Kategorie: Call for Papers

International conference, Nov 23-24, 2017, Grenoble Alpes University, France

Subject fields: Australian and New Zealand History/Studies, British History/Studies, Canadian History/Studies, Colonial and Post-Colonial History/Studies, Ethnic History/Studies

(Colonial and Postcolonial English-speaking World, 18th – 21st Century)

The research group ILCEA4 is pleased to announce the organisation of an international conference on „Space, Place and Hybridity in National Imagination“ to be held at Grenoble Alpes University. It proposes to examine the notion of hybridity or cross-fertilization in the highly controversial field of national identity – namely the spaces, figures and historical events that best symbolize it, as exemplified in the cultural productions originating from a nation or an ethnic or community group. The concept of „third space“ as developed by Homi Bhabha in his seminal book The Location of Culture, is particularly productive in that it suggests a vision of space based not on confrontation, binary oppositions or antagonistic relationships of lordship and bpondage, but on interactions involving exchange, transfer and mediation.

The conference shall examine the foundations of any „imagined community“ (Benedict Anderson) and the ways in which artistic productions cause this set of images, values and references to evolve. These both reflect a history and a heritage but also expose their inherent limitations and underlying ideology, thus paving the waay for the progressive transformation of such national figures, values and spatial representations.

All the elements pertaining to culture in a general sense and commonly considered as representative of national identity are within the scope of the symposium:

• Iconography: flags, posters (nationalistic or otherwise), emblematic figures (specimens from the local flora and faune for example), the representation of the national landscape in painting or photography, allegorical figures of the nation
• The short form as a medium for the national sentiment: national anthems, songs, poems.
• Literature in a  general sense: fiction, chidren’s and youn adult literature, textbooks, political speeches, philosophical essays, history books
• Places, types of geographical spaces but also historical events crystallizing what the nation is supposed to represent (map making, memorial ceremonies, official events)
• Cultural productions: film, dance, street art.

Every nation perceives itself as articulated around the concept of origin: a choice then emerges between a founding myth specific to it (a sort of self-generation devoid of any hybridity), and an impure, problematic genesis, born out of the contact with another cultural, historical and geogprahical sphere. Thus, within the British world itself, Scotland for example can be said to have been defined, both historically and culturally, in close relation to its rival and double, England. Similar considerations are relevant for Ireland and Wales.

More generally, former colonies of the British Crown have founded themselves in an ambiguous relationship to the „motherland“ while trying to free themselves from its influence. After the colonial period, the goal was for the settler colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) to found their identity antagonistically to that of the motherland, especially by focusing on their new land and the type of relationship they had with it so as to invest both with distrinctive national characteristics.

An interesting and contentious point of study is the undeniably hybrid character of such early identity formations devoid of any cultural heritage or history except for those bequeathed by the motherland. Another essential and no less challenging issue is that of the relationship to the Indigenous populations of the colony whose culture and values, whose very existence sometimes, were voluntarily erased. The question of a possible hybridization between the culture of the colonizer and that of the colonized could be seen as a form of defilement, corruption or degeneration. Conversely, the appropriation and even the instrumentalization of symbols, places and values specific to Indeigenous peoples in national mythologies is a highly controversial issue deserving careful scrutiny.

In what is commonly referred to as the „postcolonial“ period, the discussion often centres on the denunciation or re-definition of national figures, symbols and places as well as the great texts and events constitutive of the core of a nation’s identity. Examining those shows how much they have evolved, acress generations, through an underlying hybridization allowing greater representativeness, not only of the first inhabitants but also of new migrant communities or minority groups.

Space and place are not to be apprehended as strictly geographical or referential but also as textual, thus enabling new hybrid subject positions within national mythologies. The rewriting or new adaptation of famous works in other forms (with generic, gender or modal variations) characterstic of the postmodern approach also allows the reevaluation of what constitutes the core of a nation’s identity, changing it into a field of experimentation and cross-fertilization.

Please send an abstract (max. 300 words) either in French or in English, and a short biographical note (max. 150 words) to both Christine Vandamme and Cyril Besson by January 6, 2017. The notification of acceptance will be sent by February 10, 2017, at the latest.

International Conference, Western University, London, Ontario/Canada, March 24-26 2017

Organizers and advocates for local and global social justice are the lifeblood of solidarity movements worldwide that disrupt historic projects of exploitation, violent dispossession and social fragmentation. Social and economic inequality is a global challenge of the 21st century. The Global North’s Occupy and anti-austerity movement spoke back to the 2008 financial crisis. They now confront the urgent, mass scale migrations of peoples from the Global South to the North, fleeing a colonial legacy deprivations, militarization, wars and land grabs. Settler societies are also experiencing Indigenous re-centerings, from #IdleNoMore to the Truth and Reconciliation process, and the #BlackLivesMatter cry to enfranchise African diasporas.

Feature speakers will be (with more to be announced):

• Glen Coulthard (University of British Columbia)
• Panagiotis Sotiris (University of the Aegean, Greece)
• Concerned Student 1950 (University of Missouri)
• Miriam Miranda (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras)

It is now increasingly recognized that rising levels of inequality are linked to poverty, discrimination, illness, environmental degradation, and social unrest. It is further recognized that inequality, in turn, is conditioned by and contingent on a range of other factors, including citizenship rights, gender, race, ethnicity, age, location, and education.

But despite this recognition, social movements contesting inequality face serious problems of organization, strategy and tactics. Recent years have shown the limits of traditional trade unionism, occupy and assembly movements, vanguards and new electoral parties alike. They have also shown that anti-racism, anti-violence, LGBTQ and migrant rights movements, to name a few, face major challenges organizing in the face of violence, xenophobia, marginality, impoverishment and under threat of criminalization. Across the board, movements have to reckon with the unprecedented levels of surveillance of the digital networks which have become an important part of their organizing practices.

This conference therefore asks what forms of organization might, in today’s conditions, be most useful to movements for equality. It especially seeks contributions willing to explore new possibilities for the organization of equality struggles.

Organizitng Equality is an international conference hosted by members of the Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the Initiative for the Study of Social and Economic Inequality at the University of Western Ontario. Its goal is to bring organizers, scholars, public educators, artists, media producers and advocates together from around the globe to build local and global capacity, share theories, strategies, experiences, and insights about efforts to address inequality and develop new kinds of theory/practice to guide and build future struggles. Our goal is to strengthen connections regionally, nationally and internationally, and to develop new forms of knowing, thinking and acting together between and across politics, sectors and communities of interest. To this end, we solicit scholarly presentations, organizing and dialogue sessions, workshop proposals, art performances/installations, radical media teach-ins and more, addressing a wide variety of themes related to the worldwide struggle for equality.

These themes include, but are not limited to:

• indigenous reconciliation and reclamation
• opposing violent policing and the carceral state
• worker organizing, in and beyong unions
• social media, digital technologies and global resistance networks
• intersectional decolonial community and scholarly praxis
• migrant justice and networks of support
• decolonial/liberatory cultural production and praxis
• gender, sexuality, anti-violence and community solidarity
• struggles for access and equality in education
• environmental and climate justice and sustainability
• anti-austerity mobilization and cooperativism
• health and food security organizing
• social and community housing movements
• strategies for digital protections and privacy from surveillance

Proposals for papers and sessions should be limited to 400 words. The deadline for the submission of abstracts for 20-minute presentations is 1 August 2016. Please include with your paper or session proposal, your name, email address, institutional or group affiliation, and a short CV or biography. Abstracts should be e-mailed to the organizing committee (email). For further information and conference updates, please visit the conference website.

Travel bursaries are available for participants from the global south. Please indicate in your submission if you would like to be considered for financial assistance.

48th Annual NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) Convention, March 23-26, 2017, Baltimore, MD (United States)

48th Annual NeMLA Convention – Baltimore, Maryland | March 23 – 26th, 2017

Resolved: In Francophone literature of the last three centuries, Humor has constructed identity while Satire was used to deconstruct it.

Participants are invited to argue either side of this normative statement.

The French word “Humour” is not French at all. It was imported from the English in the 18th century; until that time, in France one spoke of Wit (“l’Esprit”) not Humor. The first written mention of humor in its modern definition in a French text is in Abbé LeBlanc’s 1745 Lettres d’un François: “De notre mot d’humeur, les Anglais ont fait celui d’humour” (114). From the age of Enlightenment on, two literary traditions evolve in French and Francophone literatures: the Anglo-influenced Humor and the Gallic-influenced caustic wit which becomes Satire.

This session proposes to debate whether Humor is a component, a constructor, of identity while Satire is its deconstructor. If true, what role does Humor play in the literary construction of characters’ identities? Conversely, Satire must represent an “othering” which seeks to deny or negate identity.

Using examples from French or Francophone Literatures from the 18th to the 21st centuries, in any number of critical lenses, participants are invited to present arguments for or against the above premises. Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to, presentations dealing with the relationship between humor and/or satire and Socialization, Postcolonial identities, Race and Ethnicity, National and Regional identities, Gender, LGBT, etc.

NeMLA formatting standards: Paper Title: 100 characters (including spaces) Paper Abstract: 300 words

Starting June 15th, please submit abstracts for this panel here.

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2016

Decision e-mails will be sent by October 15th.

NEMLA asks that accepted and confirmed panelists pay their membership/registration fees no later than December 1, 2016 in order to present at the 2017 convention.

Contact Email.