Call for Papers

Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography (collection; abstracts due May 15/08)

We invite contributions for a proposed collection of essays on visual autobiography, focusing on health, bodies, and embodied subjectivities. The collection will consider how cultural practices of self-narration and self-portraiture image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmermann's call for "radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres" (2000, p. xx). How are health, dis/ability, and the body theorized, materialized, and politicized in visual autobiographies, including forms such as photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media? We are particularly interested in the potential of visual autobiographies to: -explore how bodies negotiate disciplinary regimes and technologies -produce counterdiscursive manoeuvres and new representational spaces -investigate how power/knowledge relations constitute embodiments -provoke critical and ethical reflection

We welcome contributions from academic- and arts-based researchers and practitioners. We encourage a wide range of critical perspectives: cultural studies, critical theory, disability studies, feminist studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies, queer studies, Aboriginal studies, globalization studies, literary studies, art history, music, media studies, theatre and performance studies. Analytic approachescould involve: textual analysis; histories, presents, and futures; practices and practitioners; and pedagogy. Possible topics: dis/ability sickness/wellness disease bodies negotiating borders and boundaries traded and disappeared bodies trauma and testimony memory and memorializing monstrosity care of the self care-giving fatness and body size aging body alterations and transformations environments activisms

Send a 300- to 500-word abstract, working title, and a brief bio, by email in a Word attachment, to Sarah Brophy (brophys@mcmaster.ca ) and Janice Hladki (hladkij@mcmaster.ca on or before May 15, 2008. Inquiries are also welcome. Final papers should range in length from 4000-8000 words.

About the editors: Sarah Brophy is an Associate Professor in English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University. Janice Hladki is an Associate Professor in Theatre and Film Studies, McMaster University.

eaclals triennial conference
Venezia
25-29 March 2008

Conveners

Annalisa Oboe (Universita degli Studi di Padova)
Shaul Bassi (Universita Ca' Foscari Venezia)

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Salvador C. Fernández, Ph.D.                              Dr. Mariam Pirbhai
Professor of Spanish                                             Assistant Professor
Department of Spanish and French                      Department of English and Film Studies
Occidental College                                               Wilfrid Laurier University
Los Angeles, CA 90041                                       Waterloo, Ontario,
fernande@oxy.edu                                                N2L 3C5
                                                                            mpirbhai@wlu.ca <mailto:mpirbhai@wlu.ca> 

Caribbean Identities of Central America

We are inviting contributions to an inter-disciplinary collection on the Caribbean Diaspora in the Central American coast.

Historically, Caribbean migration to the Central American coast has played a significant role in the construction of the heterogeneous cultural identities of Central American nations. However, this diaspora has drawn little scholarly attention outside of anthropological and sociological investigations. With the ever-widening critical and theoretical framework of Caribbean Studies in its response to the expansive and complex body of Caribbean migration and identities across the Americas, we believe that a broader investigation of the Central American-Caribbean context is long overdue. 

This study aims to bring together an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural approach to this diaspora by foregrounding the multi-ethnic fabric and trans-national reach of Caribbean communities in Central America. Thus, we strongly encourage theoretical or critical readings of Caribbean cultural production in Central America, be they focussed or comparative readings across ethnicity, national contexts, cultural modes (literature, the arts, music, etc), disciplinary models or the intersecting vectors of gender, race and class; we also invite first-hand accounts of Central American-Caribbean identities in the form of testimonios, oral histories, creative essays or other non-traditional modes of cultural expression. In our appreciation of the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature of Caribbean communities, we welcome submissions in English, Spanish or French.

Please submit a 200 word abstract and a brief biography or a completed 20-25 page paper to Mariam Pirbhai for English and French contributions (mpirbhai@wlu.ca <mailto:mpirbhai@wlu.ca> ) or Salvador Fernandez for English and Spanish contributions (fernande@oxy.edu) by June 30, 2007.

Suggested areas:

History/Recuperation of Histories

Literary Production and Literary Genres

Popular Culture

Musical Expressions / Ethnomusicology

Art and other Visual Modes of Representation

Technology and Culture

Cultural Identity and Education

The East Indians of Belize

Afro-Caribbean Identities

Garifuna Identities

Racial Constructs of Whiteness, Blackness, and Mestizaje

Globalization and Indigenous Cultures

Migration and Labour

Feminist Readings / Gendered Histories

Citizenship and Human Rights

Human Trafficking

Border Theory / Trans-Border Relations

Inter-Caribbean Relations

Plantation History and Plantation Labour

Salvador C. Fernandez, Ph.D.
Professor of Spanish
Dept. of Spanish and French
  Literary Studies
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA  90041
 
tel:        323/259-2591
e-mail: fernande@oxy.edu <mailto:fernande@oxy.edu>

CFP: Post-Colonial Transformations in the New Literatures in English (Slovakia) (6/05/07; 6/8/07-6/9/07)

Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences
University of Pre¹ov at Pre¹ov, Slovakia

European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS)

 Keynote Lectures:  Pétér Szaffkó, University of Debrecen, Hungary
                                David Callahan, University of Aveiro, Portugal

In his study entitled Post-Colonial Transformation (Routledge, 2001), Bill Ashcroft argues that "the imaginative and the creative are integral aspects
of that process by which identity itself has come into being. Cultural identity does not exist outside representation. But the transformative
nature of cultural identity leads directly to the transformation of those strategies by which it is represented." Despite the fact that this book
deals mostly with ideological, sociological and political topics related to the development of post-colonial societies, the author is also addressing
the issue of the changing nature and the transformation of post-colonial cultural identity as manifested in the literary and artistic work of
post-colonial writers. Indeed the latter have tried to find a symbolic way for expressing the changing nature of cultural identity in their countries,
taking into account the difficult transformation of former patterns of colonialism and authoritarianism, but also the new freedom brought by
emerging regimes or by modern means of technology and globalization such as the media (TV, video, computers, internet), popular culture and consumerism. This conference seeks contributions on authors associated with the new literatures in English which will deal with but are not limited to:

1) the  symbolic expression of post-colonial transformation as manifested in literature (including drama);

2) the volatile nature of post-colonial cultural identity;

3) the opposition between traditional (oral and mimetic) literature and new and experimental forms of representation (written, modern, postmodern,
media) as the expression of a tension or conflict between tradition and innovation, colonialism and resistance, traditional and modern life;

4) "the translation among cultures" and the linguistic and literary expression of different kinds of cultural identities within post-colonial societies;

5) postmodern, metafictional and hypertextual narrative techniques, postmodern parody, play, irony, generic and stylistic hybridity as literary,
aesthetic and cultural alternatives to the dominant literary, cultural and national(istic) discourse as manifested in post-colonial literary texts;

6) essentialist versus non-esssentialist concepts of cultural identity (Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha) as expressed in literary works written by post-colonial authors;

7) local and regional, versus national and global, relationships as the expression of specificity on the one hand, and universality and generalization on the other.

One of the aims of the conference is to attract doctorate scholars from Central and Eastern Europe to exchange views on the discipline of
post-colonial studies and to discuss further co-operation under the aegis of EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language
Studies). The conference programme will include a post-graduate students seminar which will be run by Professor David Callahan, University of Aveiro,
Portugal. This seminar will be based on lecturing and the discussion of set literary texts. These doctorate and other scholars from Central and Eastern Europe can be sponsored by means of an EACLALS grant. Doctoral students are encouraged to present their papers at the conference (these presentations will not coincide with the seminar programme which will be conceived as a separate activity).

Contributions are not restricted to the themes oulined above. We prefer papers which deal with the aesthetic, artistic and literary aspects of
individual works, rather than those tackling ideological, political and societal aspects. The conference is organized jointly by Department of
English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences, University of Pre¹ov, Slovakia,  and the European Association for
Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS), and will take place on the University of Pre¹ov's main campus. The city of Pre¹ov is easily
accessible by train, bus, and car from neighbouring countries and by air from other countries (Ko¹ice airport is only 40 kilometers from Pre¹ov). The
papers should be presented in English. The conference is part of the research projects KEGA 3-3136-05 and VEGA 1-3710-06. Short abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent by electronic mail to Jaroslav Ku¹nír at

Jaroslav Ku¹nír

Katedra anglického jazyka a literatúry FHPV

Pre¹ovskej univerzity, 17. novembra 1

081 16 Pre¹ov, Slovakia

by May 6, 2007. A selection of papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The conference fee is 700 Sk (or equivalent in Euro, which is 25 Euros).

Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices
8th Annual Conference of the South Asian Literary Association
December 26-27, 2007, Chicago, IL

For its 8th annual conference, the South Asian Literature Association invites proposals (of no more than 200-300 words) on the subject: Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices.  

South Asian cultural production, especially in the Diaspora, tends to privilege the paradigm of identity politics.  While it has its uses, the politics of identity, in its analysis of both colonialism and of postcolonial realities, marginalizes issues of systemic social and economic exploitation. In this context, we believe it is important to redirect our attention to questions of social justice.  How have the literatures of South Asia dealt with various issues of social justice that political activists and social reformers (both during and after the period of colonial rule) have been known to engage with?  How do South Asian aesthetic practices engage with questions of the just, and the morally justifiable, whether it be in terms of affirming or contesting existing regimes of truth and reason?  As a region of historically altering hegemonies and various kinds of coexisting pluralities (linguistic, religious, ethnic, etc.) how have South Asians sought to bring the just and the beautiful in accord?  What sorts of ideologies of progress and change, or of anxious return to indigenous tradition, have fostered what kinds of narratives of affect in literature primarily but also in cinema, theatre and other popular forms?  

Possible areas and issues for exploration:

*        The rich corpus of literature engaging with struggles against both colonialism and indigenous forms of injustices during the colonial period:  Apart from analysis of anti-colonial texts, this may also include inquiries into the relationship of literary discourses with various kinds of reform initiated by leaders of particular religious communities (Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, the Barelvi and the Deobandi movements, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and other modernizers in various communities) and their combined effects on new articulations of social justice.  

*        The Progressive Writers movement and the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association (IPTA)-their reading of the anti-colonial movement, its blind spots and the socioeconomic challenges of the nascent nation. To the extent that this powerful tradition highlights class conflict, in what ways do contemporary cultural practices reflect its influence?

*        One of the most exciting developments in the contemporary Indian literary scene is the emergence of a vibrant body of Dalit literature.  A possible area of enquiry could be the *ideology vs. aestheticism* debate regarding this literature.

*        The politics of religious identity:  artistic representations of movements against communalism across South Asia.

*        How do the several movements for gender justice play out in literature and the arts?  

*        Ethnicity has been a vexing issue in postcolonial South Asia: it's a crucial aspect of the various insurgencies in Sri Lanka and within India, in the North-East, in Kashmir and Punjab.  How has literature emerging from and about these regions engaged with the issue?

*        Sexuality:  The possibilities and dead-ends within this emerging field; are there certain ways in which both struggles against discrimination based on sexuality and their representations are following different trajectories compared to their western counterparts?

*        How do we theorize social justice in regional, national and global terms?  What problems of translation (not just linguistic ones but those of cultural translation in an uneven world) do we run into when literary representations of social justice (or the search thereof) get carried over from a local (or regional) domain to a national and transnational one?  

*        Social justice in post-liberalization literature and cinema: have questions of social justice been occluded in recent literature and cinema?

*        South Asian cosmopolitanisms and questions of social justice: are recent cosmopolitical writers more sensitive to questions of social justice than some writers of the preceding generations (whether writing in English or in South Asian languages)?  How are questions of social justice being articulated in the present age of almost instant awareness of global wrongs?  Are there new dilemmas of local and global justice being articulated?  

Abstracts of 200-300 words with the subject line, SALA Abstract, must be sent to both conference co-chairs by July 15, 2007.

E-mail Addresses:  
Nivedita Majumdar:  <nmajumdar@jjay.cuny.edu>
Karni Pal Bhati:  <Karni.Bhati@furman.edu>

Postal addresses:  
Nivedita Majumdar, Department of English, John Jay College/CUNY, 1258 North Hall, 445 West 59th. Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.

Karni Pal Bhati, English Department, Furman University, Greenville, SC 29613, U.S.A.

Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, phone number and email address with your proposal. A panel proposal will be considered ONLY IF it includes a detailed abstract for each paper, a designated chair, and a short statement as to why the submissions should be considered as a panel rather than as individual presentations.

The SALA conference will be held on December 26 and 27 in Chicago, IL, in conjunction with the MLA convention. SALA also publishes the refereed journal, South Asian Review (SAR). All abstracts accepted for the conference will be published in the special conference number of the SAR. Inquiries about SAR should be directed to

Kamal Verma at kverma+@pitt.edu.

COLONIAL EDUCATION IN AFRICAN LITERATURES

Among other things, the colonial school-whether in Anglophone, Francophone or Lusophone Africa--led to the creation of new human types
as well as new social structures and interactions. How is colonial education represented in African literatures? What was (and has been)
its overall impact? In what ways did the colonial school affect human interactions? How did the colonizer use the educational apparatus? How did the colonized react to and use the school? What are the contemporary manifestations or vestiges of the colonial curriculum?

Proposals of no more than 400 words addressing the issues above (as well as others germane to the general topic of colonial education as portrayed in African literatures) are welcome before March 15, 2007.

Please send all inquiries and proposals to:

Mohamed Kamara
Dept. of Romance Languages
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
kamaram@wlu.edu
(540) 458-8475

Conference Panel Call for Papers:
Against Embodiment (or, Embodiment and its Discontents)
21st Annual Conference for the Society for Literature,
     Science and the Arts
November 1 – November 4, 2007
Portland, Maine, USA

This panel will consider some of the more nagging questions and persistent problems raised but unresolved by recent scholarship
on embodiment (e.g. Hansen, Hayles, Massumi, Munster, Sobchack). Literally meaning “putting into a body from without,” em-bodiment
necessarily operates against and through materials that are not its own.  Embodiment requires historical contexts for its actualization.  Experiences,
performances, and concepts of embodiment derive from already historical, marked, contingent bodies. This year’s conference theme
“code” – often suggesting the transformation and re-inscription of existing bodies from one medium into another – reminds us that disembodiment
occupies a prominent place within articulations of embodiment.  For these and other reasons, our panel will consider whether there can be a
meaningful notion of embodiment without something “against embodiment.”  

Perspectives from a wide variety of disciplines and methodologies are welcome.   “Embodiment” is not limited to human bodies.  Reflections
on political, literary, scientific, celestial and other bodies are encouraged.  Interested participants should submit a short abstract of their paper to
Bernard Geoghegan at b-geoghegan(AT)northwestern(DOT)edu by noon, March 15th 2007.  Scientific and artistic posters, performances, and
exhibitions are equally encouraged and invited.  At submitters' request, any unaccepted papers will be fowarded to the SLSA 2007 general call for
papers.

NEW DEADLINE 4/1/07 CFP: CULTURE AND IDENTITY Kasarinlan Philippine Journal of Third World Studies

UPDATE: Deadline extended to April 1, 2007
Call for Papers: Culture and Identity Issue

Rapid development of information technology, the proliferation of transnational capital exchange, the broadening reach of mass media, labor subcontracting, large-scale consumption, and mass migration have opened up new pathways for the critical analysis of culture and identity formation. These developments are sometimes heralded as promising avenues of unbridled progress, which serve as resources for the emergence of new modes of knowledge, identity and cultural expression. But these developments also tend to conceal the reality of uneven development, which prompts us to question contemporary identity formation and construction, and its implications in everyday life, especially in Third World countries. Understanding transformations of identity and culture also calls for a reexamination of conventional discourses of gender, ethnicity, and nationhood.

This issue of Kasarinlan will feature theoretical, methodological and conceptual issues of identity and cultural representation as they may be linked directly or indirectly to politics, economy, military, and social life, with the view to charting new alternative discourses.

We accept papers on the following topics :

nationalism
regionalism
transnationalism
social movements
democracy and human rights
race, ethnicity and citizenship
gender and sexuality
mass consumerism
mass media and new technologies

The journal is interested in publishing concise, theoretically-grounded empirical research with a high degree of scholarship. Interested contributors must submit a draft article of at least 6,000 but no more than 8,000 words, excluding the abstract. The abstract should have a maximum of 300 words. In addition, the author should indicate at least six keywords discussed in the paper.

Contributors must exercise care, precision, and honesty in citing sources using the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. It is assumed that manuscripts submitted for publication have not been published in print or electronically, in any other journal or some other form of publication, or submitted for possible publication elsewhere.

For the complete notes for contributors:

http://www.upd.edu.ph/~twsc/publications_kasarinlan-notes.html

Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies
Third World Studies Center
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of the Philippines
PO Box 210
Diliman, Quezon City 1101
Philippines
Telefax: +63 2 920 5428
Email:  kasarinlan@up.edu.ph
          kasarinlan@gmail.com
Visit the Kasarinlan webpage at
http://www.upd.edu.ph/~twsc/publications_kasarinlan.html
For free Kasarinlan essays visit the TWSC blog at
http://uptwsc.blogspot.com/

Call for Papers

LGBT African-Americans: Historical and Sociological Perspectives

Paper proposals are invited for a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists, Inc. The conference will be held March 21-24, 2007 in Atlanta, GA at the Holiday Inn-Atlanta Airport North. The theme for the 2007 ASBS Conference is Scholarly Activism & Global Thought.

This particular panel will explore various aspects of LGBT African-American life from social scientific and historical perspectives. While the focus of the conference is on social and behavioral sciences, participants from other disciplines are welcome to submit papers that are relevant to the panel's theme. 

Please note that all program participants are expected to register for the meeting, and will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations to the conference.  For further questions about logistics please respond to the email address below.   

Submit paper proposals of up to 250 words by March 1, 2007 to aporter(at)gc.cuny.edu.  Include your contact information on the proposal (name, institutional affiliation, email and telephone), and place ASBS Abstract in the email's subject line.         

We are also seeking a session chair/discussant for this panel. 

Contact:
Lavelle Porter
Ph.D. Program in English
CUNY Graduate Center
aporter(at)gc.cuny.edu 

The Modern Language Association Annual Convention 2007
Chicago
27-30 December 2007

Deadline: 17 March 2007

Special Session: Caribbean American Women Writers

Abstracts are invited for presentations on novels written by women of (Anglo, Franco, Hispanic) Caribbean descent. How so these women rewrite, revise, retell the histories of these nations?

Please send 1-page abstracts.

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Vanessa K. Valdes
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN

Seeking one essay addressing diaspora and Jewish culture (broadly
conceived), and one essay addressing diaspora and Arab culture (broadly
conceived), for a collection of essays entitled Transforming Diaspora.
We wish to receive queries/proposal from interested scholars by April 6,
2007. The full CFP for the essay collection follows. Send email
submissions to robinfield_at_kings.edu.
Transforming Diaspora (Book Collection)

Eds. Parmita Kapadia and Robin Field

Cultural studies has generated a re-evaluation of the long established tropes governing the diasporic condition. The emergence of various
diasporas prompts a rethinking of the field to include the experiences of exiles, expatriots, refugees, migrants, tourists, as well as racial,
religious, ethnic, and linguistic "Others." The existence of the diasporic state has been at the forefront of postcolonial scholarship
for over a decade now, but this scholarship has mainly focused on the home/abroad binary. This collection of essays seeks to investigate the
growing impact of the diasporic condition in light of recent studies in transnationalism, transculturalism, and globalization. How does the
existence of a diasporic community figure into the politics of the nation-state? For longstanding diasporic communities, which place is=20
home and which is exile? How is the diasporic identity constructed, particularly for later generations? How does the ascendancy of
globalization co-opt diasporic concerns?

Recent scholarship has only begun to explore the cultural impact of these historically marginalized individuals and communities.
Diasporas-both established and emergent-are central and integral to colonial, postcolonial, and transnational studies, especially critical
analyses of race, nationhood, modernity, identity, changes in economic and social structures, and ethnic, religious, political, and
linguisticaffiliation. Transforming Diaspora seeks to further our understandingand application of theories of diaspora through sustained
engagement with the literature of diasporic communities. What cultural practices challenge monolithic understandings of nationhood and instead
gesture to a transnational ethos?

What are the effects of multiple cultural inheritances on migrant populations?

How does generational affiliation affect the formation of cultural practices and notions of citizenship?

How are borders (of any sort) represented, critiqued, or exploded in diaspora literature?

Building on the recent work by Arjun Appadurai, Paul Gilroy, Robin Cohen, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, and Vijay Prashad, this collection seeks to redefine the composition, influence, and position of diasporas and their contested relationships with dominant cultures and discourses. We seek essays that are grounded in the literary and/or cultural texts of any diasporic community, including South Asian, African, Jewish, Latin American, Middle Eastern, etc. In discussing the ideas of culture,citizenship, and transnationalism, these essays should offer interpretations, extensions, and challenges to the current theoretical understandings of diaspora(s). We welcome submissions from diverse theoretical and critical approaches, particularly border cultures, literary transnationalism, race, film studies, colonial and postcolonialism.

Robin E. Field, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
King's College
133 N. River St.
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18711
Robinfield_at_kings.edu
(570) 208-5900 x. 5771

Call for Papers

REROUTING THE POSTCOLONIAL

The University of Northampton, UK, 3-4 July 2007 (07/03/07 - 07/04/07)

To mark the re-launch of the journal World Literature Written in English as the Journal of Postcolonial Studies, The Centre for Contemporary Fiction and Narrative, University of Northampton, and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, in association with Taylor and Francis publishers and the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies, hosts:

Keynote Speakers -

Simon Gikandi

Patrick Williams

Elleke Boehmer

Alastair Niven

In an increasingly mobile and globalised world, new ROUTES become available to people through movement, migration, diaspora and relocation, and through the temporary inhabiting of new spaces offered by cosmopolitan travel and tourism. These movements contribute to a critique of ROOTS - of fixed origins and traditional identity frameworks such as family, society and nation. Looking to recent developments and influences, and exploring both routes and roots, this conference seeks to REROUTE THE POSTCOLONIAL - to address the tensions that both amplify and redirect postcolonial studies in the 21st century.

Some key questions underpinning this conference:

What REROUTINGS of the postcolonial occur due to accelerated movements of peoples, the theorizing of diaspora, transformed modes of production through the impact of global technologies, new paradigms such as the global, and the reshaping of culture and the environment by globalization? What is the effect of the current shift away from resistant and counter discourses and the politics of liberation and representation? How is "writing" the postcolonial, in areas such as pedagogy, genre and the canon, and aesthetic and textual practices, changing in response to these developments?

Possible topics include:

third world cosmopolitan versus/complementing theories of the indigenous

diasporic theory and the transformation of existing  postcolonial paradigms

revisiting empire  in an age of transnational  migration

new itineraries and iterations of modernity and post-modernity

migration, exile and changing identities

global travel, tourism and new geographies

interrogations of the aesthetics of resistance

cultural representations and reimaginings of social transformation

the environment and eco-critical perspectives

the postcolonial sacred and/or profane

new and old spoken/written/visual media in a global age

changing modes and practices in "writing" and teaching the postcolonial

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words by Friday 19 March 2007 (03/19/07) to:

Janet.Wilson@northampton.ac.uk and Alison.Rudd@northampton.ac.uk.

Conference organisers: Janet Wilson, Fiona Tolan and Alison Rudd

Registration Fees (excluding accommodation and food - further details available on request):

Before 1 April 2007:  sixty-five pounds sterling (thirty-five pounds sterling - students and unwaged)

After 1 April: eighty-five pounds sterling (forty-five pounds sterling - students and unwaged)

At the door: one hundred pounds sterling (fifty pounds sterling - students and unwaged)

Cheques (sterling only) or international money orders, payable to THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON, to Chris Woolmore, The University of Northampton, St George's Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JD, UK.

CONFERENCE UPDATE:

Fifth International Conference of Caribbean Women'ss Writing
Goldsmiths, University of London
Caribbean Studies Centre

27 & 28 April, 2007
THEME: Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Feb. 19, 2007

Invited keynote speaker: Professor Sue Thomas, La Trobe University,
Australia

Possible topics include:
- Caribbean Writing in Britain
- Women, Representation and Diaspora
- Creole languages, Creolisation, Diaspora and Region
- Theoretical Discourse and the Creole Cultural Artefact
- Slavery and the Gendered Body
- Absent Mothers / Absent Fathers
-  "Creative friction" and Conditions of Cultural Production
- Oral Word/ Written Word: / Visual Art/ Verbal Art
-  Relation and Women's Writing

Notification of Acceptance:                 26 February, 2007

Abstracts
1 page proposal/abstract and a CV of not more than 3 pages should be sent
by 19 Feb. 2007, to The Conference Committee <Caribbean@gold.ac.uk>,
or post to:
The Conference Organising Committee
Fifth International Conference on Caribbean Women’s Writing
Caribbean Studies Centre
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London, SE14 6NW
UK
http:// www. goldsmiths.ac.uk/caribbean

CFP: Postcolonial Representation[s] and the U.S. (grad) [2/23/07; 5/12/07]
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Centennial House, University of California, Santa Barbara

Keynote Speaker:  Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English, UC Santa
Barbara (biography below)

http://acc.english.ucsb.edu/conference/grad2007/cfp.asp

The 2007 American Cultures and Global Contexts Graduate Conference, an interdisciplinary forum at UC Santa Barbara, will explore issues
revolving around the postcolonial—encompassing representations of the postcolonial in the U.S., colonial, neo-colonial and postcolonial
ideologies and debates surrounding imperialism and empire building. We are not only interested in representations of the postcolonial,
inside and outside of the U.S., but also representations that have to do with the U.S.  In the face of contemporary debates about whether
postcolonial theory is bowing out to theories of globalization, what is at stake for us as postcolonial scholars in continuing our research?  
Has the U.S. Empire actually or only seemingly "moved on" from previous colonial models?  Does postcolonial study reveal continuing
colonial violences from a century ago that shape geopolitical balances of power, and internal colonialisms within the U.S. that are lost in
overemphasizing transnational flows?  The intersections between postcolonial theory, global studies, and American studies offer a rich field
of study that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and we aim to cultivate our knowledge and open up a forum for discussion and debate.  Both
contemporary and historical work is welcome, as well as multi-genre work, including the visual arts.

Presentation topics may include but are not limited to the following
suggestions:
Representations of memory in diasporic/postcolonial literature
Memory, memorializing, and elided histories
The subaltern, the disenfranchised
Specters, hauntology, redress
National identity as central to the U.S.'s new nationalisms
Global capital, postcolonial theory, and U.S. institutions
Genre and postcolonial literature
Mixed media art and postcolonial identity
Diasporic/postcolonial peoples as represented by "U.S." authors/artists
Diasporic imagined communities, social imaginaries
Language and literature as related to the global south
United States citizens as represented by "postcolonial" authors/artists
Hollywood in the post-colonies and the post-colonies in Hollywood
Postcolonial and globalization theory—overlaps and divides
Postcoloniality, sovereignty, Empire, and the U.S.
Violence, terror, war
The (re)construction and/or production of the postcolonial body
History, genealogy, and recovery
Gender, sexuality, as related to postcoloniality
Identity, agency, subjectivity, and nation building

To Submit an Abstract:
Please submit 250-word individual abstracts or panel proposals (comprised of a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole and titles
for each paper) to acgc.grad@gmail.com by Friday, February 23, 2007. We request that you paste your proposal into the body of your email
and include any technology requests.  If submitting a work of art, please attach a low-resolution image of your piece, if possible, in
addition to your abstract.  Some travel subsidies may be available. Please indicate on your abstract if you are interested.

Deadline:  Friday, February 23, 2007
Conference Date:  Saturday, May 12, 2007
Email:  acgc.grad@gmail.com

For more information about the American Cultures and Global Contexts
Center, please visit http://acc.english.ucsb.edu/.

-----

Keynote Speaker Biography:
Bishnupriya Ghosh is a professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She came to UCSB with a
doctorate from Northwestern University, a B.A. from Wellesley College, and a B.A. from Presidency College (Kolkata). Her teaching interests
are global studies, postcolonial theory and media studies, and gender/sexuality studies. Apart from publishing essays on literature,
film, postcolonial criticism and theory in journals such as Screen, boundary 2, The Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and in several
anthologies, Ghosh's first monograph on globalization, literary markets, and the political imagination of South Asian writing in
English, When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel (Rutgers University Press), appeared in 2004; she has
also co-edited a volume of critical essays, Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women's Literature and Film (Garland, 1997).
She is working on a second manuscript on the corporeal idioms of famous contemporary female icons marked as "South Asian" such as
Phoolan Devi, Taslima Nasrin, Arundhati Roy, and Mother Teresa; Corporeal Intimations: The Material Life of South Asian Female Icons
rethinks received dismissals of icons as overexposed mass mediatized commodities and resituates them hieroglyphics of social power in South
Asian contexts. As she completes Corporeal Intimations, Ghosh is beginning research on a third project on a spectral modernity
evidenced in twentieth-century gothic and speculative fiction from South Asian postcolonial contexts. At UCSB she is active in the
Multi-Research Group, "The Subaltern and the Popular"; most recently, she is engaged convening a UCHRI short-term research focus group on
risk, uncertainty, and globality, "Speculative Globalities," in February 2007.

CFP for 3 Panels coordinated by the new MLA Postcolonial Studies
Division:

  Postcolonial Studies: Reflective Assessments
  Inaugurating the MLA's new Postcolonial Studies Division, a panel to review postcolonialism's transformation of literary studies since 1983.
500-word proposals and 2-page CVs by 15 March to David Chioni Moore. [mooredc@macalester.edu]

  Postcolonial Environments
  How do postcolonial literatures and cultures inscribe nonhuman alterity? Topics might include ecology, sustainability, human and nonhuman relations,
ecocriticism, ethics, biopolitics, planetarity. 500-word proposals and 2-page CVs by 15 March to Elizabeth DeLoughrey. [emd23@cornell.edu]

  Religion and Postcolonial Literature
  Possible topics: aesthetics and religion, atheism, apostasy, conversion, fundamentalism, mystery, sacred space, secularism. 500-word proposals and
2-page CVs by March 15 to Deepika Bahri, with panel title in subject line. [dpetrag@emory.edu]

  ***************************

  Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Assoc. Prof.

  Dept of English, Cornell University

  2006-2007:

  Global Fellow, International Institute

  UCLA, 11230 Bunche Hall

  Box 951487

  Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487

CFP: Law and Literature in the Postcolony (01/31/07; 07/08/07 - 07/11/07)

Special panel on ‘Law and Literature’: “Worlds, Texts, Critics” conference

Date/Place: July 8th to 11th / Durban, South Africa, University of Kwazulu-Natal.

Possibilities for papers include, but are not limited to:

Representations of law in postcolonial literature
Theorising postcolonial ‘Law and Literature’
Law, ethics and postcolonial literature
Law and subjectivity in the postcolony
Human rights in/and postcolonial literature
Multiculturalism and postcoloniality
Law, literature and truth commissions
Trauma, witnessing and the law
Law and violence after September 11

You can visit the following website for more information on the conference:
http://academic.sun.ac.za/english/AUETSA2007/home.html.

Please send notification of your wish to present a paper to the following address by no later than January 31, 2007: lentap@ukzn.ac.za

Please send an abstract of 300 words to the following email address by no later than April 1, 2007: lentap@ukzn.ac.za

Cerpac (Research Centre for Commonwealth Studies)
http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/cerpac

Novembre 8-9-10, 2007, Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier III), France

Guest writers: Bernardine EVARISTO and Karen KING-ARIBISALA
Keynote speakers: John McLeod (University of Leeds, UK) and Gerry TURCOTTE (University of Wollongong, Australia)

POSTCOLONIAL GHOSTS

From Shakespeare to the Gothic novel to Salman Rushdie, the ghost has always been a recurrent figure in literature. This conference aims at examining haunting phenomena in the postcolonial world: is there a specifically postcolonial kind of haunting? Who/What are the postcolonial ghosts? How do they show themselves? Can they be conjured or exorcised? How? To answer these questions, and many others, the presence of ghosts in the new literatures in English (Africa, India, Caribbean) can be examined; issues tackled may include magic realism, neo-gothic writings, folklore, ghosts (guilty or innocent), and the various ways in which they manifest themselves. Ghosts may also be more abstract :  haunted texts, literary or cultural ghosts from the past. Writers as diverse as André Brink, Edwige Danticat, Fred D’Aguiar, Denise Harris, Wilson Harris, Nalo Hopkinson, Margaret Laurence, Arundhati Roy or Wole Soyinka, to quote only a few, can be looked at. Another possible aspect is the presence of colonial “ghosts” in institutions, politics, historiography, education, museums. The various “truth and reconciliation commissions” established to deal with – exorcise? – the ghosts of the past may also be looked at. Many other examples can of course be dealt with. Finally, linguistic ghosts also haunt the postcolonial world : accents, creolization, “englishes” where the colonisers’ language is haunted by the colonised’s (and vice versa), etc. It will therefore be interesting to try and understand how, and to what extent, postcolonial language(s) is/are haunted. This conference should then be open to those who deal in literature, as well as to those interested in cultures, history, techniques or linguistics, in the British Empire and the Commonwealth, delivering their paper in English or French.

Please send your proposals (title + abstract of 250 to 300 words) as well as a short bio to Mélanie Joseph-Vilain <melanie.joseph-vilain@wanadoo.fr> and to Judith Misrahi-Barak <judith.misrahi-barak@univ-montp3.fr> by December 31, 2006.

Call for Proposals for “The Oral, The Written, and Other Verbal Media: Interfaces and Audiences”: A Conference and Festival University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, June 19-21, 2008

The organizers of the first international, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and trans-historical conference and festival focusing on the interface of the oral and the written invite proposals for participation. In keeping with the plenitude of modes and forms of oral and textual discourse, the organizers will welcome diverse modes of presentation, including, but not limited to, oral performances, academic talks and panels, readers’ theatre (dramatized readings of scholarly dialogues), workshops, and projects-in-progress sessions. Our goal is to generate conversations among performers, audiences, and scholars, including graduate students, from a wide range of academic disciplines, cultures, and historical periods, and to foster opportunities for collaboration among those interested in speech and other voicings on the page.

Because Saskatoon is located in a territory highly populated with Indigenous peoples whose oral traditions are still vital and developing, the festival will highlight Aboriginal performers in a Crow Hop Café featuring storytelling, Indigenous Hip Hop, music, and other oral performances. Are you studying legal contracts in medieval Europe as they move from the oral to the written, or Indigenous treaty narratives from decolonizing parts of the world? Are you asking what happens to oral stories when they are transmuted into fiction, drama, printed poetry, or visual media? Are you trying to reconstruct the oral delivery of sermons or epics on the basis of their printed forms? Are you working with Elders on the transcription of oral narratives, and would you like to discuss successes and obstacles in a workshop with others engaged or interested in this sort of work? Are you an oral storyteller/keeper or dub or spoken word poet interested in talking about your practice with scholars? Do you have other ideas for workshops related to the conference and festival theme? If you see your work reflected in these or related questions, please contact us.

Other issues and topics that might be addressed:

• aesthetics, ethics, & politics at the interface of the oral & the written

• the body &/or gender at the interface of the oral & the written

• contesting writing’s empire

• memory and commemoration at the interface of the oral and the written

• oral occasions, contexts, circumstances & modes of public address as represented in writing

• oral and written poetics & modes of meaning-making

• orality, textuality, & authority; orality, textuality, & modernity

• orature, writing, and genre: sacred narratives, proverbs, jokes, ballads, sagas, legends, folklore, sermons, oratory, & disputations

• recording oral narratives for community histories or school curriculum

• translation/transcreation of orature

• the oral and the written in visual arts

• strategies for textualizing the oral

• what audiences are well or ill served by textualizing the oral

Please forward inquiries and proposals (300-500 words) by 31 December 2006 to either of Professor Susan Gingell Professor Neal Mcleod Department of English Department of Indigenous Studies University of Saskatchewan First People's House of Learning Saskatoon, SK Canada S7N 5A5 Peter Gzowski College sag178@mail.usask.ca Enweying Building 1600 West Bank Drive Peterborough, ON K9J 7B8 nealmcleod@trentu.ca

Anti-Imperialism and Postcolonialism as Transnational

Seminar proposed for American Comparative Literature Association conference
Puebla, Mexico
19-22 April 2007

co-chairs Christi Merrill and Jennifer Wenzel, University of Michigan

Papers sought for a seminar (panel) that will examine the transnational histories of anti-imperialism and their relevance in postcolonial studies today. What difference have travelling theories and itinerant intellectuals made in struggles against imperialism? How can a comparative approach help to elucidate the transnational circulation of modes, methods, and forms of anti-imperialism? How can earlier transnational movements (e.g. Pan-Africanism, Negritude, Pan-Arabism, non-alignment) inform our understanding of contemporary phenomena such as anti-globalization movements,  post-2001 US imperialism, or radical Islam? What continuities and ruptures exist between institutions and modes of organization in different sites and moments? How can attention to south-south connections complicate notions of anticolonialism or postcolonial studies as derivative or Eurocentric?

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

--Garveyism, Garveyite, and other expectations of transnational deliverance
--Bandung and non-alignment
--colonial-era conferences of artists and intellectuals
--Progressive Writers' Associations --Afro-Asian organizations and student exchanges
--UNESCO cultural programs
--anti-imperialists abroad: Gandhi in South Africa; DuBois, Wright, and Baldwin in Ghana; Che Guevara in the Congo; Fanon, James, and Ambedkar in the US, etc.
--intersections between decolonization and US civil rights movements
--geneaologies of the subaltern
--possibilities and limitations of theoretical rubrics such as Young's "tri-continentalsim," Lazarus' "nationalitarianism," or Hardt and Negri's "Empire"

ACLA requires that all prospective participants submit an abstract through the ACLA website by 1 November 2006: http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu.

Please feel free to contact seminar co-organizer Jennifer Wenzel (jawenzel@umich.edu) with questions about and potential submissions to the seminar.

Jennifer Wenzel
Department of English
3187 Angell Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
fax 734 763 3128