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Date: March 3, 1998
1898: War, Literature and the Question of Pan-Americanism
A symposium at Princeton University
PRINCETON, N.J. -- At the turn of the century, the end of the Spanish empire and the emergence of the United States as an imperial power in the Caribbean, Central America and the Pacific loomed very large on the intellectual and cultural horizons of Europe, the United States and Latin America. In particular, out of the Spanish-Cuban-American War (1895-1898) came a profound and rapid change in the understanding and definitions of "Latin" and "Hispano-Americana" culture.
The purpose of the Princeton symposium, "1898: War, Literature and the Question of Pan-Americanism," is to study the literary and intellectual implications of the war and its deeper effects on cultural and literary practices in Spain, the United States and Latin America. The symposium has been organized by faculty of Princeton University's Program in Latin American Studies, and will begin at 9 a.m. on Friday, March 27 and conclude at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 29. It will be held in Bowl 1 of Robertson Hall at the Woodrow Wilson School. (For more information, a preliminary program is available.)
The war itself stimulated all sorts of questions and controversies. In the United States, writers and commentators discussed the meaning of the nation's outward expansion, debating whether it signaled the fulfillment of American destiny or a profound crisis for the republican form of government. In Latin America, the question of Pan-Americanism as a new political identity -- and as an attempt to remap cultural boundaries -- became a central issue in a number of debates.
A significant number of Latin American and Caribbean writers saw the triumph of the new American empire as a major and irreversible break with the past. Jose Enrique Rodo published his influential Ariel in 1900, shortly after the war. The poet Ruben Dario rushed to Spain hoping to occupy a central space in the "madre patria" and its literary modernization by those who later came to be known as the "Generacion del 98".
Since proposed interpretations had potentially fundamental consequences for literature and language, not only political figures, historians and social scientists, but many writers also participated in the spate of debates and controversies which marked the times. Such diverse figures as Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Jose Marti, Enrique Jose Varona, Menendez Pelayo, Luis Llorens Torres, Fernando Ortiz, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt (to name only a few) took an active part. Interpretations were also at war, with literature and culture their contested spaces.
There is at present a significant number of scholars whose research and writing converge around the questions of culture and imperialism. Many are investigating new forms of narrative, poetry, travel writing and journalism which emerged during the final years of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The symposium aims to stimulate new inquiry in these directions. Since scholars throughout the hemisphere are in the process of studying the meanings of regional integration and transnational migration, the 1998 centennial marks an especially favorable occasion for scholars to shed new light of the issues, authors and texts involved.