NCCLA Annual Conference

St. Olaf College, Northfield MN
September 25-27, 2025

Many Latin Americas
an interdisciplinary conference (in-person)

What is Latin America? What defines the region? How have experiences varied and how have different groups contributed to shaping the region? How do people’s experiences reflect the local, regional, national, and international? What are the benefits and pitfalls in envisioning Latin America as a unified whole and as separate/distinct from the rest of the world? These are the types of questions we encourage conference attendees to engage with based on our conference topic of Many Latin Americas. The conference welcomes scholars, undergraduate students, practitioners, and activists to share their research and experiences in hopes of advancing our understanding of Latin America’s complexity and connections to the rest of the world.

The organization invites proposals for panels, round tables, and papers from all disciplines that highlight salient topics in Latin American History, Politics, Anthropology, Art, Music, Economics, Literature, and more. Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

• Indigenous rights and race relations

• Politics and social movements

• Cultural forms of expression

• Local, regional, and global resistance

• Latinx issues in the United States

• Migration and transnationalism

• Economic development and/or the environment

• The role of Latin America in global affairs

• Teaching about Latin America

• Epistemic challenges (e.g., the concept of Abiayala)

Interdisciplinary and comparative analyses are welcome. Proposals may focus on any region and may be written and presented in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Teaching panels concerning pedagogical strategies, teaching and learning methods, and innovative approaches are especially invited. Papers and panels linking a common theme in Latin America across several disciplines are encouraged.

Proposals (250-300 word abstracts) must be submitted by June 15, 2025 at this link.

Graduate and advanced undergraduate students are strongly encouraged to participate. The NCCLA is especially interested in presentations of faculty-student collaborative research. A limited number of student travel grants of up to $200 each are available, for full-time students who are not professionally employed. That application can be downloaded HERE and is due by August 30, 2025.

Conference presenters are eligible for NCCLA Research and Teaching Awards.

Email any questions to: Adam Coon (University of Minnesota Morris), NCCLA Program Chair 2025: awcoon@morris.umn.edu.

Registration details will be available later this summer.