Call for papers

We are pleased to announce that the 31st Conference on Spanish in the United States and the 16th Conference on Spanish in Contact with Other Languages will be held on February 25–27, 2027, at the Casa de Palmas Hotel in McAllen, Texas. It is hosted by The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

The conference theme is Vivir en Nepantla: Identity, Language, and the In-Between. It draws on the Nahuatl concept of nepantla, often understood as a state of being "in the middle" or inhabiting an in-between space. The concept has been widely adopted in borderlands, cultural, and linguistic scholarship to describe the experiences of individuals and communities who navigate multiple languages, cultures, identities, and social spheres simultaneously.

The Rio Grande Valley is a region where languages, cultures, identities, and histories intersect in complex and dynamic ways. Rather than viewing borders solely as political boundaries, this conference invites participants to examine borders as lived social realities that shape linguistic practices, educational experiences, cultural production, and community life. The U.S.–Mexico borderlands provide a unique context for understanding how Spanish develops, persists, and transforms through contact with other languages, speakers, and institutions.

With this theme, we encourage submissions that explore the multifaceted nature of linguistic and cultural contact, highlighting the experiences of bilingual, multilingual, transnational, and transfronterizo communities. We particularly welcome research that examines how speakers negotiate identities, challenge linguistic boundaries, and create new forms of communication across social, geographic, and disciplinary spaces.
As is the conference tradition, we also welcome submissions in all areas of language research related to any aspect of Spanish in the United States or Spanish in contact with other languages, including, but not limited to, the following:

-Bilingualism and multilingualism
-Structural aspects of U.S. Spanish
-Translanguaging and multilingual communication
-Heritage language acquisition, learning, and teaching
-Language contact, variation and change
-Language ideologies and raciolinguistics
-Language maintenance, shift, and loss
-Translation and interpreting
-Language access
-Language and identity
-Educational policies and practices
-Linguistic rights and social justice
-Language policy and language planning
-Linguistic anthropology
-Spanish in the professions
-Spanish and the economy
-Borderlands studies
-Migration, mobility, and transnational communities
-Community-engaged and public-facing scholarship
-Indigenous languages in contact with Spanish
-Digital communication and social media

Multidisciplinary, multi-method, collaborative, and community-engaged scholarship is especially welcome. We encourage submissions that bring together diverse theoretical perspectives and methodologies to advance our understanding of Spanish and multilingualism in the United States and beyond.

Submission instructions:

We are accepting submissions for papers, panels, and workshops.

-Abstracts must not exceed 500 words, excluding the title. You may include a second page for tables, examples, and references.

-Abstracts must clearly present a specific thesis statement, and must include a description of topic, approach, and conclusions.

-Authors may submit a total of two abstracts, one individual and one joint or one as first author and one as second.

-Panel submissions will also be accepted. A panel should include a general description (500 words max) and three to four short abstracts related to the panel theme (250 words max each). Panel organizers can also indicate in their proposal if there will be an introduction to the panel before the individual presentations, and if there will be a Q&A after each paper or a joint Q&A session at the end.

-All submissions will be reviewed anonymously. Authors should thus avoid including their name or otherwise reveal their identities. Please remember to remove all identifiers from your file, following the steps outlined here.

-Papers/panels may be delivered in English, Spanish, or translanguaging. Please submit the abstract in the language(s) in which you intend to present.

-Authors should plan for papers that are 20 minutes in length, followed by a 10-minute Q&A.

Submission in EasyAbs: https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/SiUS2027/