LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Award-winning Mexican author Alberto Ruy-Sanchez will talk about diverse Arabic influences on Mexican culture during the University of Louisville’s 11th annual Latin American and Latino Studies Heritage Lecture Oct. 24.
The free, public talk – “Elusive Identities: The Arabic Presence in Mexican Culture” – will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library.
Ruy-Sanchez will trace the ways in which diverse aspects of the Arabic world migrated from northern Africa to southern Spain, influencing the ancient Andalusi culture before coming to Mexico. His examples will include ceramics, textiles, language and gestures.
The author’s numerous visits to Morocco during three decades inspired him to write a series of novels set in Mogador, the ancient name for the walled city of Essaouira on Africa’s north Atlantic coast.
Ruy-Sanchez is editor and founding publisher of the Latin American arts magazine Artes de Mexico. He writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry and has been a Guggenheim Foundation fellow and visiting professor at several universities. In Canada he has been chairman of the Banff Center for the Arts’s creative nonfiction program.
The lecture is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences’s international, diversity and outreach programs; Latin American and Latino studies, liberal studies and Middle East and Islamic studies programs; anthropology department; classical and modern languages department’s modern language fund; Ekstrom Library’s special collections and UofL’s Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality.
For more information, contact Rhonda Buchanan at 502-852-2034 or rhondabuchanan@louisville.edu or visit: louisville.edu/latinamericanstudies