The arts, languages and philosophy department invites the Spanish-speaking community at S&T to participate in a one-hour informal virtual talk. This initiative is called El Conversatorio as in Spanish “conversar” means to discuss and share ideas in a group setting. The Fall 2020 series of El Conversatorio will take place every three weeks on Thursdays, starting Oct. 1. A Zoom link and password will be provided, and all meetings begin promptly at 5:30 p.m.

Guest speakers from different areas of the Spanish-speaking world will share their thoughts on current events and issues. After a 15- to 20-minute presentation, participants can ask questions, practice their Spanish and engage in fun activities in breakout rooms.

In the first meeting, guest speaker Juan Sebastián Mina Quiñonez will present “Territorio y literatura: 4 meses por el Pacífico colombiano” or “Territory and Literature: Four months through the Colombian Pacific” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, via Zoom.

Juan Sebastián Mina Quiñonez of Cali, Colombia, has the equivalent of a bachelor of arts degree in literature from the Universidad del Valle. He is an active member of the Grupo de Investigación Narrativas (Narratives Research Group) where he works on Afrodiasporic literature, nation-building and fiction, pedagogical practices (pedagogy of teaching and learning literature), and literary translation.

Mina Quiñonez presented in the X Simposio Internacional Jorge Isaacs (X International Jorge Isaacs Symposium) with “Changó, el gran putas: un relato de Memoria y reparación política;” and “El muntu americano: Experiencia, Malungaje y Simulacro Cultural” at the last Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual conference in 2020. He has published articles in the journals Revista Temas antropológicos (Mexico) and in El Zarzo (Cali, Colombia). His tale titled “Kilele” is part of the anthology Marea Literaria (2018). He currently teaches Spanish at the colegio Liceo Pedagógico suroriental and he is the editor of the Casa editorial Imago, both in Cali.  

For more information, please contact Dr. M. Emilia Barbosa, assistant professor of Spanish, at ebarbosa@mst.edu.