CALL FOR PAPERS

Department of Modern Languages
&
Welsh Institute for Social and Cultural Affairs (WISCA)

University of Wales, Bangor

invite proposals for papers for a major interdisciplinary conference:


IMAGE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE

7-9 September 2006

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Tom Devine (Celtic Studies, Aberdeen/Edinburgh)
Professor Mike Savage (Sociology, Manchester)
Professor Stefan Berger (German, Manchester)
Professor Stephen Gundle (Italian, Royal Holloway)
Dr Luis Pérez González (Translation Studies, Manchester)



The beginning of a new century, and even more so, that of a new
millennium, inevitably promotes the reassessment of certain values and
beliefs, as well as a revisiting of the past. This is particularly the
case when this pivotal point coincides with political and economic
changes, such as the establishment of new governing structures and
parties. The expansion of the EU and the re-emergence of regionalisms
have stimulated reflections on issues of identity, citizenship,
nationality and globalization. This conference will focus on how
individual states (or national groups within states) perceive themselves
and/or are perceived by others since the Second World War. Whilst
speakers may choose to address the construction of identities through
historical discourse, state building, institutional development, music
or literary forms, the conference would especially like to encourage a
debate on the role of visual media, such as cinema, photography and the
internet in the creation/representation of identity.

Speakers should address one of the following areas:

• Identity and Nation-building: constructing national identity in newly
created states (as in Eastern Europe); identity development and
decentralised governance (as within the UK or Spain); civil society and
identity; national histories and identity; art, museums, architecture
and physical representations of identity; religion, language,
literature, myth and history in the preservation of identities; issues
of integration and ethnicity; regional identities and the problems of
nation-building; Britishness before and after devolution; ‘European’,
national and transnational identities.

• History and Memory: the role of memory in the creation of personal and
national identities; the relationship between individual and collective
identities; the relationship between micro/macro histories; the
representation of historical events and their significance in a given
cultural production; the experience of tradition; memory and forgetting:
the role of oblivion in the construction of identity; whether national
identity is now a superseded notion?

• Symbol, Image and Translation: questions of visual and iconic
communication; national identities and issues of transnational
mediation; audiovisual translation in communication industries,
including TV, film, and the Internet; the role of translation in the
construction of Europe's cultural and economic landscape via
audiovisual/multimedia material.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers. Interdisciplinary and/or
comparative approaches are particularly welcome
Please send a 300-500 word abstract to one of the following addresses:

Dr Laura Rorato: [log in to unmask]
Dr Carol Tully: [log in to unmask]

Deadline: 31 March 2006 (the selection panel will finalise the
provisional programme by 30 April 2006)


--
Dr Anna Saunders
Department of Modern Languages
University of Wales, Bangor
Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2DG
Tel. 01248 382135

[log in to unmask]