Yale University | Fall 2024 – Spring 2025
Iberian Nights is inspired by the spirit of Sheherazade, Dhuoda, Christine de Pizan, Teresa de Cartagena, the pequeñas mujeres rojas and so many others for whom the practice of literature—in many of its facets—was the matter of survival. They existed in circumstances of physical and sexual violence, of civil war, of racial discrimination, of isolation; they also lived in circumstances that cannot be properly expressed outside their own experiments with literature.
In Book Two, we look at the crossroads, at the crossings, the cross-over, even as often against the cross. A literature of survival is often a literature that crosses borders, that is at cross-purposes, and requires an equally intrepid crossing of disciplines and genres to keep it proper company.
Our guests write from many directions, for many audiences, for many souls. Novels, reviews, the lives of afrodescendent people, dance, race, sexual violences, asylum briefs, and so many other forms of polyhedric writing that explore the limits of literature—and their crossings. They will be in conversation about their work, about their thought and, certainly, about the joys and frustrations of the literary worlds they inhabit.
