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STAR Update 13th April 2010
"Transnational Americas: Difference, Belonging, Identitarian Spaces"
University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
November 11 - 13, 2010
National borders and transnational relations have long been of central importance to the Americas. From Simón Bolívar's idea of a "gran patria" to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy" and the work of the Organization of American States there is a long history of both theoretical and practical approaches to fostering transnational relationships and forms of cooperation. However, U.S. exceptionalism/imperialism and isolationist policies throughout the Western Hemisphere have often overshadowed inter-American relations and prevented approaches beyond dichotomies. In recent decades, massive migration movements, the transnational orientation of media along with the rise of New Media and the onset of the Information Age, an inter-American culture industry, the transnationalization of business and economy, trans-border consumer culture, cosmopolitan writers, artists and performers, governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as transnational alliances like those of the New Indigenous Left have promoted the crossing of multiple borders in the Americas. Yet localist and regionalist tendencies, separatist movements, or gated communities uphold the primacy of smaller entities.
Transnational interconnections are simultaneously being intensified and hampered; they are a highly complex (and a highly politicized) matter. In order to explore the intricate dynamics of Transnationalism in the Americas, Border and Transborder Studies, Area Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Urban Studies, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and numerous other academic disciplines have joined literary, cultural and media
studies in initiating a lively and fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue on questions of difference, belonging, and identitarian spaces. Those are central to analyzing the impact of transnational developments on individual, communal, and national identities.
With a focus on past and present transnational developments in the Americas, the conference seeks to conceive of the New World beyond the scope of nation states-relationally and transnationally. Considering shared experiences and issues (e.g. indigenous heritage, Black Atlantic, condition of coloniality, history of inequalities, multicultural societies, transnational media and economies, glocal approaches etc.) it seems imperative to think in inter-Americanterms. With this goal in mind, the conference will address theoretical approaches to transnationalism, social, political, economic, and (trans-)regional backgrounds and contexts, as well as cultural negotiations of transnational issues in and between North, Central and South America.
Conference website: http://www.interamericanstudies.net/?page_id=312
Abstracts for individual presentations in English or Spanish or proposals for panels should be sent to <conference@interamericanstudies.net> by April 30, 2010.
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
This international conference, organized by the research group REWEST (Research in Western American Literature: 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).
The second international conference of The European Society of Jamesian Studies: Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity
22, 23 October 2010
The American University of Paris
"Inquities in such a country somehow always made pictures" ("A London Life", Complete Tales, Vol. VII, Leon Edel ed.p. 88). Pondering over the contrast between the picturesque serenity of an old dower-house and the scandalous custom of the expropriation of the widow it embodied , the American heroine of the story entitled "A London Life" expresses her unfavourable judgment of English institutions but is also overwhelmed and puzzled by the sense of a "curious duplicity (in the literal meaning of the word)" : "She had often been struck with it before - with that perfection of machinery which can still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately rhythm long after there is corruption within it" ("A London Life", Complete Tales, Leon Edel ed., p.105). Figures of duplicity abound in Henry James's writings, both in form and contents, fiction and non -fiction, disrupting the established order, the normative vision or the canonic genre. "Successful duplicity" characterizes some of James's achievements in the domain of short fiction - the way some nouvelles or "novels intensely compressed" managed to "masquerade" as anecdotes to be accepted as "good" short stories, "heroically" dissimulating their "capital". (Preface to Vol. XVI ot the New York Edition, Literary Criticism II, p. 1240). The art of "duplicity" is also part of the lesson of Balzac, and other supposedly canonic realist writers whose complex vision "washes us successively with the warm wave of the near and the familiar' and the tonic shock of the far and the strange.(préface to vol. II, Literary Criticism, p. 1060). Duplicity also pertains to the ghostly and the uncanny effect, the double register of representations embroidering "the stange and sinister" on "the very type of the normal and easy" (preface to vol. XVII , Literary Criticism, p. 1264).
We propose to examine the multiple facets of Henry James's art of duplicity in both fiction and non-fiction, not forgetting the aesthetic borderlands where text and paratext coalesce, the clandestine figure of the author, "marking off", as Foucault would have it, "the edges of the text". (« What is an Author ? », in Textual Strategies., J.H. Harrari ed., Cornell UP, 1979, p.147)
Annick Duperray, Université de Provence, annick.duperray@free.fr
Adrian Harding, Université de Provence & American University of Paris, aharding@aup.fr
Dennis Tredy, Université de Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle) dennis.tredy@wanadoo.fr
Please send proposals (300 words maximum,) to Annick.duperray@free.fr& aharding@aup.fr . Deadline 1 June 2010.
Working languages : English or French
17th OLOMOUC COLLOQUIUM OF AMERICAN STUDIES: "Plurality of Culture and Democracy".
November 4-7 2010.
Our objectives are:
- critical assessment of the current terminology in this field and its re-definition
- evaluating the impact of democracy on American culture and on European cultures from the 19th century to the present, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century
- a fundamental and complex assessment of Americanization and globalization, especially in the field of culture
- investigation of the impact of mass and popular culture (literature, music, film) as a democratic or culturally deprivational element
- analysis of the presence and function of ethnic plurality on contemporary culture in the context of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism
- exploration of plurality in regional contexts, for instance in the American South, and investigation of local traditions, customs and myths
- critical assessment of the division between "high" and "low" culture; and in doing this proposing new classification and evaluation criteria
PLEASE SEND YOUR ABSTRACT FOR A 20-MINUTE PAPER TOGETHER WITH YOUR PROFESSIONAL CV TO COLLOQUIUM@CENTRUM.CZ
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: June 15, 2010
More details on the conference format and application at http://colloquium.upol.cz.
Organized by Palacky University Olomouc, Conference Service of Palacky University, The Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies with support of the Embassy of the U.S.A. and the Research Project MSM 6198959211.
American Studies Association of Turkey
34th International American Studies Conference
The Art of Language: Cultural Expressions in American Studies
November 3-5, 2010
Alanya, Turkey
According to American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Thought is the blossom; language the bud; and action the fruit behind it." Without language in all of its forms-oral, written, visual, and
symbolic-there would be no way to translate thoughts into political action or personal expression. In many branches of American Studies, language itself has become a form of art-the vehicle through which those in the mainstream and in the margins have communicated their histories, cultures and visions of the future. Socially-constructed and thus almost always political in nature, language not only allows individuals to develop an understanding of their environment(s), but also permits them to engage in the shaping of their own landscapes.
Language is thus intrinsic to the expression of culture. Not only does it convey values, beliefs and customs, but it also has an important social function in that it fosters sentiments of collective identity
and solidarity. It is the means through which culture and its traditions are preserved and transferred from generation to generation.
The American Studies Association of Turkey invites proposals that consider the art of language as a cultural expression, broadly conceived. We particularly encourage abstracts which incorporate
transdisciplinary explorations of the subject, and welcome submissions from any branch of American Studies. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
* Music as a language of cultural expression
* Indigenous languages and cultures/language revitalization
* Multilingualism/multiculturalism
* The politics of language and culture
* Trans or intercultural languages
* English as the global language/"American" as the global culture?
* Cultural expression in speech behavior
* Cultural outcomes/products of language (hybridity, creolization,
metissage, mestizaje)
* The manipulation of language for cultural/political purposes
* Race, language and culture
* Semiotics/semantics/sign language
* Visual language/visual culture/aesthetics
* The visual word (comic books/graphic novels/political cartoons)
* Art, language and culture
* Literature and cultural expression
* Food and clothing as cultural expressions
* Ecolinguistics
* Performance as a language of cultural expression
* Oral traditions (griots, storytelling, folktales, street poetry) as
cultural expressions
* Domestic arts (quilting, weaving, pottery, and needlework) as
cultural expressions
* Language and American identity
* The body as a language of cultural expression
* Self-writing (travel writing, journals, diaries, and memoirs) as
cultural expressions
* Translation/interpretation/adaptation of language
* Language as cultural resistance/subversion
* Design/architecture as languages of cultural expression
* Artificial languages/constructed languages/technolanguages
* Pedagogical applications of language and culture
* The limits of language, especially for cultural expression
The time allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.
Proposals for papers, panels, performances, exhibits, and other modes of creative expression should be sent to Tanfer Emin Tunc (asat2007@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and should consist of a 250-300 word abstract in English, as well as a 1-2 paragraph biographical description for each participant.
Deadline for submission of proposals: June 30, 2010
Notification for acceptance of proposals: August 1, 2010
STAR Update 1st March 2010
CFP: WEIRD AMERICA: CIRCUM-ATLANTIC CULTURES, 1790-1830
October 21-23, 2010
The Huntington Library / Pasadena, California (www.huntington.org)
A conference sponsored by the Charles Brockden Brown Society
(www.brockdenbrownsociety.ucf.edu)
The Brown Society invites proposals on all aspects of weirdness in the circumatlantic basin between 1790 and 1830. The revolutionary Atlantic is full of weird, awkward, aberrant, or emergent cultural artifacts and performances, many of which do not fit into exceptionalist (nationalist) literary and cultural narratives or canons. Do relatively unknown or understudied texts force paradigm shifts? What is weird in the revolutionary age? Does it resist canonization? Is "difference" something other than declension? We encourage proposals that present and ponder what is less canonical in the Atlantic Revolutionary and early American Republic/National period, be it textual, sonic, performative, or a folkway. Proposals DO NOT need to be framed with reference to Charles Brockden Brown, although work on Brown is welcome. The Society wants to create a space for first impressions and discussion of less familiar pathways, of what does not (yet) fit into familiar narratives of explanation for our period. Weird America will be the seventh biannual conference organized by the Brown Society and the first to be thematically untethered from its signature author. Our conference culture tries to create a space of egalitarian consideration free from career-oriented and competitive attitudes, a place for new work to blossom. In this light, we have no concurrent sessions, so that all may be heard by all. Because of time/space constraints, we may ask you to reframe your proposed talk for inclusion within a roundtable of more informal presentations.
Possible topics include and are not limited to:
Weird literatures of the revolutionary age / Alternative feminisms / Recovered Atlantic women writers / Revolutionary women / Weird domesticities and the counter-private / Medicine, the body and the weird: pus, vomit, semen, sweat, blood, tears / Reclaiming weird legacies: cultural afterlife(s) of the revolutionary era / Weird time and space: temporality, narrative, revolution / Weird sex-gender: narratives of transvestism and bodily revolution / Terror, conspiracy, paranoia, scapegoating as organizing tropes / "Savages", Indian-hating, Lusophobia / Racial revolution, slavery, abolition / Weird dimensions of sentiment and sensibility; weird affect / Idiosyncrasies, madness, and mental "alienation": psychology, demography, dysfunction / Weird religion, evangelicism, fanaticism / Ghosts, goblins, the satanic, spiritualism / The Caribbean in narratives of the Revolutionary Age / Abnormality as resistance to capitalist discipline / Weird commerce: speculation, forgery, theft / Genres and modes in periodical writing (serial essays, anecdotes, modes of reprinting, etc.) / Gothic from architecture to literature and politics / Revolutionary theater and performance / Aspects of revolutionary painting, visual culture, or music / Rhizomes, subterranean networks, and proto-communist multitudes / Hermits, pirates, saints, and seers / Alternative histories or counter-factual tales / Imposture, fraud, hoax, and masquerade
250-word proposal deadline: Monday May 3 (Acceptances announced Tuesday June 2)
Please send a Word.doc of the proposal to: Duncan Faherty at duncan.faherty@qc.cuny.edu
For any questions, please contact: Philip Barnard at philipb@ku.edu
See following link for further details: http://www.brockdenbrownsociety.ucf.edu/news/upload/CFP_CBBS_2010_Pasadena.pdf
STAR Update 21st February 2010
8th Biennial Symbiosis Conference
University of Glasgow, Scotland. 23-26 June 2011
We invite proposals for panels and individual 20 minute papers that engage a variety of transatlantic and/or transnational topics in the literatures and cultural histories of the Atlantic world. The conference is certainly not limited to local concerns, although papers that treat Glasgow (and Scotland, more widely) as a site of Atlantic cultural exchange are especially welcome, as are those examining the first decade of Transatlantic literary responses to 9/11, 2001-2011. Submissions are encouraged from scholars of literary history from the early modern period to the present.
Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 1-page CV as Microsoft Word attachments to Dr. Chris Gair (c.gair@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk ) by the end of September, 2010. Inquiries are welcome before then. More details of the conference will be posted on the journal's website (http://www.symbiosisonline.org.uk/ ) and on its Facebook page.
STAR Update 28th January 2010
Separateness and Kinship: Transatlantic Exchanges betwee New England and Britain 1600-1900.
University of Plymouth, UK.14-17 July 2010.
This three day conference will explore issues arising from the relationship between Britain and New England in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the light of recent developments in the reading of transatlantic connections. In the run up to the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower, and in the context of new critical perspectives on transatlantic studies, such as post colonial theory with its emphasis on the whole Atlantic rim, feminism, discussions of displacement and debates about national identity, what does it now mean in the early twenty-first century to revisit with an interdisciplinary perspective the cultural and ideological exchanges between Britain and New England 1600-1900? The conference will include contributions from literary scholars, art historians and specialists in the history of architecture.
Call for Papers
The conference organisers invite submissions of proposals for panels or individual papers. Proposals for entire sessions should include (1) a paragraph describing the session as a whole; (2) a one page abstract of each paper; (3) a one page CV for each participant. The conference prefers four presenters per session, excluding the chair, although submissions for panels of three will be considered.
Proposals for individual papers should include a 300 word abstract and a one page cv.
All submissions should be sent as Microsoft Word attachments to Robin Peel (rpeel@plymouth.ac.uk).
The conference will be held at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. Those wishing to reserve a place should register their interest by contacting artsresearch@plymouth.ac.uk. Details of booking and payment information will appear on the conference website later this year.
STAR Update 25th November 2009
34th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR CARIBBEAN STUDIES
University of Southampton
July 7-9 2010
The Society for Caribbean Studies invites submissions of one-page abstracts and a short CV by 15th January, 2010 for research papers on the Hispanic, Francophone, Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean, and on Caribbean diasporas for this annual international conference. Papers welcomed from all disciplines and can address the themes outlined below, and others that might fall outside listed provided.
Abstracts for papers or for full panel are also welcomed.
Those selected for the conference will be invited to give a 20-minute presentation and will be offered the opportunity to publish their work as part of the Society's online series of papers.
Limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries provided for presenters to assist with registration and accommodation costs. See link above for details.
Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Award, the deadline for which is also 15th January, 2010.
Check the Society's website for further details on provisional panels and to submit an abstract online:http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/
For further queries and alternative methods of abstract submission,
contact Lorna Burns (societyforcaribbeanstudies@gmail.com). For more
information on the Bridget Jones Award, contact Kate Quinn
(kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk ) or visit the Society website.
International Whitman Symposium: "'In Paths Untrodden': The 1860 Leaves of Grass"
Università di Macerata, June 18-19 2010.
This year's symposium will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass 1860.It will be devoted to the body of the 1860 Leaves with a particular focus on the many new paths Whitman opened with it. Papers are invited to cover a wide range of approaches to Whitman's poems: his experimenting with multilingualism and textual construction, his focus on the cohesive and energizing power of human relationships and attachments, his belief in the creative force of love, language and poetry, his anxieties about the impending civil war. Papers focusing on international responses to the poems in the 1860 Leaves, including translations into other languages, are also strongly encouraged.
Deadline for submitting one-page abstracts: 21 April 2010.
These should be sent to Marina Camboni, Università di Macerata (camboni@unimc.it), Ed Folsom (ed-folsom@uiowa.edu), and Jay Grossman (j-grossman@northwestern.edu).
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