Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in February 2020

Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Kazuo Ishiguro
The Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research (CTTR), The University of Wolverhampton, UK, 1 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2020

Contributions by, amongst others: Jeannette Baxter (Anglia Ruskin, UK), Andrew Bennett (Bristol, UK), Christine Berberich (Portsmouth, UK), Max Berghege (Wolverhampton, UK), Peter Childs (Newman, UK), Laura Colombino (Genova, Italy), Robert Eaglestone (RHUL, UK), Carla Fusco (University G. D’Annunzio of Chieti, Italy), Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton, UK) , David James (Birmingham, UK), Barry Lewis (Sunderland, UK), Liani Lochner (Université Laval, Canada), Sean Matthews (Nottingham, UK), Ana-Karina Schneider (Lucian Blaga, Romania), Kristian Shaw (Lincoln, UK), Peter Sloane (Lincoln, UK), Motoko Sugano (Tsurimu University, Yokohama, Japan), Ria Taketomi (Gifu University, Japan), Yugin Teo (Bournemouth, UK), Jason Tougaw (CUNY, USA), Paul-Daniel Veyret (Université de Montaigne Bordeaux 3, France), Cynthia Wong (Colorado Denver, USA), Hülya Yıldız (Middle East Technical University, Turkey)

Kazuo Ishiguro remains one of the finest writers of our times, yet, as the twenty-first century world is changing, how do we see these new, turbulent times reflected in his body of work? The early twentieth-first century presents us with a host of pressing contexts and challenges, from concerns about climate change and technological innovation to LGBT issues and shifts in geopolitical power. To what extent does Ishiguro’s writing anticipate and comment on the early twenty-first-century Zeitgeist? Surely, The Remains of the Day anticipates Brexit, Never Let Me Go mediates on posthumanism, whilst The Buried Giant comments on our distracted, amnesic times. This conference invites critical and creative responses that connect Ishiguro’s work in new ways and/or situate it in new contexts.

We invite (position) papers, panels, and creative responses to Ishiguro’s work. Next to critical responses, we hope to schedule a programme with creative writing, visual art, dance and other creative interpretations. Please send your proposal to 2020ishiguroconference@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is 31 January, 2020. For further information, please contact Professor Sebastian Groes on s.groes@wlv.ac.uk

Conference organisers: Professor Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton, UK), Max Berghege (Wolverhampton, UK), Ana-Karina Schneider (Lucian Blaga University, Romania), Kristian Shaw (Lincoln, UK), Peter Sloane (Lincoln, UK), Lina Strempel (Bamberg University, Germany), Professor Jason Tougaw (CUNY, USA).

More information about CTTR can be found here: https://www.wlv.ac.uk/cttr

(posted 26 July 2019)

Case Closed? The Affaire Dreyfus in British Literature and Culture
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy, 6 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 December 2020

A gloomy parenthesis in the radiant belle époque, the Affaire Dreyfus (1894-1906) was the most notable political and judicial scandal of the Third French Republic. Soon, the story of the Jewish Captain crossed the Channel and became, in Great Britain, a true sensation. The case was everywhere – in the press, on stage, in novels, even on the big screen – and for a few years, it resonated with the political and cultural history of fin-de-siècle Britain: the end of the Victorian age, the politicization of antisemitism, British imperialist ambitions, the rising tension between European powers etc. Today, the Affaire Dreyfus is back in the spotlight: it is the story behind Robert Harris’ best-seller An Officer and a Spy (2013) and Roman Polanski’s latest film J’accuse (2019).

This, however, is hardly the first time the Affaire has appeared in the domains of literature or cinema. On the contrary, its peculiar bond with the realm of literature is possibly the main reason for its extraordinary popularity. With its high narrative potential, dramatic accelerations and turns of events, the sense of suspense and eventual happy ending, the story of the Affaire was, and is, a rich well from which literature drew compelling plotlines, vivacity and aesthetic materials – the conviction for high treason, the trial, the ceremony of degradation, the exile on Devil’s Island; the scandal, the story of espionage, the conspiracy, intelligence stolen and retrieved, forged letters, spies, suicides, veiled women and cleaning ladies employed by the Secret Service; the fight between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, the publication of Emile Zola’s J’accuse…! (1898), the Rennes trial and, finally, the official pardon.

The aim of this conference is to describe the presence of the Affaire Dreyfus in Great Britain through the lens of literature. Shifting the focus from France to Great Britain will hopefully open a rich, as yet hardly explored territory, adding new interest to a well-known case and illuminating its complexities. The conference will move in two directions: on the one hand, a historical reconstruction of the British response to the Dreyfus case; on the other hand, an investigation on the legacy of the Affaire in the British novel, dwelling on the modes of representation, on the proliferation of Dreyfus material in popular literature and its apparent absence from the Modernist production.

Contributions may include, but are not limited to:

  • The representation of the Affaire Dreyfus in the British press: themes, imagery, rhetoric
  • British responses to the Affaire
  • Franco-British relations, British anti-Gallicism
  • Liberalism, philosemitic traditions, antisemitism
  • The reception of the Affaire in British Jewry, the representation of the Jewish self
  • The birth of Zionism
  • International espionage and imperialism
  • Emile Zola, the Dreyfusards and the birth of the politically engaged intellectual
  • The role of women in the Affaire
  • Presence and absence of the Affaire in works of fiction and non-fiction
  • The modes of representation of the Affaire: allusions, transpositions, allegories, themes, motives etc.
  • Popular entertainment, plays and films based on the Dreyfus case
  • The Affaire in popular literature – Gothic fiction, spy fiction, popular romance etc.
  • The Affaire, the intellectual milieu and the Modernist novel

The conference will be hosted by Centro Studi Americani at Palazzo Mattei di Giove in Rome.

Please submit a 300-word abstract together with a short author bio by 15 December 2019 to alessandra.crotti@uniroma1.it. Papers should be 20 minutes long. Notifications of acceptance by 20 December.

(posted 21 November 2019)

(De)Constructing Narrative Identities: International Conference on Film Studies
London, UK,  8 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 30 Septembe 2019

Conference website: https://film.lcir.co.uk/

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, cinema, television, and related media have become increasingly central both to individual lives and to the lives of peoples, groups, and nations. Cinema has become a major form of cultural expression and films both reflect and influence the attitudes and behaviour of people, representing their tensions and anxieties, hopes and desires and incarnating social and cultural determinants of the era in which they were made.

Cinema as a whole has historically offered a rich setting for understanding cultural interaction, however it functions within certain political and ideological limits. It offers fascinating source material for an examination of what, in the modern world, we understand as “otherness”, the cinematic “Other” being constructed in terms of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

This conference aims to consider film studies from a variety of critical, theoretical, and analytical approaches and to focus on how “self-other” relations are represented.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • Post-colonial discourses in the cinema
  • Representations of femininity and masculinity
  • Nationalism and multiculturalism
  • Inclusiveness and belonging
  • Orientalism vs globalisation
  • Cinematic representation of the exotic
  • Horror films and depiction of the supernatural
  • Portrayal of homelessness and poverty
  • Depicting environmental otherness

The conference is addressed to academics, researchers and professionals with a particular interest related to the conference topic. Proposals up to 250 words should be sent by 30 September 2019 to: film@lcir.co.uk

Download paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX

(posted 20 September 2019)

International Conference on Oral History
London, UK, 8-9 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2019

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Conference website: https://oralhistory.lcir.co.uk/

For decades, oral history was considered less than scholarly, leading to its exclusion from several history books; thus valuable first-hand experiences and information that could alter historical truth were neglected and ultimately lost to oblivion. Our conference wishes to challenge the pervading view that oral testimony can lead to false representation of historical events and underline the significant support it can provide to historical research, especially in lieu of written documentation.

The journey of a memory through time may change, transform or even become distorted from its primary form. Oral testimony requires a multilevel examination and verification so it can be considered legitimate and useful as historical information, but despite these difficulties, oral tradition can have the power to present an entirely new perspective on an event, future generations can then interpret it freely.

The conference will focus on the connections between oral history, collective memory, and individual memory. Whether from a historical, social, or even psychological perspective, we wish to engage scholars in a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach in order to deeply explore all aspects of this valuable and fascinating area. We are committed to creating a welcoming space for discussion, collaboration, and exploration of oral history’s potential as a tool for local, national and international projects that would enrich and even revise chapters of history.

Conference presentations will be related, but not limited, to:

  • Oral history throughout history
  • Oral historian: a public historian? Oral history as a form of social and communal activity; Promoting oral history and engaging public awareness
  • Conducting oral history research; advantages and disadvantages; limitations and ways to overcome them
  • Archiving oral testimony; examples and presentation of valuable archives
  • Methodologies, techniques and methods in conducting and writing oral history
  • Theories of oral history
  • Re-examining and re-writing history through the lens of oral history; Oral history in the global historical arena
  • The absence of historical facts and the role of testimonies
  • Epistemological and ethical dilemmas in oral history
  • Use and abuse of oral history on the Internet
  • Oral history and the law
  • Cases in which oral testimony changed historical truth
  • Oral history as a form of therapy
  • Collective memory and oral tradition
  • The role of individual memory in oral history
  • Oral history as a revealing or misleading tool
  • Manipulation of memory and the role of oral history
  • Oral history and trauma
  • Oral history in war
  • Oral history in the hands of social scientists
  • Oral history as a tool of revealing/reliving a dictatorship/suppressing regime
  • Altering, exaggerating or forgetting memories; the psychology of a survivor
  • Can individual and collective memory be manipulated in order to present a particular side of an incident?
  • Iconic cases of oral history
  • Why is the oral history project needed? Goals, steps and priorities
  • Oral history in teaching and teaching oral history

The conference will bring together scholars from different fields including history, philosophy, religion, sociology, international relations, literature, art, space studies, peace studies, cultural studies, minority studies, war and/or genocide studies, journalism, immigration studies, psychology and psychiatry, political and social studies, and those working in archives, museums and NGOs.

We are particularly interested in inviting those with first-hand experiences, amateur archivists and memory collectors to participate in our newly established session “Share your memories and change history.”

Submissions may propose various formats, including:
*Individually submitted papers (organised into panels by the committee)
* Panels (3-4 individual papers)
* Roundtable discussions (led by one of the presenters)
* Posters

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 15 October 2019 to: oralhistory@lcir.co.uk.
Please download Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Standard registration fee – 180 GBP
Student registration fee – 160 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX

(posted 21 September 2019)

Breaking the Boundaries: In Between Texts, Cultures and Conventions – 11th Brno International Conference of English, American and Canadian Studies 2020
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic 12-14 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2019

Organized and hosted by:

  • The Czech Association for the Study of English (CZASE)
  • Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Conference website: https://english.phil.muni.cz/brno2020

The Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Brno and the Czech Association for the Study of English are proud to announce the 11th Brno International Conference of English, American and Canadian Studies.

This year’s conference theme reflects some of the key concerns of all scholars in English studies: the focus on text analysis, the consideration of cultural and other contexts, and the operation of textual, social and generic conventions in which our communicative practices are embedded, regardless of whether one deals with authentic texts, literary creations, or translated works. The conference seeks to break down some of the existing boundaries between the disciplines, not only bringing scholars together but also investigating the potential for their interdisciplinary cooperation.

Following the tradition established at the previous Brno conferences, we invite proposals for individual papers (20 min + 5 min discussion) and posters in the fields of literature, linguistics, cultural studies, translation studies, and ELT methodology. Abstracts of papers and posters (200-250 words) should be submitted onlineat the conference website by 31 October 2019.

Please send any queries to brno2020@phil.muni.cz

(posted 4 October 2019)

An interdisciplinary workshop on Fan Fiction
English Department, University of Zurich, Switzerland, 14-15 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2019

Organisers: Johanna Vogelsanger, Rahel Oppliger, Olivia Tjon-A-Meeuw (all University of Zurich)

Fan fiction is an important part of fandom, particularly in the online communities that form around art, entertainment, or celebrities. Members of these communities produce pieces of writing taking their favourite books, TV shows, K-pop groups, and many more as inspiration, and they make their stories available in diverse online spaces, often including specifically dedicated archives. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) alone counts more than five million fanworks, and a community of over two million users that write, read, and provide feedback and appreciation. There is something for everyone, and unless one is the lone fan, there seems to be an unending stream of delightful fan fiction to read, as the archive continues to grow – what, after all, is a good night’s sleep compared to the next fake relationship story in your favourite fandom?

Beside the interest of avid readers and writers, fan fiction has garnered the attention of research in a variety of fields: the online practices surrounding the production and consumption of fan-produced works of fiction, as well as the literary products themselves, have been of interest to literary scholars, linguists, culture and media analysts, sociologists, and many others. Fan fiction has for instance inspired discussions about intertextuality, the subversive nature of stories produced especially by women and minority groups, the nature and function of feedback within the communities, and how writers and readers construct their identities as part of fandoms.

This interdisciplinary workshop hopes to bring together researchers from a variety of fields to discuss fan fiction as a literary, linguistic, and socio-cultural practice. The workshop will also include two practical sessions: one will showcase the communal experience of fan fiction through a writing (and reading) session, while the other will provide a brief introduction to computer-assisted analysis of fan fiction texts. We are happy to announce two keynotes, which will be given by Dr. Valeria Franceschi, University of Verona (14 February), and Dr. Anne Kustritz, University of Utrecht (15 February).

We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers in English focusing on any aspect of fan fiction from any theoretical perspective or discipline. Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Narrative practices in fan fiction (e.g. intertextuality, the seriality of fan fictions, transmedial transformations)
  • Discursive practices in fan fiction (e.g. author notes, comments, beta-readers)
  • Socio-cultural practices in fan fiction (e.g. identity construction in the fandom)
  • Ethical considerations related to fan fiction (e.g. age ratings, trigger warnings, real- people fan fiction)
  • Multilingualism in fan fiction (e.g. code-switching, translations, second language speakers in fan fiction)
  • Inter-communal engagement in fan fiction writing (e.g. cross-over fan fiction)
  • Fan fiction and fanon (e.g. memes, archives, terminology)
  • Themes and topics in fan fiction (e.g. identity politics, pornography, the body)

To apply, please submit a 250-300 word abstract along with a 50-word biographical note to fanficworkshop@gmail.com by 1 December 2019. Notification of acceptance will be given in early December. Early career researchers will be given preference.

For further information, please visit fanficworkshop.wordpress.com

Supported by a Short Grant of the Graduate Campus of the University of Zurich

(posted 21 November 2019)

Political Orders: 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German Speaking Countries (GKS)
Grainau, Germany, 14 – 16 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2019

The Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries aims to increase and disseminate a scholarly understanding of Canada. Its work is facilitated primarily through seven disciplinary sections, but it is decidedly multidisciplinary in outlook and seeks to explore avenues and topics of, and through transdisciplinary exchange. For its 2020 annual conference, the Association thus invites papers from any discipline that speak to the conference theme of “Political Orders” with a Canadian or comparative focus. (Papers may be presented in English, French or German.)

The 41st annual conference will focus on the causes, nature, and consequences of key transformative periods and central patterns in Canadian political development(s). By concentrating on the concept of ‘political orders,’ the idea is to synthesize different research traditions (culture, institutions, ideas, and agency) and disciplines into a coherent understanding of political development(s) in Canada. Political orders will be understood as a coalition of governing state institutions, non-state economic, social, and cultural actors that are bound together by broadly similar or competing ideas of goals, rules, roles and boundaries. If we try to track the rise and fall of distinct political orders and their contestations, we have to look at specific and competing mutually supportive bundles of ideas, actors, and institutions that build the core of a political order. The concept of political order must invariably be plural: understood not as one political order but an intercurrence of multiple orders across time and space.

Papers may address a whole range of topics, in the following specific areas and dimensions:

  1. Citizenship and Belonging: In this first area, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion may be addressed. The meaning of what citizenship entails is multilayered and has changed over time in Canada. How is citizenship connected to cultural identity? What kind of status and rights are granted with citizenship? What competing concepts of citizenship have been debated? How is citizenship related to the idea of human rights? Papers may also focus on immigration and integration. Questions that address ideas and policies of how to integrate newcomers, immigrants, and Indigenous people into the Canadian society are of interest here. Those concepts have constantly changed over time from assimilation to integration, accommodation and recognition to multi- (Canada) and interculturalism (Québec).
  2. Ideas and Concepts of Political Orders: Political orders and developments are embedded in sets of central ideas and concepts of how societies are structured and organized. The initial idea of Anglo-dominance in Canada has been strongly challenged by internal nations and nationalisms – First Nations and Quebecers – and by the contestations among and between Catholics and Protestants, English and French, white and Aboriginal, and Black and Asian Canadians, among others. This complex interplay of different interests and identities has constantly challenged the idea of the Canadian nation and its meaning. Specific groups and their claims for recognition may be analyzed here as well in terms of how these groups address state policies that fostered specific ideas of what it means to be Canadian. This moves us away from discussions of specific state policies on recognition toward a broad conception in which other types of state practices and policies beyond multiculturalism or cultural policy are viewed as part and parcel of the political processes that produce, reinforce, or mitigate unequal social, economic, and political relationships, thereby connecting cultural recognition to specific historical, material, and institutional contexts.
  3. Developments and Institutional Change: Political orders are shaped, maintained, and changed over time by political, societal, and economic actors and at the same time stabilized by specific institutional arrangements and interest-based actor-coalitions. Forces of change and stability include dominant and constantly changing cleavage-structures in Canada. These relate to forms of Regionalism, Federalism, and specific nation- and state-building processes. Conflicts in societies are grouped around specific cleavages (gender; capital and labour; French and Anglo; church and state; urban and rural; and center and periphery; settler and Aboriginal people; First Nations and immigrants) that on the one side build up stable patterns of interest representation, but on the other side change massively over time. In some cases, those cleavages build the foundation of the party system and they might be reflected in and structured by specific forms of regional or federal interest accommodation, as well as specific patterns of state and nation-building processes.

Contact and abstract submission:
Paper proposals/abstracts of max. 500 words should outline:

  • methodology and theoretical approaches chosen
  • content/body of research
  • which of the three main aspects outlined above the paper speaks to (if any).

In addition, some short biographical information (max. 250 words) should be provided, specifying current institutional affiliation and position as well as research background with regard to the conference topic and/or three main aspects.

Abstracts by established scholars should be submitted no later than May 31, 2019 to the GKS at: gks@kanada-studien.de.

Abstracts by emerging scholars should be submitted no later than May 31, 2019 directly to the Emerging Scholars Forum: nachwuchsforum@gmail.com.

(posted 5 April 2019)

Fashion, Body and Culture
London, UK, 15 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 20 October 2019

Conference website: https://fashion.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Applying diverse methods from across subject disciplines the conference will explore fashion and style in wide-ranging contexts. It will examine connections between fashion, body and culture and will focus on dress, cosmetics, coiffure and body alterations (piercing, tattooing, circumcision, aesthetic surgery, etc).

How does our dress or hair style create our identity and status? How is it concerned with sexual and body politics? Is the desire to be “in fashion” universal or unique to Western culture? These and other questions we set out to discuss at the conference.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • Fashion History
  • Geographies of Fashion
  • Psychology of Fashion
  • Fashion Design and Technology
  • Fashion and Media
  • Fashion and Rituality
  • Gendered Fashion
  • Sustainable Fashion
  • Fashion and Power
  • Fashion and Body Politics

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 20 October 2019 to: fashion@lcir.co.uk.
Please download Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London  WC1E 7HX

(posted 23 September 2019)

Time, Space and Culture: Spatiality and Temporality
St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK, 15-16 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2019

Conference website: http://spatiality.temporality.lcir.co.uk

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the upcoming “Spatiality and Temporality” International Conference. The conference is addressed to academics, researchers and professionals with a particular interest related to the conference topic. We invite proposals from various disciplines including philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, culture studies, literature and architecture.

The conference will explore spatiality and temporality as fundamental categories of human experience and cognition and it will discuss various interpretations of these categories and complex relations between them. The conference will examine conceptions and perceptions of time and space in relation to memory, historical and social change, technological innovations, interactivity and cultural differentiation.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • time and space boundaries
  • monuments and historical sites
  • globalization and urban spaces
  • places made by nature
  • ruins and forgotten places
  • heterotopias and heterochronies
  • toponymy and topoanalysis
  • cartography and mapmaking

Proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 30 September 2019 to: spatiality.temporality@lcir.co.uk

Download paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Standard registration fee – 220 GBP     Student registration fee – 180 GBP

(posted 20 September 2019)

The Forms of History: Historical Fictions Research Conference 2020
University of Salzburg, Austria, 21-22 February 2020
Dealine for proposals: 1 September 2019

Historical fictions can be understood as an expanded mode of historiography. Scholars in literary, visual, historical and museum/re-creation studies have long been interested in the construction of the fictive past, understanding it as a locus for ideological expression. However, this is a key moment for the study of historical fictions as critical recognition of these texts and their convergence with lines of theory is expanding into new areas such as the philosophy of history, narratology, popular literature, historical narratives of national and cultural identity, and cross-disciplinary approaches to narrative constructions of the past.

Historical fictions measure the gap between the pasts we are permitted to know and those we wish to know: the interaction of the meaning-making narrative drive with the narrative-resistant nature of the past. They constitute a powerful discursive system for the production of cognitive and ideological representations of identity, agency, and social function, and for the negotiation of conceptual relationships and charged tensions between the complexity of societies in time and the teleology of lived experience. The licences of fiction, especially in mass culture, define a space of thought in which the pursuit of narrative forms of meaning is permitted to slip the chains of sanctioned historical truths to explore the deep desires and dreams that lie beneath all constructions of the past.

We welcome paper proposals from Archaeology, Architecture, Literature, Media, Art History, Musicology, Reception Studies, Museum Studies, Recreation, Gaming, Transformative Works and others. We welcome paper proposals across historical periods, with ambitious, high-quality, inter-disciplinary approaches and new methodologies that will support research into larger trends and which will lead to more theoretically informed understandings of the mode across historical periods, cultures and languages.

We aim to create a disciplinary core, where researchers can engage in issues of philosophy and methodology and generate a collective discourse around historical fictions in a range of media and across period specialities.

Key note speakers:

  • Dr Michael Brauer, University of Salzburg, “Cooking up Salzburg”
  • Prof Dr Gerhard Kubik and Dr Moya Aliya Malamusi, University of Vienna, “Works and Biographies of East and Central African Musicians“.

Send abstracts of no more than 250 words to: historicalfictionsresearch@gmail.com (1st September 2019; no pdfs, please).

https://historicalfictionsresearch.org/hfrn-conference-2020/
Twitter: @HistoricalFic
Facebook Group: Historical Fictions Research Network

(posted 8 April 2019)

The Aesthetics of Decay: Creative Modes of Destruction
St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK, 22 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 10 October 2019

Conference website: http://aesthetics.decay.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Decay as a state of nature is inevitable, yet it is something that could be at least postponed: decay in art as the main decadent idea has been on the cultural front row long enough to make certain conclusions about its essential characteristics. Decay as a philosophical issue is much more complex than its natural incarnation: French Symbolists and, later, fin de siècle authors regarded decay as an inseparable part of any type of cultural cognition. Its original interpretations can be found in the ideas of Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Nietzsche, Wagner, Bergson’s intuitivism, modern scientific discoveries and folklore. The art of decay feels the need to justify its aesthetic principles, to explain to the public audience its goals and tasks. As Oswald Spengler says in his main work, “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” (“The Decline of the West”), “Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, death following life, rigidity following expansion, intellectual age and the stone-built, petrifying world-city following mother-earth and the spiritual childhood of Doric and Gothic. They are an end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again.” That being said, decay is always that other side of progress and the movement ahead.

How shall we treat it then? Where do we spot it? How could it be perceived? What are the different approaches to conceive decay as an aesthetic phenomenon?

Possible fields for discussions may include but are not restricted to:

  • Decay: an aesthetic impasse or an impulse for a new creation?
  • Decay as a matter of freedom in design and architecture;
  • Decay as a psychological complexity in contemporary world;
  • Decay as a literary conundrum (Gothic and neo-Gothic introductions);
  • Decay as a hazard in extremities of political gambling.

Proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 10 October 2019 to: aesthetics.decay@lcir.co.uk

Download the paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

(posted 21 September 2019)

Migrating World: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Migration and Integration
St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK, 22 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2019

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Conference website: https://integration.lcir.co.uk/

“History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.”
Ellsworth Huntington

Migration has been a constant feature of human history – “homo migrans” have existed ever since “homo sapiens”. Recently the themes of migration and integration have been especially topical in Europe and in other parts of the world due to massive and ever-growing movement of population. These spreading in-flows of immigrants have a strong impact on the social, economic and political climate of host countries, which are often highly challenged by the growing number of immigrants and, therefore, have to review their immigration and integration policies to adjust to the contemporary processes of globalization. Integration is becoming more and more important at the time when international migration is steadily growing and diversifying and when immigration is undergoing profound changes. Integration and its diverse components have therefore become a central aspect that must be analyzed, supported and facilitated in contemporary societies because only successful integration builds communities that are stronger economically and more inclusive socially and culturally.

It is important to analyze all these processes of our migrating world applying various interdisciplinary approaches in order to better understand the current trends in international migration, to discuss and assess different aspects and changes in the fields of migration, integration and cultural diversity. The international interdisciplinary conference “Migrating World: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Migration and Integration” aims to bring together scholars from around the world to exchange and share their ideas and research findings in all relevant aspects of migration and integration. It will provide an effective interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the fields of migration, integration and cultural diversity.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Asylum policy and treatment of refugees
  • Asylum seekers, refugees, migrants – understanding immigration systems
  • Border services and management
  • Comparative migration policies
  • Migration and migration history
  • The importance of the linguistic integration of immigrants
  • Citizenship and immigration
  • Social, cultural, economic integration of immigrants and refugees
  • Illegal migration and security threats
  • Family dynamics and inequalities in migration
  • Migration and human rights
  • Human trafficking and exploitative migration
  • Identity of immigrants
  • Labour market integration; refugee status; adaptation strategies of immigrants; retention of ethnic and older national identities
  • Migration and multiculturalism
  • Migration and social change: international and European perspectives
  • Policing ethnicity: between the rhetoric of inclusion and the practices and policies of exclusion
  • Political asylum and refugee status
  • Policy discussions that enhance the understanding of immigration, settlement and integration and that contribute to policy development
  • Promoting social imagination at the global level: a discussion about migration and intercultural integration
  • Sociology of migration: differences, inequalities and sociological imagination
  • (Successful) migrant integration: whose responsibility is it?
  • Cultural diversity and diversity management
  • The inequalities referring to the right to mobility in the context of globalization
  • Migration in Media and Arts
  • Migration in literature

We invite proposals from various disciplines including political science, sociology, economics, history, law, philosophy, anthropology, public administration, demography, social geography, literature, linguistics, etc.

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 15 October 2019 to: integration@lcir.co.uk
Please download paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 110 GBP

(posted 21 September 2019)

Bridging Cultural Boundaries Through Language: Migration and Intercultural Dialogue: Sapienza Graduate Forum
Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, 28 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2020

It is the 21st century and it is the era when people around the world have had their most travels, some reaching the farthest, the coldest, the highest or even the hottest places on Earth. Travelling has always helped people improve, enhance or use communication skills in order to understand particular behavior, enter into relations, gain cultural knowledge and why not adopt some. With the rise of technology and its spread in each corner of the world, the proliferation of information has been made possible with just one click. Now, it is easier than ever before to be acquainted even with the most unknown, unfamiliar or distant place on the planet in few seconds.

On the other hand, we live, work, communicate and interact in a growingly globalized space—social, cultural, linguistic and so on. Globalization has largely affected the international exchange of cultures, ideas, values and above all, concepts. Moreover, the various waves of migratory movements, owing not only to globalization, but mostly to political, social and economic crises, call for our attention, to look into the new alignments, definitions and constructions of most social concepts. In view of these, concepts like language as the primary tool for communication, culture as a construct defining and defined by language and community as an integration of both need revisiting.

We invite postgraduate students interested in these issues to join us in the reconsideration of any of the following:

  • Representations of technology in language, literature and culture.
  • Globalization in language, culture and literature.
  • Constructions of new realities, real and imagined, in literature.
  • Language and cultural knowledge as a means to communicate and connect.
  • Identities in the making.
  • Interculturality, culture, and language teaching and learning.
  • Teaching culture in the 21st-century classroom.
  • Multicultural education.
  • Technology, language use, and communication.
  • Social media and social communities.
  • Community languages.
  • Linguistic geographies.
  • Etc.

Papers are welcomed from but are not limited to:

  • World Literature
  • Cultural Studies
  • Intercultural Communication
  • Communication Studies
  • Media Studies
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Pragmatics
  • Linguistics
  • Semiotics
  • Translation Studies
  • Political Studies
  • Gender and Queer Studies

During the graduate forum we will have two keynote lectures, one by Frederic Chaume Varela (Full Professor in Audiovisual Translation at Universitat Jaume I, Spain) and one by Elena Lamberti (Associate Professor in Anglo-American Literature at Università di Bologna, Itay).

Proposals for each individual paper should be approx. 300 words long. Please send also a 200- word bio for each participant. Please send your proposal by 15th January 2020 to: ssymposium2019@gmail.com

Notification of acceptance: 20th January 2020.

Each presentation should not exceed 20 minutes.

Registration fee for each participant would be 35 Euros.

For further information, please visit https://sapienzaforum.wordpress.com/

(posted 21 November 2019)

Gender Narratives: International Conference on Gender Studies
London, UK, 29 February 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2019

Conference website: https://genderstudies.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

The conference seeks to explore the past and current status of gender identity around the world, to examine the ways in which society is shaped by gender and to situate gender in relation to the full scope of human affairs.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • gender equality
  • gender and human rights
  • gender and education
  • gender and leadership
  • gender and health
  • gender and sexuality
  • gender and religion
  • gender and literature
  • gender and politics

The conference is addressed to academics, researchers and professionals with a particular interest related to the conference topic. We invite proposals from various disciplines including history, sociology, political studies, anthropology, culture studies and literature.

Proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 15 October 2019 to: genderstudies@lcir.co.uk
Download the Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX

(posted 24 September 2019)