San Fernando de las Barrancas, Spanish fort at what would become the site of Memphis, Tennessee; c. 1795 …… San Fernando de las Barrancas, fuerte español en la que devendría la ubicación de Memphis, Tennessee; c. 1795.
Aquí Memphis: Spanish on the Memphis and Mid-South Map
Free Public Lecture by Dr. Pablo J. Davis
February 7, 2013 (6:00 – 7:45 p.m.) at Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central Ave., Memphis TN 38111
Florida, Texas, and California, not Memphis and the Mid-South, are what come most readily to mind when we think of Spanish place names in the US. Yet Gayoso Ave. downtown; nearby Cordova TN; De Soto County MS; and San Fernando de las Barrancas (the Spanish fort built in 1795 near about where the Pyramid stands today) are just some of the historical and cultural traces of the Spanish language and Hispanic/Latin American culture in Memphis and the surrounding region. Dr. Pablo J. Davis’s lecture will explore these links and place them in the broader context of Mid-South toponyms.
Dr. Davis, a graduate of Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities in Latin American History, with a certificate from the University of Buenos Aires, is a certified professional translator/interpreter as well as cultural educator and trainer (www.interfluency.com); his bilingual column “Mysteries and Enigmas of Translation” appears weekly in La Prensa Latina and at the interfluency.wordpress.com blog.
Date: February 7, 2013 Reception: 6:00 – 6:30pm Lecture: 6:30 – 7:30pm Q & A: 7:30 – 8:00pm