Established in 1951 as the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference (MIFLC), the Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Association (MIFLA) is an organization of teachers, scholars, and graduate students dedicated to the advancement of literary, linguistic, and pedagogical scholarship in foreign languages. It provides a forum for members to exchange ideas and advance the cause of teaching and research in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Today, the annual MIFLC draws approximately 200-250 academic professionals from the United States and abroad for a three-day program in October featuring nearly 70 sessions as well as other events, including workshops, plenary sessions, social gatherings, a banquet, and book displays. This year’s conference will be hosted by East Tennessee State University.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
María Paz Moreno
Dr. Moreno is a poet, essayist and literary critic. She is Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a Licenciatura in Spanish Philology from the Universidad de Alicante and a Ph.D. In Spanish Literature from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on Spanish contemporary poetry, women's writing, and the cultural importance of gastronomical literature, in particular cookbooks. She is the author of landmark works on the writer Juan Gil-Albert, among them El culturalismo en la poesía de Juan Gil-Albert (2000), the edition of his complete poetry with Editorial Pre-Textos (2004), and the edited volume Cartas a Juan Gil-Albert. Epistolario selecto(2016), and the anthology Concha Zardoya, Antología poética (2008). In the area of Spanish food studies, she is the author of De la página al plato. El libro de cocina en España (2012), and Madrid: A Culinary History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), and edited the monographic issue of Cincinnati Romance Review Writing About Food: Culinary Literature in the Hispanic World (2012), considered by critics to be groundbreaking studies on the topic of Spanish food studies. She has published ten books of poetry and has been included in a number of anthologies. Her most recent poetry books are Amiga del monstruo (Renacimiento, 2020) and The Belly of an Iguana/El vientre de las iguanas (Valparaíso Eds., 2021). More info about her publications can be found at https://www.mariapazmoreno.com/