>
> The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at The Open University,
U.K.
>
> Announces: Self and Subject: African and Asian Perspectives An
International
> Conference on The Study of African and Asian Cultures in the 21st Century
>
> Held 20th- 23rd September 2005, at Edinburgh Conference Centre,
Heriot-Watt
> University, Scotland
>
> There are few areas of research that have attracted so much interest in
the
> arts and humanities as the constitution and representation of the self,
> whether as a unit of literary and philosophical reflection, or as embodied
> entity or as product and producer of cultural life. Yet with the
increasing
> movement of people, goods and ideas within and beyond national boundaries,
it
> is not only the identity and status of the individual subject that has
been
> called into question but also many of the assumptions and methodologies
that
> once characterised different disciplinary approaches to the self.
>
> This conference invites a double questioning of the subject. It seeks to
> foreground recent innovative reflections on the status of the individual
> subject through a questioning of different disciplinary approaches. It
asks
> how the recognition that individual lives are formed in increasingly
complex
> "multi-cultural" and "trans-national" contexts demands new methodologies
for
> re-thinking the subject within and across disciplinary boundaries.
>
> Papers are invited from literary theorists, historians, anthropologists,
> philosophers, art historians and other specialists of Africa and Asia who
have
> an interest in such domains as life histories, post-colonial literature,
> autobiography, visual representation, material culture, aesthetics, the
media,
> ethnicity, ethnography, migration and diaspora studies, and the politics
of
> identity.
>
> The conference will be divided into eight panels, each of which is
organised
> around a particular theme. In line with the theoretical aims of the
> conference, contributors are asked to include explicit reflection
concerning
> their methodological assumptions and innovations, and to indicate to which
> panel they wish to contribute. Abstracts of not more than 300 words should
be
> sent by email to: [log in to unmask] by 31 December
> 2004.
>
> Invited speakers to be announced shortly.
>
> The themes of the Conference panels will be:
>
> *       Life Writing/Reading Lives: to examine the processes by which the
> colonial and post-colonial subject is rendered into textual form and the
> reception of those textual selves Sub-themes include: (a)
> autobiography/biography; (b) narrative and memory; (c) heroism,
hagiography
> and the exemplary life; (d) invisible presences - lost lives.
> *       Translating Cultures: to debate the relationship between the act
of
> linguistic translation and cultural transmission. Sub-themes include (a)
the
> invisible transportation of the source text; (b) cultural interchange -
> translating/transferring cultures; (c) 'translating the self'; (d)
> 'cosmopolitics', "glocalisation" and cultural translation.
> *       Aesthetic Questions: to examine the conceptualisation of the
aesthetic
> dimension of life in African and Asian cultures. Sub-themes include: (a)
is
> transcultural aesthetics possible? (b) insider and outsider views of
aesthetic
> concepts; (c) sense of self/sense of beauty; (d) the search for aesthetic
> universals.
> *       Transcultural Histories: to question the essentialised subjects of
> history and to debate the mutually implicating relationship between 'the
> economic' and 'the cultural' in African and Asian histories. Sub-themes
> include: (a) beyond nation-state histories; (b) material and cultural
> transactions and interactions; (c) the search for cultural creativity; (d)
> revisiting the concept of 'historical agency'.
> *       'Image and Sound: to explore recent approaches to the audiovisual
in
> which cultural processes and subject formation are perceived as practices
in
> sounds, images and performances, and to re-evaluate and recontextualise
the
> status of different disciplinary approaches to the audiovisual subject.
> Sub-themes include a) image practices; b) sound practices; c) the
> performative; d) "audiovisualscapes".
> *       Cultural Identities/Global Politics: to explore manifestations of
> nationality, religion, ethnicity, class and gender in the 21st century.
> Sub-themes include: (a) identity post 9/11; (b) cosmopolitan citizenship;
(c)
> margins and metropoles; (d) post-colonial futures.
> *       Body Forms: to explore African and Asian conceptions and
expressions
> of self through a focus on the visual media of dress, body art and related
> practices and to evaluate different disciplinary approaches to embodied
> experience. Sub-themes include (a) interrogating the boundaries of the
body;
> (b) dress as individual expression and social skin; (c) the interplay of
> globalising and localising forces on the body; (d) the relationship
between
> bodily and other modes of visual and sensorial expression.
> *       Situated Identities, Migrant Cultures and Contested Locations: to
> explore the relationships between migrant communities and locations and to
> examine how local cultural identities, in the process of transformation,
are
> displayed in cultural productions. Sub-themes include: (a) being there -
> ethnography in the 21st century; (b) travelling cultures; (c) border
lands;
> (d) exile.
>
> The conference language will be English.
>
> The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies is a research institute
> within The Open University, U.K. For further information on the Ferguson
> Centre, please visit our website above.
>
> Heather Scott
> Research Centre Secretary
> The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies,
> Faculty of Arts,
> The Open University,
> Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
> MK7 6AA, UK
>
> +44 (0)1908-655244 (Telephone)
> +44 (0)1908-653973 (Fax)
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Visit the website at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre