500 years since the birth of Camões: Congress in Goa + Call for articles

Over 2024 and 2025, Portugal celebrated the half-millenium since the birth of the country's national poet, Luís de Camões. A Rede Camões na Ásia & África (the Camões Network in Asia and Africa), of which this blog is a proud sponsor, just held the Third Congress in Goa on March 12. The Network also launched a call for submissions for the second edition of the Revista de Estudos Camonianos (Journal of Camonian Studies). Huge congratulations to the Network's coordinator, Associate Professor Felipe de Saavedra!!

Why Goa? As the Network points out, Camões lived in Goa between 1559 and 1562, during the viceroyalties of Dom Constantino de Bragança and Dom Francisco Coutinho, both his patrons and protectors, but also in 1566 and 1567, when he fell out of favour and was imprisoned by order of the viceroy Dom Antão de Noronha.

The capital of the Portuguese Empire in the East was crucial to the poet's literary life: it was in Goa that he composed his Auto de Filodemo, as well as many poems and extraneous letters, and a significant part of Os Lusíadas. Half a millennium after his birth, Camões' work, although only partially preserved, remains tche most influential literary phenomenon of Goan and Portuguese cultures, as well as the Portuguese-speaking world in general.

The III Congress of the Half Millennium of Camões' Birth continues the series of high-profile scientific meetings initiated in Ternate, Indonesia, in March 2022, and continued in February 2024 in Macau, and in June 2025 on the Island of Mozambique, all places where the poet stayed for an extended period.

The Congress in Goa is co-organized by the University of Goa, the Camões-Centro de Língua Portuguesa in Goa, the community of Portuguese descendants in Daman, and the Indo-Portuguese community of Macau.

The Camões Network in Asia and Africa also launched in December 2025 the first edition of the Revista de Estudos Camonianos (R.E.C. - Journal of Camonian Studies). It had been two decades since an academic journal entirely dedicated to the study of Camões was published, and contributors included authors from five countries and regions: Macau, Goa, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Brazil.

R.E.C. publishes original research papers in a variety of fields: literature, history, rhetoric, biography, humanities, sciences, visual and performing arts of the 15th to 17th centuries, Portuguese Asia and Africa, and the classical and medieval models relevant to the Renaissance.

The R.E.C. invites researchers from any country or region, whether academically affiliated or independent, to submit their article proposals for issue number 2, which will be published continuously throughout 2026. The R.E.C. adheres to the most demanding international standards of quality, integrity, and originality. All texts in the "articles" section undergo double-blind peer review. Other sections include research, interviews, source editing, translations of historical and literary texts, and reviews, for which proposals are also requested in this call for papers.

Articles, in Portuguese or bilingual – in any Asian or African language accompanied by a Portuguese version – will be published in the order of arrival and review. The title, abstract, and keywords of the articles will be proposed by the authors in Portuguese and translated by the Editorial Board into an Asian or African language.

Still reading? Check out my earlier post on Luís de Camões!