The Association of Colombianists, a major international academic association on the study of Colombia, will meet from Aug. 3 to 6 at Denison University. The 14th conference of the association will focus on "Colombia: Times of Imagination and Challenge." Denison President Dale T. Knobel will kick off the conference which is being coordinated by Professor Eduardo Jaramillo, who teaches Spanish in Denison's modern languages department and is the current president of the association.

Founded in 1983, The Association of Colombianists publishes the academic journal Revista de Estudios Colombianos and organizes conferences every two years. Sponsors for this year's conference are Denison's Foresman Fund, the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, and The Agency for the Advancement of Sciences in Colombia.

Keynote speakers for the conference are Professor Mary Roldan of Cornell University and Enrique Serrano, a renowned Colombian novelist. Professor Roldan published "Blood and Fire: Violence in Antioquia, Colombia 1946-1953" (Duke University Press, 2002). She will lecture on "Dreams of Peace: Radio, Civil Life and Political Alternatives in Colombia." Serrano, a professor at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, is a leading member of the PeaceLab design team and will deliver a talk on "Writing in Colombia: A Challenge for the Imagination."

More than 100 professors and specialists on Colombia in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences have registered for the conference, including some from Canada, France, Korea and Colombia in addition to the U.S. registrants.

Most of the panels and conferences will be in Spanish and will concern such topics as history and imagination, violence and representation, testimonies, the art of translation, the challenges Colombia currently faces, populism and personal memories, the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the cultural processes of Colombia. The complete program of the conference will be available in the lobby of the Burton D. Morgan Center, where the sessions will take place.

As part of the conference, the association has planned a concert of Latin American songs at 7:15 p.m. on Friday (Aug. 5) in Burke Recital Hall. Vocalist Lucia Pulido will be accompanied by musicians Sebastian Cruz, Sergio Reyes and Pedro Giraudo. Pulido has mined the rich musical traditions of her native Colombia in her ongoing search for new and distinct musical possibilities, incorporating different elements from contexts as varied as jazz, contemporary music and chamber music.

Also as part of the conference, Colombian filmmaker Luis Ospina will present two of his documentaries on writers Ferrnando Vallejo and Andre Caicedo at 9 p.m. on Wednesday (Aug. 3) and Thursday (Aug. 4) in the Slayter Hall Auditorium. These film presentations and the concert are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Professor Jaramillo at: jaramillo@denison.edu.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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