Kategorie: Call for Papers

Two Panel Call For Papers at the Irish Association for American Studies/British Association of American Studies Conference at Queen’s University, Belfast, 7-9 April 2016

Scholarship on the Mexican-American border has dominated the field of border studies for the past forty years, from the publication of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera in 1987 to the present. Yet the forty-ninth parallel remains an under-examined yet critical divide, separating Indigenous tribes and cultivating distinct colonial and neo-colonial histories in both Canada and the United States. Richard Ford’s most recent novel, Canada, examines the complex relationship of America to its northern neighbour, focusing on how one young white boy remakes his identity once he has crossed the 49th parallel, albeit with relative ease. While the novel portrays the Prairies and later Central Canada, looking specifically at the Windsor-Detroit border, Ford offers a distinctly American vision of Canada. Using the theme of border-crossings and revolutions (and recalling that during the American Revolution, many British Loyalists fled northward to what was to become British North America), the organizers are interested in papers that consider the relevance of the Canada-US border from an American Studies perspective.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• border security and surveillance
• innovative approaches to border theory and the concept of hemispheric studies   (typically dominated by the United States)
• American exceptionalism and the border
• space/place and the 49th parallel
• que(e)rying the border
• borders and regions
• revolutionary borders
• Indigenzing the border
• border claims after the human rights revolution
• trauma, testimony, and geopolitical reconciliation
• cultural memory and the revolutionary moment
• how the revolutionary spirit is maintained
• mobilizing (counter)revolutionary affects across borders

Please send abstract (250 words maximum) and a brief (2-3 sentence) scholarly biography by September 15th, 2015 to Jennifer Andrews and Richard Cole.

Conference and Call for Papers:
Third Bremen Conference on Language and Literature in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts:
„Postcolonial Knowledges“
University of Bremen, March 15-18, 2016

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf, Prof. Dr. Eeva Sippola

This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars of different academic backgrounds to explore how knowledge systems, cultures, languages, and literary traditions have been affected by colonial and postcolonial conditions that are increasingly marked by contradictions, cultural heterogeneity, and transcultural processes. We are interested in the ways in which colonial and postcolonial constellations have been reflected, shaped, and negotiated by communication, symbolic practice, and knowledge practices.

We will look critically at ongoing knowledge production and Eurocentric ‘intellectual dominance’ (Emeagwali 2003) in knowledge centers and discourses around the world. We aim to crystallize decolonial strategies to challenge neocolonial tendencies in institutions of knowledge production and to probe the possibilities of integrating postcolonial knowledges into present knowledge discourses. Many collaborations and attempts to interlink Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric knowledge systems are already taking place, and scholars around the globe are producing alternative postcolonial visions of reality and the world that are embedded in non-European lives, ontologies, and philosophies (e.g. Armstrong 2009; Atleo 2009, 2011; Dogbe 2006; Garcés V 2012; Moctar Ba 2013).

To address these issues, this conference focuses on themes related to the marginalization and displacement of local knowledge systems and the endangerment of languages as well as on epistemological and language ideologies in colonial and postcolonial settings.

We welcome contributions from linguistics, cultural studies, literature and film studies, anthropology, history, political science, sociology, and other disciplines.

Further information on the Conference and the Call for Papers can be found here.

The 2015 Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies
(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, DGfA) calls for submissions to this year’s
conference.

This year’s PGF is jointly organized by PhD candidates from the University of Bamberg and the University of Bayreuth. The conference itself takes place at the University of Bamberg from November 6 to 8, 2015.

Please find the call for papers here. Deadline: July 31, 2015.

BACS Literature Group Symposium, University of Leeds (GB)
7th September 2015

Extended Deadline: 30th June 2015

Amidst an ongoing public finance crisis, scholars of Canadian literature often find themselves confronted by the need to work within a new “research capitalism” paradigm (Coleman and Kamboureli 2011). While certainly not unique to the humanities, the current drive to refashion knowledge-production in view of the new socio-economic and political realities has affected the development of critical pedagogies which challenge canonised views while “initiating ethical acts that have social justice and equity as modes of desire” (Miki 2011: 259). Do the revised financial, institutional and disciplinary agendas inevitably doom Canadian literary scholarship to embracing the proverbial “strategy of survival” (Sojka 2013: 16)? Or, could this moment be an opportunity for rethinking the parameters of our pedagogic practice and exploring “the unpredictable resources of the imagination, and the plethora of non-rational tensions and uncertainties that are operative in everyday intellection” (Miki 2011: 254)?

This one-day symposium of the BACS Literature Group seeks to address the above questions by providing a forum for discussion, analysis and reflection on current practices of teaching Canadian literature in the UK and beyond. We are hoping that this event will give us the opportunity to share and reflect upon our teaching experiences, methodologies and approaches to curriculum design in a cross-institutional and trans-national setting, with a view of making an important contribution to pedagogic discussions taking place in Canada. Proposals for 15-minute position papers, case studies or reflective pieces on the above questions are invited. Although not limited to the following, these might address:

• designing Canada-related modules and syllabi within a non-Canadian HE setting;
• developing alternative models of Canadian literature knowledge-production and pedagogic practice in and outside the HE classroom;
• making Canada matter outside Canada – comparative and trans-national approaches to teaching and learning;
• assessing the impact of “rhizomatic learning” (Cormier 2010), interdisciplinarity and the  employability agenda on Canadian literary study;
• examining the role of Canadian Studies networks for the development of critical pedagogic practices.

The symposium is open to BACS members and non-members alike, and participants from any country are welcome, academic or professional background. Postgraduates and those with teaching experience in a non-academic context (e.g. arts organisations, schools, community groups, life-long learning, etc.) are particularly welcome. There is some funding available to help with the travel expenses of postgraduate / unwaged presenters.

Outline proposals for papers, reflective pieces, reports or case studies (250 words) and a short bio note should be sent to Dr Simone Lomartire and Dr Milena Marinkova at bacs2015symposium@gmail.com. Also welcome are alternative formats for presentation, such as workshops, roundtables or other dialogical arrangements (please note your suggested format on the proposal). Please submit your proposal no later than 30 June 2015. Extended versions of the papers will be uploaded on the BACS website in August.