Professor of Hispanic Studies Julio Ortega is currently in Peru to attend the Transatlantic Peru conference, an event co-organized by the Transatlantic Project, a Brown academic initiative.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —Julio Ortega, professor of Hispanic studies, is currently in Lima, Peru, to take part in "Transatlantic Peru," an international conference that examines Peruvian cultural history and literary production and other cultural models from Europe, Africa and Asia. The conference is organized in cooperation with the Transatlantic Project, an academic initiative at Brown started 15 years by Ortega.

The event, being held at the Universidad Católica del Perú, began on July 15 and has attracted more than 170 academics from universities in the United States, Europe and Latin America.

"We are happy to partner with the Universidad Católica del Perú to work on the development of a new critical paradigm for Hispanic studies, based on the reading of cultural and literary works as products of contact, exchange, appropriation and debate within different traditions in dialogue," Ortega said.

Last year, the initiative sponsored a similar conference in Havana, Cuba, and next year, Brown will host an its own international conference. Universities from Chile and Mexico will follow with other conferences dedicated to studying Chilean and Mexican literature and arts from the transatlantic perspective.