XVIII Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference/Association for Documentary Editing 2026, a joint conference
Record Keepers of Nation: Diverse Foundational Figures and Documents of the US
Deadline Extended to January 19
The Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program (Recovery) and the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) invite proposals for a joint conference to be held October 8-10, 2026 in Houston, Texas. This first-ever collaboration between Recovery and ADE will bring together scholars, archivists, editors, students and community practitioners to explore how figures and documents—canonical, forgotten, official and grassroots—have shaped the histories, literatures and identities of the United States.
The conference theme, Record Keepers of Nation: Diverse Foundational Figures and Documents of the US, highlights the intersection, conflicts and compromises of people, papers, voices, archives and biographies of first nations, natives, settlers, immigrants and exiles that have forged collective memory and national narratives. The conference will emphasize recovery, preservation and dissemination of the historical records of various communities that expand and unsettle our understanding of the nation’s foundation.
Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage is an international program to locate, preserve and make available Hispanic culture of the United States in its written form since colonial times until 1980. The Association for Documentary Editing promotes the publication of a broad range of materials of historical value in print and digital formats and supports cooperation and exchange of ideas among a diverse community of editors.
Suggested themes
Foundational Texts and Archives
- Recovery and critical analysis of foundational US documents
- Petitions, letters, legal texts and manifestos as historical and cultural sources
- Printing, journalism, literature and oral traditions in shaping community histories
- US independence and its impact on Latin American independence movements
- The United States as a site of exile, organizing and activism for Latin American independence movements
- Collections and archives: accessioning, curation and critical archival studies
- Methodologies in documentary editing, preservation and digital archiving
- Digital humanities approaches to foundational texts and archival recovery
People and Movements
- Studies of activists, writers and intellectuals who shaped the US
- Analytical studies of recovered authors, voices and texts
- The role of women’s writings in shaping intellectual and cultural histories
- Gender, sexualities and queer approaches to the archive
- Folklore, testimonios, oral histories and multilingual voices in the US record
Theories, Silences and Interventions
- Archival silences, erasures and the politics of preservation
- Critical, historical and theoretical frameworks for recovered texts
- The intersections of biography, memory and national identity
- Historiography, language, translation, bilingualism and linguistics
- Religious thought, practice and their archival traces
- Material culture as a site of memory and recovery
Pedagogy and Practice
- Curriculum development: integrating recovered texts into K–12 and higher education
- Library and information science approaches to preservation and accessibility
- Social, cultural and political implications of archival recovery
