
Welcome to the Onsite
16th International SAAS Conference
Granada, March 28-30, 2023
A Return to (What Never Was) Normal: Discourses of (Ab)normalcy in US Culture, Literature, Arts and Politics, Past, Present and Future
Upon our arguable return to normalcy after the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, the members of the Spanish Association of American Studies will be gathering in Granada to discuss the grounds that have historically established notions of normalcy and abnormalcy in American society and culture since its origin to the present moment. Said notions trigger conceptualizations about what things ought to be like and their deviation from the norm, thus a moral or ethical assessment that is time and place precise, i.e. culturally specific to the US context. In the context of the 21st world pandemic, climate crisis, the #metoo movement and the #Icantbreathe movement, the recent American political turn from Trumpist era to Democrat Joe Biden presidency, discourses that focus on the (impossible) return to normalcy can be analyzed on many levels. Is such a return possible in American discourses? What affects does this “return to normalcy” narrative trigger? Are narratives of renewal and healing, as was the case of Harding’s speech, mainstream? Or do they coexist, collide, counterpose with other discourses? Do narratives reconstruct a historical vision of a past to which it is possible or impossible to return?
For the 2023 SAAS conference at the University of Granada, we welcome members to approach the “return to normal” from sundry theoretical positions within American Studies, regardless of whether they further interrogate or challenge American discourses, past and present, based on a “return to normal” logics.
Dr. Miriam Fernández Santiago
University of Granada
Organizing committee
Local Organizing Committee
- Miriam Fernández Santiago
- Rosa Morillas Sánchez
- Mauricio Aguilera Linde
- Milagros López-Peláez Casellas
- Paula Camacho Roldán
- Jiří Měsíc
- Daniel Juan Rubio
- María Olalla Luque Colmenero
Andalusian Team
- Cristina Gámez Fernández (U. of Córdoba)
- Susana Nicolás Román (U. of Almería)
- Carolina Sánchez Palencia (U. of Sevilla)
- Ana María Chapman (U. of Málaga)
Our PhD-Student Team
- Lucía Bennett Ortega (U. of Granada)
- Carmen Hidalgo Varo (U. of Granada)
- Macarena Martín Martínez (U. of Sevilla)
- Safa Alshammary (U. of Granada)





Conference venue
Centro Federico García Lorca
Cultural Institution dedicated to research into the life and work of Granada poet. It has been safeguarding the poet’s legacy since June 2018.
The Federico García Lorca Center is a cultural institution dedicated to research into the life and work of the poet from Granada, as well as to the diffusion of his literary work. Inaugurated in 2015, its main objective was to conserve the poet’s legacy in association with the García Lorca Foundation, which is presided over by the poet’s heirs. It is also a space expressly conceived to host all kinds of contemporary artistic events. It has an auditorium, exhibition rooms, offices and a library equipped with a safe room to store the most valuable material.

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