CFP: Encounters, Rights, and Sovereignty in the Iberian Empires, 15th-19th Centuries (Portugal, May 2018)

The University of Évora in Portugal is soliciting submissions for its international conference, to be held on 24 and 25 May 2018. The overall theme is "the colonial encounters fostered by...Iberian empire-building processes and...the strategies developed to regulate the rights and lives of native and colonial populations." The goal of the conference however, is to move beyond the consideration of these processes in each individual Iberian empire, however, and to facilitate the presentation of papers that focus on the interactions between, or comparisons between, Spanish and Portuguese expansion and rule. Topics which the organizers have suggested include how cultural interaction helped produce the notion of human rights, how these interactions helped contribute to border definition, how judicial decision-making functioned in the colonial environment with respect to both culture and commerce, and the nature of communication between the two empires and how it may have impacted their joint perception of colonial "others." Much more detail is available at the conference website.

Paper proposals of 300 words (or panel proposals, including 3-4 papers, of 600 words) should be submitted through this online portal by 10 Feburary 2018. Notification of selected submissions will be made by 20 February, and papers complete by early May. A selection of presented papers will also be published. Submissions in Portuguese, Spanish, or English are all permitted. Questions should be directed to iberianempires@uevora.pt.