October 8-10, 2015, University of Duisburg-Essen (Campus Essen)
The third edition of the postgraduate forum “Postcolonial Narrations” addresses the interconnections between imperial practices and neurosis. The forum theme proposes to investigate the range of ‘neuroses’ that are generated by or connected to colonial or imperial experiences, but transcends any strictly clinical meaning of ‘neurosis’ and expands into philosophical, literary, and metaphorical implications of the term. In this wider sense, neurosis functions as a tool to describe the individual experiences of colonized and colonizer while the concept also invites questions about the political, social, economic, and cultural practices of establishing, maintaining, or rationalizing empires past and present. The postgraduate forum welcomes contributions by PhD students and postdocs who work in the field of Anglophone literature and cultures, Postcolonial Studies, Linguistics, Pedagogy, Media and Film Studies. Contributors are invited to engage with the theme of “Empire & Neurosis.” As the postgraduate forum aspires to facilitate dialogue, exchange, and collaboration among junior scholars, participants will be given the opportunity to present their projects to an audience of early-career researchers. The conference will take place at the University of Duisburg-Essen, October 8-10, 2015.
The Postcolonial Narrations Conference 2015 will explore value and challenges of bringing together empire and neurosis for the study of contemporary literature, culture and politics. The forum invites papers from different disciplines and reflections on different types of texts, including poetry, prose, film, photography, art, dance, and others. We also welcome comparative approaches that put Anglophone postcolonial literature and culture into dialogue with cultural production in other languages. The debate on imperial neurosis should by no means be limited to former territories of the British Empire. We encourage applicants to venture into comparative analyses that may bring in different imperial formations. Some of the key issues guiding our discussion might be:
• Reading empire through neurotic experiences
• Understanding neurosis as imperial practice and as a consequence empire
• Narrating neurosis in the postcolonial world
• The impact of neurosis on conceptualizations of empire
• Literature and culture in the context of empire & neurosis
• Neurosis as a (dis)rupture of imperial practices
• Postcolonial memorials and memory
• Urban experiences of empire & neurosis
• Psychoanalysis as Postcolonial Theory
• The postcolonial psyche in media, literature, and popular culture
• Problematizing the concept of neurosis, nervous states, or postcolonial melancholia
• Teaching the postcolonial condition in the EFL classroom
• Local and historical specificities in comparison
If you are interested in contributing, please send an abstract (300 words) for a 20 minute presentation to postcolonial.narrations[at]gmail.com no later than June 15, 2015. We’d be happy if you could include a short biographical note and the topic of your current project.
For more information and a detailed call for papers, please visit http://postcolonialnarrations.wordpress.com/