Alejandro Vaccaro, collector and biographer of Jorge Luis Borges, appears with Alejandro Roemmers (poet and entrepreneur) and Roberto Alifano (author, poet and essayist) to present their research and collections.

The roundtable examines how collecting practices shape narratives around Borges, exploring notable objects, metonymic extensions of the writer, and the philosophical stakes of preserving literary heritage. Vaccaro will show selected items from his private collection and speakers reflect on memory, curation and literary legacy.

In Spanish.

Alberto Manguel, Argentine-Canadian writer, essayist and former director of the National Library of Argentina, is known for A History of Reading and Reader of Borges; his work examines reading, libraries and literary imagination.

He will discuss Borges’s biographical dimension and its links to his poetics, examining how reading shaped Borges’s creativity—from childhood encounters in his father’s library to his later practice of reading through others. The lecture explores themes of memory, translation, textual transformation and the reader’s role.

In French.

Annick Louis, a Franco-Argentine academic, and Félix Terrones, professor at the Institute of Hispanic Language and Literature (Universität Bern), bring scholarly expertise in Hispanic studies and literary criticism.

This lecture examines the elements of Borges’s writing that fascinate scholars and engage general readers, investigating his narrative strategies, themes of identity and labyrinthine structure, and the legacy he left for subsequent authors and literary movements.

In French.

Jacques Berchtold presents a study of Rousseau’s self-identification with exile, in dialogue with Chake Matossian (Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). He situates Rousseau’s gestures within artistic and textual traditions.

The lecture examines Rousseau’s abrupt adoption of Armenian dress and its representation by painters, linking classical (Ovid at Tomis) and Christian (John Chrysostom) models. Berchtold investigates the Enlightenment re-reading of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat and argues this purification of origin frames Rousseau as a new Noah confronting modern degeneration.

In French.

Michele Poretti, sociologist and economist at the Haute école pédagogique du canton de Vaud, works on policies for children and youth with a focus on inclusion and citizenship. Martin Rueff, poet, translator and philosopher at the University of Geneva, is a Rousseau specialist.

Drawing on Rousseau and social sciences, the discussion examines how schools both welcome difference and reproduce socioeconomic and cultural inequalities. Speakers investigate tensions between inclusion ideals and performance-based assessment, explore consequences for disadvantaged pupils, and outline conceptual avenues to rethink educational aims and citizenship in schooling.

In English.