Connecting Minds and Ideas: Inaugural Arconexiones Conference by ISU Spanish MA Students

While ISU´s online Spanish Master of Arts program has been in place since 2019, never before have the over 100 students that are in the program held an event to showcase their academic work and to come together to share ideas. 

That is the idea behind the inaugural Arconexiones conference. ISU Spanish MA students live all over the country—including Arizona, Washington, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and beyond. This event will be a way for them to create a virtual community despite their geographical distance. 

The Spanish MA students of ISU will hold their first-ever graduate student conference virtually on Saturday, February 10, 2024. The conference will be held in both English and Spanish, and participants are welcome to use either language throughout the conference. The conference will consist of several panels of graduate students sharing their research and work, as well as a round table event during which program professors and former MA students from the program will discuss professional development topics. Professor Gibette Encarnación, a new professor in the ISU English Department, will give a keynote speech. The event will also include a virtual coffee hour for informal conversation for attendees to get to know one another.

The conference organizing committee consists of a core group of dedicated MA students, mostly in their final year of studies, and one faculty advisor, Dr. Marin Laufenberg. Dr. Laufenberg says that students strongly advocated for this conference experience and have been the driving force in organizing it behind the scenes. Student committees are working on website design, drafting the Call for Papers, publicity, technology, and reading and evaluating proposals. 

One MA student on the committee, Juan Miguel, says of the importance of Arconexiones, “Organizing a conference for ISU graduate students about the Hispanic world is a unique experience that we began this year and that we hope will continue over time with different groups of students.” (“Organizar una conferencia para los estudiantes de posgrado de ISU sobre el mundo hispano es una experiencia única que iniciamos este año y que esperamos que continúe a lo largo del tiempo con distintos grupos de alumnos.”)

“They want to get the most out of their MA and are inspired to share ideas and create community with their colleagues, despite being online– something that some would see as a barrier, but of which these students take advantage,” Dr. Laufenberg says. “Creating a virtual conference actually overcomes a lot of access barriers that traditional conferences can have." 

One conference committee member, Marleni Colvin, graduated with her MA from the program last year and plans to participate in the conference by offering insight into what the post-MA looks like, at the round-table event. Colvin says, "This conference is a space where we as students and alumni can not only share what we have learned, but also, create consciousness about and turn our gaze towards social situations that require attention." (“Esta conferencia es un espacio donde nosotros alumnos y exalumnos podamos no solo compartir nuestros aprendizajes, sino también crear conciencia para voltear la mirada a situaciones sociales que requieren ser atendidas.")

The conference committee is excited to invite graduate students from ISU in fields related to cultural and literary studies (and related to the Hispanic world, Latin America, and Spain) to send proposals for consideration to participate in the conference. Organizers hope that graduate students from English, Anthropology, History, and other departments may be interested in participating alongside Spanish MA students at ISU. 

The event is free and open to ISU students, faculty, and staff as well as the public. Proposals are due by Monday, Dec. 4.