11 Across Borders Conference
“A Sea of Words – Exploring Blue Humanities”
Cádiz, 14–16 September 2026
Venue: Universidad de Cádiz, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Avenida Doctor Gómez Ulla, 1, 11003 Cádiz
08:45 – 09:00 Registration
09:00 – 09:15 Official Opening (Room A)
09:15 – 10:15 Plenary Session I
Luis Garcia Montero – Title TBA
Chair: Beatriz Hernanz Angulo
10:15 – 10:45 Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:45 Parallel Sessions
|
Room A Myth, Legend, and Ancient Waters |
Room B Environmental Crisis and Coastal Change |
|---|---|
| Chair: Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz | Chair: Elizabeth McKeigue |
| Łukasz Byrski: Aquatic Symbols Across Scripts: The Evolving Meaning of Water in Non-Alphabetic Writing Systems | Tadeusz J. Rudek, Aleksandra Wagner & Oliwia Mandrela: Are we ready to live on the sea? |
| Wojciech Sowa: Beyond the Sea: Waters, Death, and the Inverted Cosmic Voyage in Indo-European Myth | Tomasz Sikora: The Baltic’s No Future? |
| Mark Ringer: The Voiceless Children of the Undefiled: Aeschylus and the Sea | Marame Gueye & Daniel Cid: The Fish Returns: Border Crossing, Identity, and Community Building |
| Aleksandra Klęczar: The Mermaid Princess and the Water of Life: The Legendary Afterlife of Thessalonike of Macedon | Christopher T. Gullen: Selling the Sirens: Overtourism, Coastal Degradation, and the Paradox of Paradise |
12:45 – 13:45 Plenary Session II
Finn Fordham, Ulysses, ‘Penelope’ and Gibraltar: Fashioning Memory Beside the Sea Below the Sea
Chair: Władysław Witalisz
13:45 – 15:15 Lunch Break
15:15 – 16:45 Parallel Sessions
|
Room A From the Wine-Dark Sea to Middle-earth: Oceanic Imaginations Across Time |
Room B Personifying Waters: Storytelling, Identity, and Social Meaning |
|---|---|
| Chair: Mark Ringer | Chair: Christopher Gullen |
| Władysław Witalisz: Homer’s oînops póntos (οἶνοψ πόντος) and its colours in English Medieval romances on Troy | Gerard McCann: The Ubiquitous Personality of the Irish Sea |
| Karolina Pasiut: Monstrous Waters: The Sea as a Liminal Space in Medieval Imagination |
Sachiyo M. Shearman: Power of Storytelling: Increasing Empathy Toward Refugees through Their Stories |
| Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz: Sea Voyage as Quest and Pilgrimage in the Work of J. R. R. Tolkien | Julie Whitlow: Embodied Waters: Race, Gender, and the Cultural Personification of Hurricane Katrina |
9:00 – 11:30 Parallel Sessions
|
Room A Historical Journeys and Port Narratives |
Room B Jokes, Memes, and Messages: Humour in Contemporary Cultural Communication |
|---|---|
| Chair: Julie Whitlow | Chair: Władysław Chłopicki |
| Elizabeth T. Kenney: Biographical Spaces: Women on the Verge | Anna Rewiś-Łętkowska: Communicative Function of Multimodal Metaphor in Posters about Marine Plastic Pollution |
| Elizabeth McKeigue: Built by the Sea, Threatened by the Sea: The House of the Seven Gables and Oceanic History in the Anthropocene | Liisi Laineste: Humour Across the Gulf: Estonian–Finnish Joking Relations |
| Charles Twardy: “Blackbeard's Brogue: The Hoi-Toiders of Ocracoke Island” | Anastasiya Fiadotava: Have you tried Belarusian shrimps? A geopolitical meme in a landlocked country |
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11.00 – 12:00 Plenary Session III
María José Coperías Aguilar, The Sea in the Life and Work of Elizabeth Gaskell
Chair: Rafael Vélez Núñez
12:00 – 14:00 Parallel Sessions
|
Room A Gendered Waters: Women and the Sea in Contemporary Literature |
Room B Visual Culture and Environmental Metaphor |
|---|---|
| Chair: Finn Fordham | Chair: Gerard McCann |
| Małgorzata Kowalcze: Aquatic Agency: Posthumanist Perspectives on Water in Magical Realism | Władysław Chłopicki: Colours of the Baltic sea: challenge of the verbal description |
| Dorota Brzozowska: Women and the Sea in Lisa See’s novel (Island of Sea Women) | Daniel Kariko: Impermanence: Louisiana’s Vanishing Coast |
| Dorota Rygiel: Between Waves and Worlds: The Significance of the Ocean in Andrea Levy’s Small Island | Stephenie A. Young: Wet Indexes: Water, Evidence, Photography |
| Przemysław Michalski: Significance of Water in Sheila Armstrong’s Falling Animals | Maria del Castillo Garcia Romero: “Leni Midsuf: Gender and identity in Gibraltarian painting (1906–1989)” |
14:00 – 15:30 Lunch Break
15:30 – 17:00 Parallel Sessions
|
Room A From Imperial Seas to Poetic Oceans: Evolving Maritime Imaginaries |
Room B Technologies in Maritime Contexts: Language Training, Communication, and AI |
|---|---|
| Chair: María José Coperías Aguilar | Chair: Sachiyo M. Shearman |
| Monika Coghen: Sea imagery in Byron’s and Mickiewicz’s poetry | Joanna Ziobro: AI as the Invisible Boothmate: Navigating Maritime Terminology in SI Training |
|
María José González Dávila: The Sea Between Languages: Llanito, Hybrid Identity and Border Poetics in Gabriel Moreno's Gibraltar |
Mariusz Marczak: Algorithmic Tides: How Language Technologies Shape Marine Communication and Social Action |
| Rafael Vélez Núñez: (Re)defining the sea in Jackie Anderson’s Poetry | Anna Łobodzińska: Sea-related content in selected EFL Coursebooks: Between exam-oriented teaching and the potential for CLIL |
17:00 – 17:15 Closing Ceremony (Room A)
20:30
Conference Dinner at Peña Flamenca Enrique el Mellizo: Paseo de San Felipe s/n, 11004, Batería de San Felipe, Cádiz
Day Trip to Gibraltar
- 09:30 Departure (meeting point TBA)
- 11:30 Arrival in Gibraltar
- 12:00 – 14:00 Tour and cultural activities
- 14:00 – 17:30 Free time
- 18:00 Departure to Cádiz
- 19:45 Arrival in Cádiz