To mark the centenary of Natália Correia’s birth, the Portuguese Sub-faculty is organising an international conference, which will be held at Wadham College on 3^rd November. There will be speakers from Brazil,  Portugal and the US.

As a poet and playwright, political activist and MP, broadcaster and literary hostess at Lisbon’s Botequim bar, to name but a few of her multiple endeavours, Natália Correia’s life and work reflect wide-ranging areas of engagement and talent. Part of a progressive, non-conformist circle of intellectuals in mid-century Lisbon, Correia never forgot her Azorean roots, which often resurface in her writing, as does her commitment to exploring the mythologies of femininity. Despite several decades of intense activity, and her influential work in surrealism, her contributions to Portuguese culture, and its social and political shifts as the country moved from dictatorship to democracy, have yet to be fully explored. Indeed, they are all too often overshadowed by her iconoclastic persona. To mark the centenary of Correia’s birth, this conference aims to reassess the legacy of Natália Correia as both a woman of letters and a public figure. We invite delegates to consider the provocative significance of her (non)-place in the Portuguese collective imagination and, in so doing, to reclaim her central role in Portuguese contemporaneity. Our aim is to establish a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue between researchers who have engaged with different facets of this extraordinary, pioneering intellectual.

Please see the conference's programme below. 

Image

Portrait of Natália Correia, Nikias Skapinakis (1959),

oil on canvas. Copyright Jorge Coelho and Helena Skapinakis

Programme

MORNING

10:00 Registration and Welcome

Session 1 (10. 15 - 12.15)  

Silvia Laureano Costa: “A Sabedoria Poética” que Natália encontrou em Almada Negreiros   

Andrzej Stuart-Thompson: “[H]omem bilião de formigas/ suando o cimento de cidades” (Mátria, 1968): Reading Natália Correia's eco-matriarchal poetry in the Anthropocene.

Edson Santos Silva: “Erros meus, má fortuna, amor ardente”: Natália Correia  ou uma fome que eufemisticamente chamamos poesia.

 

LUNCH BREAK

AFTERNOON 

Session 2 (2.00 – 4.00 pm) 

Daniela de Melo: “No. This is not my revolution": Natália Correia's Revolutionary Politics

Hilary Owen: Natália Televisiva: the embodiment of excess

Bruno Silva Rodrigues: Vanguarda e Surrealismo em Natália Correia: a libertação do menino Jesus

Conference organisers: Prof Claudia Pazos Alonso and Dr Luisa Coelho