MACLAS Conference Reflection

First I have to say that I am so glad that I was able to participate in the MACLAS conference both as an intern and as a presenter. Maritza, Lydia, and I were mainly in charge of the film festival and bringing director Peter Sanders to campus, but I feel like we became involved in many aspects of the conference and that it was great preparation for any future event planning activities. We spent several meetings and many hours deciding which films to show, where to get them, and when to present them. Together we also designed a film festival brochure containing the film schedule to hand out at the conference. Throughout the process we thought about the theory involved as curators of a film festival and Latin American film production in general.
One thing in particular that I learned from my MACLAS experience is that even the best-laid plans sometimes fail. For example, two of the films that we selected fit into our schedule, were available at Swem library, and were relevant to the theme of globalization. However, when I went to check them out two weeks after we had viewed them, the library said that they were unavailable because they could not be located. Additionally, for the film that I had checked-out, the library records indicated that there had been no activity on that film since 2007! Obviously that was impossible since I had checked it out on my card two weeks earlier. We were unable to procure the films from another source because of time constraints, so we had to cut the films from our program. While we were very grateful that Swem had many films that we used in our film festival, it was disappointing and stressful that they could not find films in their own building. We also initially had difficulties as students trying to use VHS tapes for the conference because students are not allowed to check them out. It took a little bit of work to get the necessary forms to check-out more than three DVDs at a time and to check-out VHS tapes. This was both a valuable experience in dealing with bureaucracy and learning how to stay flexible.
Despite some difficulties, I think that the conference was a huge success. It was great to have so many scholars who concentrate in Latin American studies at our campus and to hear about their work. The panels contained a lot of useful information about the field and made me realize the broad nature of the discipline. For example, one of the most interesting panel sections had two speakers who presented on Second Life, a virtual online world, and how it can be used to teach Spanish. That is both a program and an application of technology that I never would have thought about it if I had not heard it at the conference. While I don’t know if I will ever need to use Second Life to teach Spanish, it showed how professors are using technology to push the boundaries of classroom learning. Another panel that I especially enjoyed was the panel on the Hispanic community of Hampton Roads. My freshman seminar focused on this topic, and it was inspiring to hear from a group of professors and scholars who study the Hispanic community of my local area. Beyond the panels I heard a lot of participants having discussions with each other in the hallways and at meals, so hopefully they left feeling like the connected with one another as a community of scholars. It was also an added bonus to be able to show off our campus to MACLAS members, and many people commented to me that they enjoyed attending the conference at William and Mary. I think that the location of the Hospitality House in relation to Blair made it fairly easy for participants to navigate on our campus. Of course it is always nice to hear how beautiful our school is!
I hope that in the future other William and Mary students will be able to serve as interns for the MACLAS conference. We were pioneers this year, but I think that our experience shows that it would be valuable for both the conference and for the academic and professional development of students to continue to have interns.