Understanding the celebration

Carnival is one of the most important traditional festivals in Uruguay. On an artistic and creative level and in terms of the number of people, events and structures involved, its significance for Uruguayan culture and society is undeniable. Diverse in its essence and forms, the 40-nights-long Uruguayan carnival is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon that generates a multiplicity of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research approaches.

The Interdisciplinary Academic Conference on Uruguayan Carnival (CAICU by its Spanish acronym) presents a space for dialogue and encounter between researchers from different disciplines who study the multiple facets of Uruguayan carnival, with the aim of producing and promoting interdisciplinary academic knowledge on the subject. The conference, whose first edition took place in Septembre 2023, is aimed at researchers at different stages of their academic training from all institutes and departments of the University of the Republic (Udelar) -Uruguay's only public university- and other educational institutions in Uruguay and the rest of the world, as well as those who are interested in researching the Uruguayan carnival. We welcome cross-disciplinary proposals as well as artist/scholar collaborative interventions.

The full proceedings of the first edition of the conference (2023) are available here. The introduction and abstracts of all papers are translated into English.