October 2010




Navigating Cultural Spaces: Images of Coast and Sea
University of Kiel, Germany  -  1-3 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2010

Water imagery is one of the central topoi in poetic, fictional and critical language. Since the victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, the national consciousness in Britain has been directed towards the movement from solid land and coast out into the open sea by the art of navigation. The literary imagination followed, and coast and sea have provided room for projections of hope, longing, and fear. The transition from solid land to fluid ocean challenges culturally induced value systems and world views; the confrontation with foreign worlds undermines identities and generates new images of alterity.
In this context sea and coast are historically highly semanticized and hotly contested topographical spaces, which enable the discovery and designation of new cultural spaces in imagination and practice. This conference will focus on fictional representations of sea and coast in their topographical, ecological, and economic specificities, as endangered and endangering realms, as enabling and conditioning forces of the cultural imaginary in the history of English-speaking literatures and media.
Possible topics include:
•    Postcolonial and transatlantic (re)writings of conquest and travel narratives
•    gendered perspectives on maritime heroism
•    first colonial encounters with overseas cultures
•    the role of the sea in the development of national identities
•    the cultural production of alterities
•    negotiations of 'class' and 'race' in maritime fictions
•    island and survival narratives
•    the sublimation of sea and coast in British Romanticism
•    the "Black Atlantic"
•    tales of emigration to the US
•    narratives of whaling and fishing
•    sea and coast as the unknown
•    sea monsters and the edge of the world
•    maritime utopia and dystopia
•    living by the sea
•    outposts of civilisation
•    ecocriticism
•    ships on stage
•    great floods in literature
There will be a section dedicated to papers by graduate students.
All papers will be considered for publication in the conference-proceedings. Further information is available on our conference homepage: http://www.coastandsea-kiel.de
Please send your abstracts (300 words) for papers (20 min) to the following Email-address by May 15, 2010:
<coastandsea@anglistik.uni-kiel.de>.
Organised by Prof. Dr. A.-M. Horatschek, Daniel Schäbler, Yvonne Rosenberg.
(posted 22 September 2009)



II International Conference on the American Literary West: Beyond the Myth
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain  -  7-8 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2010

This international conference, organized by the research group REWEST (Research in Western American Literature: http://www.ehu.es/rewest will focus on the different ways in which literary interpreters of the American West have shaped and reshaped traditional western imagery and themes. We would like this conference to offer as diverse and rich a picture of current research on the literature of the American West as possible. We particularly invite specialists of western American studies to consider the literary representation of the complex interaction between the mythic dimension of the West and its real historical, social, and cultural features. Papers can address a variety of critical issues in literary studies of the West:
- the role of "place", "space", and "region" in western writing
- the interplay between myth and history
- the construction and deconstruction of western stereotypes
- gender politics and power
- masculinity and cowboy mythology
- border landscapes and narratives
- race and ethnicity (multiculturalism, assimilation, exclusion, transculturation...)
- immigration and exile
- forgotten and neglected Wests
- the impact of globalization, urbanization, science, and technology on the West
- nature writing, ecocritical perspectives, and environmental concerns
- the popular West
- memory and (auto) biography in the West
- the New West
- class issues
- religion in the American West
- personal / regional identity (re/de) construction in the West
- the role of family and relationships
- the American West in non-U.S. literatures
- cultural transfers between literature and films...
Papers should not exceed 10 pages (2,500-3,000 words: 20 minutes‚ delivery). Although English will be the official language of the Conference, papers in Spanish or Basque will also be accepted.
The conference will be held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
Confirmed plenary speakers: Neil Campbell (U. Derby), David Fenimore (U. Nevada-Reno)
Confirmed keynote writers: Phyllis Barber, Gregory Martin
Please submit your proposal (300 words) plus a brief CV to the conference organizers by April 30, 2010.
Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to David Rio <david.rio@ehu.es>, including copies to Amaia Ibarraran <amaia.ibarraran@ehu.es > and Martin Simonson <martin.simonson@ehu.es>.
(posted 23 January 2010)



Perspectives on 9/11
Aix-en-Provence, France  -  8-9 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2010

Perspectives on 9/11, organized by the LERMA (Aix-Marseille University) conjointly with the research group ERIC LINT ("The Lower Manhattan Project", Figura, UQAM, Montreal).
Scientific committee : Gérard Hugues, Sylvie Mathé, Richard Phelan and Sophie Vallas for the LERMA ; Annie Dulong and Bertrand Gervais for ERIC LINT.
This symposium will focus on 9/11 and its aftermath in the US from two general perspectives : first, the political impact on American institutions; secondly, the challenges, ethical and aesthetic, posed to representation.
1. Politics: crisis in American institutions
    • How far is the 9/11 drift of presidential power different from previous similar situations (Civil War, Pearl Harbor etc.)?
    • Causes and magnitude of the popular and mediatic consensus in the wake of the attack.
    • Slow and gradual emergence of an opposition with special emphasis on the forms it took.
    • Reaction (or absence thereof) of the other poles of power (Congress, Supreme Court) and of the media.
    • Role played by lobbies in the process of extension of presidential power.
    • Attitude of the major parties toward presidential activism.
    • Possible consequences of the crisis upon the future evolution of US institutions.
2. The challenges of representation: ethics and aesthetics
If, as Jay Parini writes in his poem "After the Terror," "Everything has changed, though nothing has," what are the challenges posed by the attacks on the World Trade Center in terms of witnessing and recalling, personal and collective trauma, historical and fictional representations, and more generally figurative and interpretive narratives?
We invite papers that will address aspects of the issues raised by the adjustment of aesthetics to ethics in the (re)presentation and recreation of the events of September 11 and their aftermath.
Presentations, in English or in French, should be limited to 25 minutes to allow ample time for questions and discussions.
Abstracts (under a page, with key-words and an abbreviated CV) should be sent by March 15, 2010 to:
- Gérard Hugues <gerard.hugues@wanadoo.fr> for the workshop on politics
- Sylvie Mathé <sylvie.mathe@univ-provence.fr> for the workshop on representations.
(posted 18 December 2009)



Creative memory, explorative memory: the grafting of the real in translated fiction - Palimpsestes 24 / Colloquium
Université Paris 3, France  -  15-16 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2010

Works of fiction in which a mimetic representation of the real plays a major role, or that include elements external to the work of fiction itself, call on both the imagination and the limited framework of the historical account, of a specific space, culture or linguistic system. They can therefore not be translated without making reference to the individual or collective memory, or both. Beyond the straightforward remembering of the past, this approach attempts to construct an interpretation -- absorbing an outside element plunged into the present of a translational situation with a contextual shift. Memory therefore boosts the movement towards the other, towards extraneous discourses the representation of which resorts to various hybridizing techniques such as collage, embedding, or merging. Integrating memory -- that is, reconstructing the real from non-fictional (or supposedly non-fictional) elements -- into the heart of a fictional work raises the question of superimposing different genres within a literary work and making the overall work coherent on the level of discourse as well as that of the textual object, with an eye on the social, historical and cultural factors affecting its production. Different texts will have different rationales depending on their origin, function and target readers and the translation will re-arrange conceptual borders considerably, given the linguistic and cultural constraints imposed on it.
Central to this study will be works of fiction (novels, short stories, plays and poetry) bearing the mark of the real (historical accounts, newspaper extracts, scientific or philosophical essays, etc) or containing documents conjuring up memory (personal diaries, letters, reports, etc)
In addition to studying the diversity of translating strategies when dealing with various types of texts or discourses, papers will focus on the analysis of discrepancies caused by overlapping discourses (history and poetry for example). Addressing both theory and practice they will bring together theorisation, the history of translating practices -- in particular the role of memory in these practices -- and text analysis.
Proposals (a half-page summary in English or French) plus a short CV should be sent, by 30 April 2009 at the latest, to:
Christine Raguet
<c.raguet@univ-paris3.fr>
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3
Institut du Monde Anglophone
5, rue de l’École de Médecine
75006 Paris
(posted 10 December 2009)



Contemporary British Theatre: Towards a New Canon
School of English, Birmingham City University, UK  -  16 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 31 Mach 2010

Confirmed speakers include:
Prof. Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr Graham Saunders (University of Reading)
Dr Aleks Sierz (Rose Bruford College, Boston University London branch)
The conference seeks to address representational trends and practices in post-1995 British theatre. It will examine the work of playwrights who produced their most influential plays during the last fifteen years and changed the face of contemporary British theatre, contributing to the development of new playwriting traditions in the UK. The conference will shed light on how these playwrights can be seen as belonging to a new canon, which is redefining extant notions of theatre and representation.
Proposals for papers are now invited. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
•    Influential plays and playwrights
•    Responding to social change: new issues for British theatre
•    Renegotiating form, content and genre: testing the boundaries of representation
•    New political theatre(s)
•    Contemporary British theatre and Europe: influences, exchanges, aesthetics
•    Contemporary British theatre and gender
•    Contemporary British theatre and national identity
•    Specific theatres, artistic directors and repertoire choices
Proposals of 250-300 words should be sent to Dr Vicky Angelaki, conference organizer, at: <vicky.angelaki@bcu.ac.uk>, by 31 March 2010.
(posted 1 February 2010)



Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture: Spaces and Context: 4th International SELICUP Conference
Palma de Mallorca, Spain  -  20-22 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 May 2010

SELICUP, the Spanish Association of Literary Studies in Popular Culture, is pleased to announce its 4th international conference to be held at the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The global topic chosen for the conference is "Past, present and future of popular culture: spaces and contexts".
SELICUP was born with the aim of becoming a forum for scientific exchange between teachers and researchers sharing an enthusiasm for the study of popular culture in and outside Spain. The 4th International SELICUP Conference, to be held in Palma de Mallorca, a meeting point for cultures and languages on the Mediterranean, intends to continue with the work done by SELICUP up to now and to open lines of debate about the new realities of culture(s) in the globalised world.
Through a selection of papers, roundtable discussions, and keynote addresses, debates will be held around the present, past, and future of our fields of study and the cultural products that inspire them.
Proposals are to be submitted by 15 May 2010. The conference will prioritise the following thematic lines although proposals relating to any of the diverse SELICUP interests will also be considered:
- Popular culture and teaching
- Methodological approaches fostering the use of popular culture as a teaching tool
- 'Culture' vs 'culture’': perpetuation in society, deconstruction in teaching?
- Cultural studies: its place in the education system and Academia
- Educational reforms and popular culture
- Popular culture in the globalisation era: local identities
- The effects of globalisation on popular culture
- Popular culture and the audiovisual media
- The demands of local cultures and identities in the 21st century
- New forms of popular culture in the globalised world
- Birth, development and local adaptation of 'slow' movements- Theoretical frameworks for the study of popular culture
- Poststructuralist, postmodern and postcolonial views on popular culture
- Theoretical articulations of culture. Key voices and critical debates
- Cultural theory/ies and practice/s
- Minorities/multiculturalism: deconstruction in popular culture
- Appropriation, subversion, deconstruction in/of popular culture
- Representations of the subaltern in popular culture
- The subaltern and popular culture consumption
- Effects of multiculturalism on hegemonic cultures
- Language and popular culture
- Movements for the revitalisation and defence of minority languages and cultures, as well non-standard language varieties
- Manufacturing of languages or sub-languages in the fight for cultures and identities
- Language-contact situations
- Tourism and popular culture
- The representation of cultural identity in tourist promotion: stereotyping, exoticising, otherness
- Tourism and communities in contact: development and transformation of popular culture
- Tourism and its impact on the visitor: travel literature
Proposals for papers, roundtables and workshops are to be submitted online by 15 May 2010. Please follow the cfp link on the conference website http://www.selicup2010.org and follow the instructions. It must be noted that delegates may only submit a maximum of 2 different proposals.
Conference paper proposals should include a title, a 300-word abstract (including bibliographical references, if applicable) and a 100-word bio-note. Please note that presentations should not exceed 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes' discussion time.
Roundtable proposals should include a 1000-word abstract. This will briefly state the aims and feature a summary of each speaker’s presentation as well as a list of key bibliographical references. Please note that three is the minimum number of speakers per round table.
Workshop proposals should include a 1000-word abstract. This should briefly state aims, structure, and a list of key bibliographical references. Workshops will be allotted 90-minute slots and should always remain essentially practical in nature and foster audience participation.
The official conference languages will be English, Spanish and Catalan.
For further information please visit http://www.selicup2010.org
(posted 30 October 2009)



The epic's extension today: between expansion and extinction
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France  -  21-23 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2009 (closed)

"What has been lost (…) is the epic, or rather, the taste for the poetic continuum such as once informed the epic vein of Romanticism" (C. Doumet). How much of a fact is that? For, as "a wandering path towards what must be an ancient skill" (S. Bouquet),  the epic and the heroic continue to haunt the literary landscape in a wide variety of fashions ranging from the "fictions of globalization" (J. Annesley)  to The Lord of the Rings craze and to the recent new translations of foundational texts of the genre -- Yusef Komunyaka's Gilgamesh (2006) and Ciaran Carson's Inferno (2002) and Táin (2007) among them -- as well as the uninterrupted dialogue with heroic gestures being written by contemporary poets.
Martinican writer Edouard Glissant in his Faulkner, Mississippi (1996) may offer a possible gate of entry to the question of the relevance of the epic when he observes that:
"Today the only community with a cast entitling it to community-building is the world-as-commune (…). The new epos originates in that community -- the world-as-a-whole -- which is the only one that does not conceive of itself or feels itself as such. It has been the office of the epic to be entrustedwith the expression of all communities. Epics of the ancient world and epics of the nearer past did it through the exclusionary heroic, meant for times when human communities were as much defined by ethnic and even genetic boundaries as by the "universal" dimension each one of them held. Epics for the present and for the world that is to rise might do it through the participative and inclusive heroic which could lead to the world-as-commune, and in which nothing short of the “universal” would be the finite and infinite measure of all cultures and of all human kinds (…). All literatures in the world are in attendance as all of them together are being introduced to this new heroic in such a prodigiously diversified manner– and it is as if the astounded face of the epic was looking at the gathering of all of us again (…). To us, the grandiose heroic of excluding the other is nothing but furbelows (…). The world-as-commune calls for that other epic, which Faulkner adumbrated, the epic of the difficult Relation."
Participants in the conference are invited to address the question of whether or not the notions of "the exclusionary heroic" and of the "participative and inclusive heroic" are useful starting-points for a renewed reflection on the heroic and the epic. Should one speak of the expansion or even of the distension of the epic instead of the predicted dilution of the heroic?
The epic has always borne some relation to a wish to "say it all", say the "whole" and thereby alter the perception of it by fitting it into a form. It has therefore often been wedded to the political. Is this still the case? For instance, have works -- both long and short -- with epic features published since 1989 shown an inclination to challenge globalization or on the contrary have they been subtly accompanying it? Do such texts "think globally," with the Earth or with the economist's or workers' world in mind? Or do they enhance local or minority identity? Or can they do both things at once, i.e., promote difference while drawing up a sustainable larger picture? Or is Worstward Ho the main direction pointed to? In short, what road maps have been in the writing -- or are there no longer roads for epics to forge?
And whence does Glissant's distinction stem? In some ways, it echoes Simone Weil's famous "The Iliad or the Poem of Force." Does the non-bellicose epic have a future? Has there been any offspring for The Iliad as Weil saw it?
With the United States' influence across the world, American literary production of the past two decades makes a choice field for scrutinizing the treatment of the conflicting priorities within aesthetic forms aiming at the global reorganization outlined above.
However, it is equally obvious that this generic and political reexamination of the relation between the heroic and the building of worlds cannot be confined solely to the field of American literature as this would defeat the purpose of this conference, whose intention it is to consider a more global epic possibility. So both English-language literature specialists and comparatists are welcome to submit: this is primarily an invitation to examine American works with epic features of the past twenty years -- in the field of poetry and also of literature as a whole -- but this conference also wishes to rekindle "Relation" and be an occasion for taking a retrospective look at older works which may shed light on more recent uses of the heroic and the epic -- from Piers Plowman to Claude Simon's novels. The comparative approach is of course irreplaceable to attain even a tentative panoramic view of the genre.
Submissions -- 300 words in length -- should be sent to Vincent Dussol by November 30th 2009 at: <vincent.dussol@univ-montp3.fr>.
The languages of the conference will be English and French.
A volume of the articles selected by the reading committee will be published.
(posted 23 June 2009)



Do You Bowles?: Paul Bowles's Centennial Conference
University of Lisbon, Portugal  -  21-23 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 6 April 2010

Paul Bowles is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's most skillful storytellers and imaginative composers of modern American music. His unsettling literary themes and expatriation to Morocco made him into a cult figure whose life and work continue to fascinate contemporary audiences.
By examining the interplay between literary, musical, visual and cultural texts, the conference aims at stimulating discussion on Bowlesian musical and literary themes, as well as cultural and anthropological issues and on the relationship between the artist’s challenging work and current inner and outer geographies.
Given the international and interdisciplinary academic mould of the conference, and the author's polymath profile, we encourage contributions from scholars and artists of different fields and welcome suggestions for papers, panels and sessions, and also multimedia proposals.
The Conference will be hosted by the American Studies Research Group at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES /CEAUL), Portugal, from October 21 to 23, 2010.
SUGGESTED TOPICS:
• Bowles and Portugal (influences, writings, translations)
• Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles (interactions/interinfluences)
• American Existentialism (the Beats, American negativity, dissonance, crime, Modernism)
• The Maverick Tradition (rebels, individualism/community, Avant-garde, Anti-art)
• New American Music (trends, aesthetics, fictions)
• Literature and Other Arts (music, contemporary opera, spoken-word, film music, cinema)
• Gothic and the Grotesque (American gothic, horror, dark poiesis)
• Exile (Moroccan fiction/place/culture and travel)
• Literature and Anthropology (Anarchism, cultural clash; magic/smoking/religion)
250-word abstracts, or any queries, should be sent by April 6, 2010 to: Anabela Duarte and Hermínia Sol at:
<doyoubowles@gmail.com>.
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon
Alameda da Universidade
1600-214 Lisbon
PORTUGAL
(posted 30 January 2010)



Monty Python in Its British and International Cultural Contexts or:  How to recognise the Spanish Inquisition from quite a long way away
University of Łódź, Poland  -  28-29 October 2010
Deadline for proposals: 30 April 2010

The Department of British Literature and Culture, University of Łódź, is happy to announce an academic conference in cultural studies.
The suggested areas for discussion will include:
- Monty Python's humour
- the language of Monty Python
- the visual poetics of Monty Python programmes and films
- Monty Python and the British tradition of humour
- Monty Python and the idea of Britishness
- Monty Python and stereotypes
- cultural subversion and iconoclasm
- Monty Python and counterculture
- The postmodern contexts for Monty Python
- The influence of Monty Python on British/international culture
- The reception of Monty Python abroad (in Poland and elsewhere)
The conference will take place in the University of Lodz Conference Centre.
The conference fee is 70 € for foreign scholars and 200 PLN for Polish scholars.
The reviewed selection of essays following the conference will be published.
Abstracts ca. 300 words will be sent by 30 April 2010 to: <mpconference@gmail.com>.
The organizers of the conference are Prof. Jerzy Jarniewicz and Tomasz Dobrogoszcz, PhD.
(posted 4 January 2010)


  

November 2010




The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Representing Self and Other in Literature and Culture (postgraduate conference)
Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany  -  5 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 28 May 2010

Contemporary literary and cultural critics are notoriously careful with the time-honoured but dethroned grand terms “reality” and "truth". Authenticity, however, though closely related to the former, seems not to have suffered as severely from postmodern scepticism. On the contrary, looking at book blurbs and adds there can be no doubt: Authenticity sells. While the term might seem to serve merely as a politically correct way of reintroducing the true and the real, prominent cases of faked authenticity like that of Mudrooroo or Benjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood spectacularly prove that authenticity is not a mere empty sales slogan, but, on the contrary, is closely and indissolubly tied to questions of authority and power struggles, to ethical considerations and emotional investments. As such the importance of authenticity belies the "Death of the Author" proclaimed by Roland Barthes and becomes the site of tearing tensions between the fictional and the real, conventionality and originality, the margins and the centre, the same and the other. At the same time, authenticity as a term is far from being clearly defined and bears those contradictions within itself.
While it apparently hinges on notions of objectivity, truth and reality, it can also be used - rather paradoxically it would seem - to denote ardent, genuine expressions of subjectivity in the sense of being true to oneself. In both cases authenticity depends on giving the impression of being inherent, natural, found not created. Nevertheless it is often the result of careful aesthetic construction that depends on the use of identifiable techniques with the aim of achieving certain effects for certain reasons. To better understand the mechanisms behind this and the functions it serves is to get a clearer view on an important baseline of contemporary culture.
This conference therefore aims to explore further along these lines the appeal, the lure and the problems of discourses of authenticity. We would especially encourage papers concerned with the narrative and aesthetic strategies used to establish authenticity as a verbal illusion. Possible topics include but are not restricted to:
- Narrative Strategies for Generating or Subverting Authenticity
- Authentic Representation as an Aesthetic Category
- Authentic Representation and Realism
- The Ethics of Authentic Representation
- Authenticity and Alterity
- Authenticity and Simulation
- Authenticity and the Sublime
- Authenticity and Postmodern Theory
- Commodification of Authenticity
- The Politics of Authenticity
- Authenticity and Sincerity
- Authenticity and Originality
- Authenticity and Tradition
- Authenticity and Authority
Please send a 250-word proposal for a 20-minute talk and a brief CV to <irmtraud.huber@ens.unibe.ch> by 28 May
2010.
For further information please contact the organisers:
Wolfgang Funk (University of Hanover) <wolfgang.funk@engsem.uni-hannover.de>
or Irmtraud Huber (University of Berne) <irmtraud.huber@ens.unibe.ch>
or visit the website http://www.engsem.uni-hannover.de/authenticity.html
(posted 17 January 2010)



Playfulness and Painfulness
University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France  -  5-6 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2010

The  2010 SEAC Conference, " Playfulness and Painfulness",  will be  held at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, with the support of  CIRCPLES. The conference will take place on 5-6 November 2010, and we  have the pleasure to announce that  Graham Swift will attend the  conference as our guest of honour.
Having lost faith in hegemonic discourse and reassuring canonical resolution, postmodern literature seems doomed to remain "unconsoled". Doubts and pain are at the heart of texts which seek to convey affect -- yet which at the same time constantly mock mawkish displays of pathos and relish playful shifts of tone or even grim irony. Pain thus mingles with derision, while emotion is most often associated with playful devices. This unexpected association  entails a variety of stylistic and narrative devices, such as the recurrent use of first-person narration to convey and question emotion. Far from being simply playful or parodic, the wide scope of strategies shows not only the referential, but also the ethical impact of contemporary British literature. The first-person exploration of sundry emotions corresponds to the ethical quest defined by Levinas as a permanent effort to grasp the Other's irreducible alterity or otherness, in the face-to-face epiphany of an  encounter.
Thus papers dealing with this paradoxical interplay between ethics  and irony, irreverence and pain will be welcome, especially (but not  exclusively) if they address Graham Swift's own work. A projection of  the film adaptations of Swift's work (including Last Orders) is being considered by the Cinémathèque, so that we would also be happy to  accept papers dealing with cinematic transposition.
Abstracts for papers in English (about 300 words) should be sent to  Christian Gutleben <gutleben@unice.fr> et Michel Remy  <ScapeRemy@aol.com> before June 30, 2010.
(posted 1 February 2010)



English and German Nationalist and Anti-Semitic Discourse (1871-1945)
Queen Mary, University of London, UK  -  10-11 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 April 2010

The Historical Discourse Working Group and the Leo Baeck Institute London with the support of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations would like to announce their first international conference to be held at Queen Mary, University of London on 10-11 November 2010.
The conference organisers, Professor Felicity Rash, Dr Geraldine Horan, Dr Daniel Wildmann and Dr Stefan Baumgarten, invite proposals in the form of abstracts of about 150-200 words on relevant topics in the analysis of pre-1945 nationalist, anti-Semitic or colonialist discourse. We welcome contributions which discuss issues of methodology or which adopt interdisciplinary approaches, and we hope to foster debate on points of contact between linguistics and the historical analysis of political and ideological discourses. We would be particularly interested in contributions on nationalist figures who are less well-represented in discourse research. It is hoped that academic colleagues at all levels of their careers, including postgraduate students, will offer to present papers or lead workshops.
The conference will be one of the events organised as part of the major research project, The Discourse of German Nationalism and Anti-Semitism 1871-1924, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Prof. Felicity Rash and Dr Geraldine Horan. The project website is http://www.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/research/nationalismproject.
Key note speakers will include Ruth Wodak and Andreas Musolff.
It is intended that the conference proceedings will be published.
Please send expression of interest and abstracts to Dr Stefan Baumgarten by 15 April 2010: <s.baumgarten@qmul.ac.uk>.
(posted 18 December 2009)



Marlowe / Shakespeare / Burgess: Anthony Burgess and his Elizabethan Affiliations
University of Angers, France  -  18-20 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 17 May 2010

4th international symposium of the Anthony Burgess Centre.
Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were twin stars in Anthony Burgess's intellectual and artistic firmament. Inspired by them, he wrote and composed abundantly, from his MA thesis on Marlowe's Dr Faustus to the last novel published in his lifetime, A Dead Man in Deptford. He absorbed Shakespeare along the way, spawning Nothing Like the Sun, Enderby's Dark Lady, a biography, short stories, articles both journalistic and scholarly, a film script, a television series, songs, even a ballet suite for full orchestra.
In this, its fourth international symposium, the Anthony Burgess Centre intends to address the contrasted influences of these two Elizabethan heavyweights on Burgess and his work, exploring what they brought to it and what he, in turn contributes to our understanding of them.
Proposals of around 300 words for 30-minute papers in English, accompanied by a short bio-bibliography should be sent to Graham Woodroffe at <graham.woodroffe@univ-angers.fr> no later than May 17, 2010. The symposium will be followed by a publication. A selection of papers from the 3rd international symposium will be published late 2009 by Cambridge Scholars’ Press under the title Literature in Music and Music in Literature.
For more details please see the Anthony Burgess Centre website:
http://bu.univ-angers.fr/EXTRANET/AnthonyBURGESS/
(posted 9 November 2009)



Can Literature and the Arts by Irenic?
Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, France  -  18-19 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2010

"We go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both." Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry Magazine.
Can literature and the arts be irenic?  How are the arts a unique vehicle for promoting peace?  How do they enhance memory?  How do the arts play a role in the formation of public opinion?  What possible effects could they have in policy-making?  How might literature and the arts be a vehicle of resistance to tyranny? Our enquiry begins with, but is not limited to these questions.
The importance of literary and artistic contributions to the obtaining and preservation of peace has been recognized and rewarded by prizes such as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize (awarded to Mahmoud Darwish in 2003), and others, often lesser known, such as the Leeds Peace Poetry Award or the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award.  Although the connection between the arts and the search for and preservation of peace is instinctively acknowledged, its exact nature is imprecise.
This conference will seek to examine and theorize the role of literature and the visual arts in search for "positive" peace (the elimination of causes of violence and the avoidance of conflict) and the creation of a peace culture.
Speakers will provide specific examples from literature in English (poetry, drama, fiction) or the arts (music, painting, sculpture, photography, and film).
If you would like to participate, please submit a 300-word propsal for a paper to be given in English, as well as a brief bio-bibliography by March 15, 2010.
Literary proposals should be sent to Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec <jennifer.kilgore@unicaen.fr> and all others to Claire Bowen <bowenclaire@aol.com>.  Peer-reviewed publication is anticipated.
(posted 10 December 2009)



Formulas in Medieval Culture
Université de Nancy, France  -  19-20 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2010

The GRENDEL, the medieval section of the IDEA research group (Nancy University), invites proposals for an international and interdisciplinary conference devoted to the study of formulas in Medieval Culture, to take place on November 19-20, 2010. The conference is a follow-up to the successful 2008 Conference on Formulas in Medieval England.
Medieval modes of thinking and representation rely heavily on formulas, that is to say on the expected return of recognizable devices. The omnipresence of formulas in all aspects of medieval culture generates productive tensions between individual expression and collective norms, change and continuity, innovations and rituals.
The aim of the conference is to systematically explore these tensions through presentations devoted to various areas of the Medieval World and of Medieval Thought.
Papers are welcome on, but not limited to:
- Religious and political rituals
- Oral-formulaic theory
- Legal formulas
- Topoi and generic conventions
- Politeness and ritualized interaction
- Conventional motifs in visual arts
Papers may be given in English or French and should be 20 minutes long. Selected papers will be published in the proceedings of the conference.
Please email a brief CV and an abstract of no more than 400 words to Colette Stévanovitch: <colette.stevanovitch@univ-nancy2.fr> by February 28, 2010.
Please include the title of your paper, name, affiliation and email address.
Inquiries are welcome.
Contact:
Colette Stévanovitch <colette.stevanovitch@univ-nancy2.fr>
IDEA (Interdisciplinarity in Anglophone Studies)
23, bd Albert 1er
BP 3397
54015 Nancy Cedex
France
(posted 10 December 2009)



London, a Global, Multicultural and Olympic Capital
Université de Nancy2, France  -  26-27 November 2010
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2010

For decades, even centuries, London has been a global city ranking at world level in economic, cultural and financial matters, among others. The British capital has had its hours of glory and its times of trouble weathering wars, periods of economic upheaval and political ups and downs.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, this tumultuous and often rebellious past is part of the city and makes it unique at a time when it is faced with unprecedented challenges:
- maintaining its position as a leading banking center and stock-market in a world economy that is being constantly shaken by the global crisis, and resisting the competition of both its major rivalling cities and the megalopolises of the emerging countries.
- combining sustainable development with demographic pressure and the housing crisis.
- managing migratory movements which have contributed to its development and prosperity (Heathrow is the busiest airport in the world) but are more and more questioned by the British.
- meeting the 2012 Olympic deadline in a political and economic context that has been totally upset by the July 2005 terror attacks, the changes in City Hall and the lack of funding.
In order to cast as far-reaching a light as possible, the committee has opted for a definite pluri-disciplinary approach so that specialists of cultural studies, geography, economy, sociology, history, political sciences and other fields of studies may confront their opinions. Papers should aim at putting the suggested but not limitative issues into a contemporary perspective or choose a prospective angle. Since the London topic can only be understood in a clearly set national or international background, comparatist approaches will be welcome.
Working languages : English and French.
Deadline for sending (300 to 400 words) proposals to the organising panel: March 31st 2010.
After approval by the reading committee, papers will be published in a forthcoming issue of Les Cahiers de l'Observatoire de la Société Britannique (spring 2011).
Organising panel :
- Roseline Théron, Université Nancy2 (IDEA and a member of CRECIB) <roseline.theron@orange.fr>
- Timothy Whitton, Université Blaise Pascal (EHIC and a member of CRECIB) <twhitton@club-internet.fr>.
(posted 19 January 2010)



  
December 2010

 


Continuity, Conservatism, Classicism: Reading Postcolonial Literature against the Grain?
Université d'Orléans, France  -  2-3 December 2010
Deadline for proposals: 15 June 2010

Conference jointly organized by research groups META (Université d'Orléans) and GRAAT (Université de Tours), Dec. 2-3, 2010, in Orléans.
Postcolonial criticism was particularly productive in its effort to reconfigure the canon (Western, imperial, male) and to allow for the emergence of a corpus of "new" literatures; however, it is nowadays questioned as a method, due to the joint transformations in the fields of representations and of politics (critical relativism, political correctness, etc.).
As postcolonial criticism is based upon the idea of a break leading to the emancipation of the individual from colonial and neo-colonial hegemony (by committing its practitioners "to the highly tangible pursuits of making colonialism visible in the world, and of helping to make it obsolete", G. Huggan, 2008), it could fail to account for the ideological, political and aesthetic diversity of postcolonial literature, by ignoring its forms of continuity and classicism. In a context that values multicultural positions (hybridity, creolity, relativism), a form of criticism is needed that would take into account the notions of tradition, resistance to innovation, or collaboration. One thinks, for instance, of the request for "intolerance" expressed by Slavoj Zizek in his criticism of multiculturalism (2004), or of the deconstruction by Laurent Jenny of the "terrorizing" metaphor of literature as necessarily "revolutionary" (2008), or of the reassessment of "anti-modern" writers by Antoine Compagnon (2005).
Participants may wish to discuss the work of postcolonial writers too hastily condemned for conservatism, such as V.S. Naipaul, Nirad Chaudhuri or J.M. Coetzee, at a time when a thriving publishing market is tending to favor community literatures. They may also consider the nostalgic, classical, or universal features to be found in the work of the main anti-imperialist figures, such as Rushdie, Walcott, or Achebe. Imagining the paradoxical possibility of a "rearguard" in
postcolonial literature could also require a new reading of its direct predecessors, such as Conrad, Kipling, Waugh, Greene, who all offer a complex and controversial representation of the colonial enterprise.
This conference will assess the political dimension of postcolonial literature, but also its fierce resistance to established political categories (left/right, liberal/conservative). Is it possible to think in terms of conservatism and eurocentrism and yet avoid the trap of a reactionary discourse? How does one account for authors who do not feel any solidarity with the preceding generations and whose project cannot be understood as the echo of a whole community? How does one interpret classicism (in style, themes) in a critical context that calls for the rise of newness and hybridity within language, close to the cosmopolitan mélange seemingly called for by the forces of globalization? Is it possible to make sense of postcolonial literature without ignoring the economic and political demands of the publishing industry (literary prizes, film adaptation) or museology ("arts premiers" in France, etc)
Proposals (along with a short CV), in English or in French, can be addressed to
- <cecile.girardin@univ-orleans.fr>
- and <philip.whyte@univ-tours.fr>
before 15 June 2010.
Doctoral students are encouraged to send proposals; a panel will be dedicated to their work in progress.
(posted 10 December 2009)



On the Road, on the Streets: the Vagabond
Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Pau, France  -  2-4 December 2010
Deadline: 1 February 2010

What we know as nomadism is a phenomenon that has existed since the very beginnings of mankind. It has always been closely related to the seasons and to the resources available to populations through hunting, fishing and gathering. Then came agriculture and the raising of livestock, both of which activities ensured regular supplies of food and a certain degree of comfort. The subsequent widespread evolution towards sedentary economic and social activity, which, to most, represented progress, began de facto to push the nomad, henceforth a radical 'Other', out onto the margins of society. It was not long before the lack of understanding of such a lifestyle developed into mistrust and then into repression.
Yet in Europe, people were forever on the move, living (on the) outside, whether by choice or under duress. As early as the Middle Ages, the 'fashion' of going on a pilgrimage to Compostella launched thousands of people forth, even those who were not necessarily staunch believers. On the way, they came across those that remained? actors or spectators? after the countless local conflicts that weakened a continent that was still recovering from the fall of the Roman Empire; there were civilians in flight, soldiers on campaign, rascals and rogues, peddlers and prophets; most of them had a strong inclination to interpreting local laws and customs after their own fashion, which certainly did nothing to help their reputations.
Since then, Judeo-Christian societies have wavered between fascination and repugnance for what was seen as a desirable (carefree) yet at the same time contemptible (being that of social parasites) existence. Very early on, these societies endowed themselves with a whole batch of laws enabling them to separate what they saw as the 'good seed' (pilgrims, priests) from the 'chaff' (idlers, gypsies, Jews). Literature then positively laid hold of such humble odysseys, the plastic and graphic arts soon following suit.
The purpose of this conference is to fix an image of the vagabond in Western culture, within a diachronic perspective, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Firstly, the aim will be to establish a sociological framework for the impact this issue had/has had (from the legal, religious, social, medical, cultural perspectives, among others), by comparing the various attitudes to the phenomenon, as well as the evolution they have gone through: compassion, charity and hospitality gave/have given way to distantiation, reprehension and exclusion, even physical elimination. Secondly, the focus will be on the vagabond and (on vagabondage) as an eminent figure, be he/she the victim, or the advocate, of Otherness in the service of creation; there is a wide range of examples from the medieval pilgrim to today's homeless; the picaro, the gypsy, the Wanderer, the hobo, the beatnik or the hippy are but a few of the many that can be studied in an endeavour to bring out a paradigm.
Contributions from all approaches and on all fields of the arts will be welcome.
Proposals (200 words maximum) have to reach us before the 1st February 2010. The number of participants is limited at 70. A collection of articles based on contributions to the conference (after approval by the scientific committee and a reading panel) will be published during the course of 2011.
Contact: <morag.landi@univ-pau.fr>.
(posted 30 October 2009)



Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World
10th Annual Conference of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC)
Leeds, UK  -  3-5 December 2010
Deadline for proposals: 1 June 2010

10th Annual Conference of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication.
In association with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University.
The world is ever 'on the move'. The opportunities and challenges of both real and virtual travel are very much at the heart of the emergent interdisciplinary field of 'mobilities', which deals with the movement of peoples, objects, capital, information and cultures across an increasingly globalised and apparently borderless world. In the practices, processes and performances of moving -- whether for voluntary leisure, forced migration or economic pragmatism -- we are faced with the negotiation and re-negotiation of identities and meaning relating to places and pasts.
Within the increasing complexities of global flows and encounters, intercultural skills and competencies are being challenged and and re-imagined. The vital role of languages and the intricacies of intercultural dialogue have largely remained implicit in the discourses surrounding mobilities. This Conference seeks to interrogate the role of intercultural communication and of languages in the inevitable moments of encounter which arise from all forms of 'motion'.
This international and interdisciplinary event is the 10th anniversary conference of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) and is being organised in association with the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change. Through this event we aim to bring together many of the sub-themes of previous IALIC conferences and focus upon the issues of culture, communication and translation in a mobile world, including: languages and intercultural communication in local and global education, tourism, hospitality, migration, translation, real and virtual border-crossings.
We are pleased to receive 20-minute research papers or descriptions of pedagogical practice which address or go beyond the following themes:
•    Moving languages - continuities and change;
•    Real and virtual border crossings;
•    Tourist encounters and communicating with the 'other';
•    Tourism's role in inter-cultural dialogue;
•    The languages of diasporas and diasporic languages;
•    Dealing with dialects and the evolution/dissolution of communities;
•    Hospitality and languages of welcome;
•    Learning the languages of migration;
•    Lingusitic boundaries and socio-cultural inclusions and exclusions;
•    'Located' and 'dislocated' languages and identities;
•    Practices and performances of translation.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words including title and full contact details as an electronic file to Jane Wilkinson at <IALIC2010@leeds.ac.uk>. You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than 1st June 2010.
Please send any queries to us at <IALIC2010@leeds.ac.uk> or visit our conference webpages: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/german/ialic_conference_2010.htm
(posted 30 January 2010)



Looking back : The Past, History, and History writing in Early America and the Atlantic World: EEASA biannual conference
Paris, France  -  9-11 December 2010
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2010 (closed)

Looking back : The Past, History, and History writing in Early America and the Atlantic World
EEASA (European Early American Studies Association) biannual conference
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/cas/eeasa
Co-hosted by University Paris-Diderot and University Versailles-St Quentin
Venues: University of Paris-Diderot (Centers Charles V and Paris-Rive Gauche) and Institute of Protestantism in Paris.
The third EEASA conference (Paris, December 2010) invites scholars of early American history and the Atlantic world to reflect on the role of the 'past' within the time frame, 1607-1865. These two and a half centuries were often constructed by contemporaries not only through a teleological, progressive or providentially-motivated perspective, but also in a retrospective mode. The urge to revolve, to have a 'revolution' in its original sense of an eternal return to a distant past "the past embodied by a 'purer' America, Europe or Africa" was transformed into idealized beginnings, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty.  These moments include the late seventeenth-century Puritan world as expressed through the jeremiad or the invocation of the 'spirit of 76' in the later years of the early republic, as well as by the independence movements in Latin America. For American radicals looking to France, 'the spirit of 1789' was an inspiration when it was feared that the original meaning of the new United States might have been forgotten. Examples also extend to the idea of 'the noble savage' for Europeans 'imagining' Native Americans, and the idea of an indigenous Afro-Caribbean culture that early Haitian historians posited in seeking the origins of their Revolution.
These are only a few instances of the roles played by the multiple pasts that made up early American and Atlantic history. They are notably reflected in the current interest in commemoration, memory or nostalgia studies and can be looked at through the history of emotions as well as of material culture, or in the tracing of intellectual and political transfers in their transatlantic as well as trans-American dimensions. From a more theoretical standpoint, this wide-ranging topic may lead to philosophical reflections on changing conceptions of history and relationship to time in the formative years, from early providentialism to a need for a common history in the process of post-revolutionary nation-building in the first half of the nineteenth century. More generally, this topic offers a platform for broader historiographical considerations on our practice as historians of early American history and the Atlantic world.
Please send your proposal up to 300 words and a brief resume (one page) to Allan Potofsky <apotofsky@gmail.com> and Naomi Wulf <naomi.wulf@univ-paris3.fr>. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010. Applicants will be notified whether they have been accepted by the end of February 2010. Preliminary short versions of the papers are due in by November 1, 2010 for pre-circulation. The main language in which the conference will be conducted is English.
Program committee:
Zbigniew Mazur, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland
Naomi Wulf, University Sorbonne-Nouvelle, France
Allan Potofsky, University Paris-Diderot, France
Trevor Burnard, University of Warwick, England
(posted 17 November 2009)



Graham Greene: A Writer in his Century
Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France  -  10-11 December 2010
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2009 (closed)

The work of Graham Greene (1904-1991), itself so representative of its time, has lost little of its appeal even though more than one generation has gone by since his death. This may be due in part to the fact that the conception of literature it reflects was more forward-looking that it could appear then. It can be called committed literature, not in the sense that it serves a party or an ideology, but insofar as the author commits himself as a witness to current events. And some of the topics it confronts – imperialism and colonial or postcolonial conflicts, the emergence of the Third World, cultural shocks, drugs, crime – are not about to disappear from our horizon. One would even add that the very form of his work, its aloofness vis-à-vis the great modernist debates, makes it appear, with hindsight, more modern. Having begun as a journalist, Greene was one of the first “serious” writers to distinguish himself as reporter, screenwriter, and author of detective fiction.
The Centre Jacques Petit, which devotes part of its research activities to the study of Roman Catholic writers, could not fail to concern itself in a major way with the spiritual side of Greene's work, which gives him a standing comparable to that of Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac in France. A successful writer in his country while belonging to a minority religion, a convert to Catholicism who had a less and less easy relationship with the postwar Church, Greene occupies both a preeminent and a paradoxical position among the great Catholic writers of the twentieth century.
The international colloquium to be held in Besançon in December 2010 will address the current relevance of Greene's work from all possible viewpoints, including his relations with his contemporaries and from a comparative angle.
Paper proposals (400 words maximum) are to be submitted by 31 December 2009. They should be sent electronically as attachments to the following addresses:
- <bruno.curatolo@univ-fcomte.fr>
- <vincent.giroud@univ-fcomte.fr>.
The languages of the colloquium will be English and French. Papers are not to exceed thirty minutes.
(posted 21 September 2009)


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