involved in navigating the positive and negative processes of everyday life. The art of bregar across the Caribbean and Latin America describes not only historical and cultural heritage, but also the unpretentious mechanisms of coping that constantly create new concepts and new intricacies of heritage and imaginaries in the present day.

Our keynote lecture was given by Dr Kerstin Oloff, Assistant Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, with a talk entitled Monsters of Neoliberalism: The Human-as-Waste in the Sacrifice Zone. She talked about the zombie in film and literature as a figure that reflects capitalist relations and the tendency towards ecological and political degradation. We also screened a Costa Rican documentary House on a Foreign Land/Casa en tierra ajena followed by a skype Q&A with the director, Ivannia Villalobos and her team. The screening of this film, and reception afterwards was co-sponsored by the Migrations group at Newcastle University, many thanks to Emma Coffield and Ian Biddle.

Thanks also go to Alix Ferrer-Yulfo from Media, Culture, Heritage, Anne Carruthers and Luis Fallas-Fallas from Modern Languages and Carolyn Taylor from CLACS, who organised the conference.