Calls for papers for conferences taking place in December 2024

The Status of Myths in New Millennial/post-2000 Cultural Production: What is left of myths in contemporary arts and literature?
Jean Jaurès University, Toulouse, France. 6-7 December 2024.
Submission deadline: 29 February 2024.

Venue: Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University, France – Center for Anglophone Studies
Date: December 2024, 6-7

We plan to publish a selection of papers following the conference.

Please send a 300-400-word abstract (for a 20-minute presentation) with a short biography to: submissions@myths24.fr

Submission deadline: February 29th, 2024

Languages: English or French

Organizing and scientific committee:

  • Lara Cox, Céline Magot, Sophie Maruéjouls-Koch, Jean-François Tuffier  
  • Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University
  • Center for Anglophone Studies

Confirmed guests and keynote speakers:

As founding narratives or idealized representations of historical figures, myths have, from time immemorial, tied humans together, creating communities that grow into organized societies. They have therefore become the safeguards of a vision of History that the arts and literature have ceaselessly spun into stories, in order to better transgress, deconstruct or simply revisit an ever-changing mythos. Contemporary stories reshape the contours of an all-too-often glorified past and they question our cultural heritage at the same time as rekindling it.

Creative imagination feeds on these forms of “poaching” as Michel de Certeau put it. This process is not entirely separable from a certain level of violence. The artist who ventures into the territory of myth challenges authority, creating a tension within the main collective discourse by allowing new voices to emerge. The Black Lives Matter movement gave rise to a wave of protest demanding the removal of statues. This undoubtedly characterizes a world where the expression of singular identities, whether ethnic, gendered, racial and/or social, is transforming mainstream culture. Current artistic productions embrace and question figures or facts that collective memory has mythologized, and this serves a restorative purpose in various ways. It behooves us to enquire into the political, ethical, cultural and economic implications of these rewritings. 

Read more on our website:

myths24.fr

(Posted 25 October 2023)

(Re-) Drawing Borders: When and Where was the United Kingdom? When and Where is it Now?
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 12-14 December 2024.
Deadline for submissions: 6 June 2024.

The Centre for British Studies seeks papers for an international conference on the topic of (Re-) Drawing Borders: When and Where was the United Kingdom? When and Where is it Now?, which will take place at the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on 12-14 December 2024.

The conference will provide an interdisciplinary forum to reassess the significance of border-making in the United Kingdom, both empirically (administrative, societal, and cultural boundaries within the UK as well as between the UK and the rest of the world), historically, and theoretically (concepts, methods, and interdisciplinary dialogue in British Studies). It will include keynote speeches and panels organized in four strands: 

  1. devolution; 
  2. (post-)colonial legacies; 
  3. the UK in Europe; 
  4. UK divisions: early 20th and early 21st centuries compared. 

Keynote addresses 

Confirmed:

  • Catharine Barnard (Cambridge), 
  • Michael Kenny (Cambridge) and 
  • Insa Koch (St Gallen) 

We are hoping to hear shortly from Virinder Kalra (Warwick) and David Olusoga (Manchester).

Disciplines

We welcome established and early career scholars from all disciplines of the broad field of British Studies, including but not limited to 

  • British Literature, 
  • Cultural Studies, 
  • History, 
  • Law, 
  • Ethnology, 
  • Political Science, 
  • Sociology, 
  • Economics, 
  • Media Studies, 
  • International Relations, 
  • Anthropology, 
  • Art History, 
  • Geography, 
  • Border Studies, and 
  • Gender Studies.

Submission

Please send your short paper proposal (title, author, position, affiliation, e-mail, 250-word abstract, up to 5 keywords, proposed strand, estimate of total conference expenses, amount requested from the organizers) as a pdf format to Corinna Radke (corinna.radke@hu-berlin.de) by the deadline of 6 June 2024.

Funding

Speakers without sufficient institutional funding can apply for the reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses. 

Publication

We plan to publish a selection of papers in an edited publication (special issue and/or edited volume) and are seeking funding for the conference.

Informal inquiries can be sent to Dr Paolo Chiocchetti (paolo.chiocchetti@hu-berlin.de).

(Posted 18 May 2024)