


The Conference
“Borges and Texas” will offer an unmissable panel of local and international experts that will speak at Rice University, Grand Hall on November 29th, about different aspects of the work and ideas of Jorge Luis Borges: from mirrors and tigers to quantum physics.

Gwendolyn Diaz-Ridgeway, Ph. D
She received her doctorate in Spanish Literature with concentrations in French and Portuguese from the University of Texas at Austin. There she met and took seminars with Jorge Luis Borges and Noam Chomsky among others. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese and publishes in both English and Spanish. She has authored 7 scholarly books, including Women and Power in Argentine Literature (UT Press) and the Spanish version of Mujer y poder en la Literatura Argentina (Emecé). Her most recent book, Mujer y Escritura, (2022) is an anthology of 35 contemporary Argentine women authors. Her second field of interest is the relationship between Science and Literature. She has written articles on Jorge Luis Borges and Quantum Physics, on Julio Cortázar and Chaos Theory, as well as on the relationship between literature and the New Physics as seen in current literary trends. In 2015 her book of short stories Buenos Aires Noir was published. Her short stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals in both Spanish and English. She is the founder of Las Américas Series in Literature and the Arts, which she directed at St. Mary´s University for 20 years. She has received the Fulbright Award, and the Carnegie Mellon Award, and was named Distinguished Graduate and Undergraduate Professor at St. Mary´s University on several occasions. In June of 2023, the Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires named her Distinguished Person in the Area of Culture in a ceremony that took place in the Legislative Palace of the City of Buenos Aires.

Daniel Bonevac, Ph. D
Daniel Bonevac is an American philosopher born in Pittsburgh. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He has degrees in philosophy from Haverford College and the University of Pittsburgh. His areas of interest are metaphysics, philosophical logic, ethics, and Eastern philosophy. Professor Bonevac works mainly in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, semantics, and philosophical logic. His book Reduction in the Abstract Sciences received the Johnsonian Prize from The Journal of Philosophy. The author of five books and editor or co-editor of four others, Professor Bonevac's articles include “Against Conditional Obligation” (Noûs), "Sellars v. the Given" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research), "Reflection Without Equilibrium," (Journal of Philosophy), "Free Choice Permission Is Strong Permission" (Synthese, with Nicholas Asher), "The Conditional Fallacy," (Philosophical Review, with Josh Dever and David Sosa), “The Counterexample Fallacy” (Mind, also with Dever and Sosa), and “The Argument from Miracles” and “Two Theories of Analogical Predication” (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion). He was Chairman of the Department of Philosophy from 1991 to 2001.

Fernando Flores Maio
Sociologist, graduated from the Universidad del Salvador, Argentina, and journalist. He was a collaborator and columnist for several Argentine newspapers, among them “La Nación”, "Tiempo Argentino" and "El Cronista". Producer and director of radio programs and television, among them “Desafío Empresario”, and the magazine “Desafío Empresario”. In the 1990s, he carried out special TV programs paying homage to Borges and directed the program "Los conjurados", in Cablevision. He is a member of the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation, since its inception in 1988, and is currently Vice President. He is the Deputy Director of Prisma and Proa magazines, of that foundation. He is author of stories for children such as "Sonrisita quiere un circo" (Ladefa, 1978, "La guerra de los espejos" (Ediciones Orión), "El mejor regalo, una amigo" and "Qué pasó en el establo?" (Ladefa, 1978), "Un amigo de otro mundo” (Ladefa, 1978), “Sonrisita vendedor” (Ediciones Orión), “Seres imaginarios de Borges” (Penguin Random House, 2022). He is also the author of essays: “Los Hippies-Introducción” (Ed. Basic Books, 1970); “Rebelión juvenil y cambio social” (Ed. Americalee, 1973, mention of the Municipal Essay Contest of Buenos Aires), and “Comunismo o Reino de Dios. Una aproximación a la experiencia religiosa de Ernesto Cardenal” (Ed. Fernando García Cambeiro, 1975). He is the author of "La biblioteca de Borges" (Paripé Books, 2017). He is co-author of "“La economía de la enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera” (Ariel, Fundación Telefónica, Ed. Planeta). He is the author of a paper at the V Congress of Spanish Language, “La enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera en la Argentina”. He is author of the paper "Borges, una filosofía de vida", presented at the "Convegno Borges” organized by the Borges Foundation and the Commune of Rome in Rome, in the Instituto Italo Latinoamericano (IILA), and published in the magazine Proa, Borges Foundation (No 22, 2015). He organized the exhibition of the centenary of the birth of Borges (1999-2000), in Venice, Madrid, Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Rome, and Barcelona. He performed the documentary "Borges, el eterno retorno". He was the curator of the exhibition "El Atlas de Borges”, from 2008 to 2017 in many countries. In the 90s he held 12 colloquiums "Desafío Empresario", in Argentina and France, with the participation of cardinals, bishops, businessmen, politicians, and trade unionists. In that decade he organized colloquiums on Borges at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Since 2001 he has been the Director of the Foro E – Ecumenico Social magazine-books. Since 2001 he has been Director of the Forum Ecumenical Social, which began with an agreement with the University of Georgetown (USA) and then joined by more than 30 universities in Argentina, Spain, Italy, and the United States. At the request of Pope Francis and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, he led forward the Vatican initiative "Atrio de los Gentiles" in Argentina and Spain, between 2014 and 2018. He completed the projects approved by Patronage of the CABA "Diálogo Intercultural and Social Responsibility" (2010) and "Borges para niños y jóvenes" (from 2017 to the present). He is the Director of the magazine “Seres Imaginarios de Borges”. He is the author of the play “Seres Imaginarios de Borges”, which was presented at the Borges Cultural Center and in Tecnópolis in 2022 and is currently represented in the Belgrano Auditorium, in Buenos Aires.

Nicolas Shumway
Nicolas Shumway’s scholarship explores Latin American history and culture with an emphasis on Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Before coming to Rice, where he served for seven years as Dean of the School of Humanities from 2010 to 2017, he held positions at the University of Texas at Austin and at Yale University. At UT he was director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies. His book, The Invention of Argentina (1991), was selected by The New York Times as “a notable book of the year” and received Honorable Mention for the Bryce Wood Book Award of the Latin American Studies Association. Shumway also has a strong interest in foreign language education.
The conference is kindly sponsored by
To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.
















Contributing Institutions
Art About LLC
Casa Argentina de Houston
Hispanic American Medical Association of Houston (HAMAH)
ALMAAHH
Art Museum TX
Houston Gateway of the Americas
Argentina Texas Chamber of Commerce