italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Cari colleghi,
vorrei portare all'attenzione della lista la seguente conferenza e la
seconda richiesta di interventi.
cordiali saluti
Rossella Riccobono
INSTITUTE OF EUROPEAN CULTURAL IDENTITY STUDIES
SCHOOL OF MODERN LANGUAGES
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
International Conference
EUROPE AND ITS OTHERS.
INTERPERCEPTIONS PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
6-8 JULY 2007
NEW HALL & THE GATEWAY
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
‘Europe and its Others’ is an international conference in the area of
literary and film studies, covering the main European languages (English,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish). It sets
decipherers of Europe’s cultural traditions in interdisciplinary dialogue
with historians, political scientists, social anthropologists, culture
theorists, and international relationists. Through the mirroring
representations of Europe’s cultural production, we aim to explore a nexus
of particularly rich and complex self-and-other relationships: diverse in
space, multiple in its scenes, actors, dimensions; and evolving in
time. We wish to understand something about how the Other-encounters,
perceptions and relationships of Europe function - a ‘poetics’ of
collective, culturally formed and informed ‘identities’.
We welcome proposals for papers (a 300-word abstract) to be submitted to
the Convenors of the 10 symposia that are being organised by 29 September
2006. We hope to have a definitive programme in place by November.
It is the intention of the organisers to edit a series of books, either
region or discipline-based, using as a basis a selection of papers given at
the conference. Each is intended to profit from, and to exploit diversely,
the overarching perspectives explored.
The Conference Registration (Full Board) 6-8 July 2007 will come to £200.00.
Please address general queries to:
Conference Organiser: Professor Will Fowler, Dept. of Spanish, University
of St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL. E-mail address:
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]
or
Professor Paul Gifford, Director, Institute of European Cultural Identity
Studies, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews, Fife KY16
9AL. E-mail address: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]
OPENING PLENARY SPEAKER
PROF. THOMAS ELSAESSER
CONCLUDING PLENARY SYMPOSIUM
Defining perceptions: getting a hold on ‘Europe’
will count with the participation of:
PROF. ROBERT FRANK, PROF. LUISA PASSERINI
& PROF. ANNE STAPLES
Defining perceptions: getting a hold on ‘Europe’
Convenor: Prof. Paul Gifford, [log in to unmask]
This session retraces the movement of the entire conference, but here in
the concerted search for an overview. It seeks to explore the diverse and
evolving sense of 'Selfhood' implied by Europe's richly diverse gaze upon,
and dealings with, its 'Others', and to question the images inscribed in
their perceptions-in-return of Europe. Attending to how we see others and
how they see us often throws up onto screen of awareness those implicit and
invisible factors by which collective cultural personae are most profoundly
formed, remembered and projected; the silent and all-conditioning realities
which, in identity terms, are also the most organically constituting.
Such defining perceptions may be sought and found in a broad range
imaginative writing, film and cultural theory; and at all moments and
phases of European culture history. The only qualifying condition of
pertinence for this session is that these perceptions will lead us towards
an enlarged understanding of the cultural bond that is Europe. What is
'Europeanness', 'Europeanicity'? What does it owe to objective solidarities
(like those of geography, history, economic and political systems or
life-style). How far is it a matter of common history and experience? How
does it reflect the more elusive awareness of bonding attitudes (values,
ideologies, sacralities)? What versions of are there or have their been of
'Europe'? And, as it becomes more 'creolised', is 'Europe' still a
recognisable concept in the order of cultural identity?
Agonistic encounters: war, civil war, and terrorism
Convenor Dr Michael Gratzke: [log in to unmask]
Focussing on interperceptions, this panel will explore representations of
politically motivated violence within Europe and between Europeans and
Non-Europeans. War, civil war and terrorism will be the cornerstones but
contributions dealing with deportation, ethnic cleansing, revolutions,
revolts and similar actions involving violence are equally welcome. It is
the expressed aim of this panel to instigate discussion about the
interconnections between aesthetic and historical/political/social issues.
Papers dealing with the full range of artistic expression and aesthetic
representation will be considered.
Translating Cultures: Europe and Latin America:
Convenor: Dr Eleni Kefala, [log in to unmask]
According to Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of cultural translation, cultures,
when taken out of their “original” context, are transformed and
misinterpreted by the Other. This panel looks at cultural encounters and
interperceptions, focusing on the dislocations, displacements and
appropriation of European cultures in Latin America as well as on European
perceptions of Latin America.
Where the borders lay - Europe through its neighbours’ eyes.
Convenor: Dr Tanya Filosofova, [log in to unmask]
This interdisciplinary panel will focus on examining various aspects of
cultural connections and political relations between European countries and
their closest East Slavonic neighbours: Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from
medieval times up to modern times. The panel will examine their perception
of Europe and Europeans, for example, in folklore, literature, art, films,
media and popular culture as well as complex political historical contexts.
Europe and its Others: Mediterranean Interperceptions
Convenor: Dr Lorna Milne, [log in to unmask]
This strand of the conference invites analyses of national and cultural
interperceptions across and around the Mediterranean Sea, from the Middle
Ages to the present day. How is the Mediterranean itself represented in the
imaginaries of the littoral cultures? What effects do such representations
have on perceptions of Self and Other, seen from any given point around it?
Does a degree of shared Mediterranean history and culture in any way
transcend or mitigate perceptions of national Otherness, for example as
between Spain and Morocco, or France and Algeria? Within the littoral
nations themselves, to what extent does the possession of a Mediterranean
coastline inflect the sense of national cultural identity? And do
interperceptions between Mediterraneans and northern Europeans have a
distinctive shape of their own?
From accounts of the Crusades to the debate about Turkish membership of
the EU; from archeologists' and adventure narratives to portrayals of
contemporary migrations; from the imagery of 'orientalism' to the
denunciation of colonial oppression, this panel will study cultural
representations of Self and Other, as shaped by Mediterranean-ness, in art,
text, film or other forms of discourse. Pairs or groups of papers
addressing the same topic from different perspectives will be considered
for inclusion: please give full details if your contribution is proposed as
part of a panel.
Gender and the Other
Convenor: Prof. Helen Chambers, [log in to unmask]
Gender is widely seen as a paradigmatic signifier of Otherness: in the
context of the conference theme of Interperceptions between Europe and its
Others this panel will focus on the role of gender in relation to
constructions of identity. Investigations of gendered discourses, whether
of masculinity or femininity, will illuminate the ways in which writers and
artists in other media have, consciously or otherwise, used notions of
gender to represent perceptions of the relationship between themselves and
Europe, or vice versa, from the Early Modern period to the present.
Contributions on literary texts, film, historiography, cultural journals in
any of French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish - and including
comparative discussions - are invited. These will enhance our understanding
of the part gender has played in cultural responses to the awareness of
difference. A range of theoretical and empirical approaches is welcome.
Europe: The Alienated Self
Convenor: Dr Claire Whitehead, [log in to unmask]
This panel will focus upon literary portrayals of madness from the
eighteenth century to the present day. In post-Enlightenment Europe and
beyond, depictions of alienation played a crucial role in charting
reactions to the rise of rationalising civilisation. Concomitantly,
developments in medical science retrieved madness from its categorisation
as a purely spiritual ailment. This panel will welcome all critical
approaches to alienation: historical, sociological, psychological,
narratological, etc. It will also particularly encourage comparative
approaches in which literary accounts of madness from one or more countries
(European and non-European) are discussed.
Narratives of History and Memory:
Remembering and Re-imagining the European Past(s) Across Media
Convenor: Dr Belen Vidal, [log in to unmask]
This session seeks papers on issues of history and memory with especial
reference to the diverse modes of re-imagining the past in written and
visual media. In which ways has the European past been structured as a
collage of fragments, and a source of dialectic tensions between Self and
Other? Where can we locate the points of transnational dialogue and
exchange that would allow for the construction of a shared European past? .
This CFP should be of interest for researchers in the fields of literary
studies, cultural studies, film and media studies, as well as to those
working on approaches to history and historiography across media. Possible
topics may include but are not limited to:
· The past as Other: nearness versus distance
· Affective discourses around the European past
· Highbrow, lowbrow, or middlebrow? The impact of
popular culture versus/ in dialogue with European heritages.
· Alternative histories re-written from the present
· Constructing spatial and/or temporal displacement
through narrative
· The Other’s claims on European history
· Remembering/Forgetting: Trauma and displacement
· The private and the public: intimate spaces as memory
spaces
· National histories versus transnational memories
Europe and Its Others: Political and Cultural Influence and Interference
Convenor: Dr Will Fowler, [log in to unmask]
This panel is concerned with the manner in which European ideas, trends and
customs, as expressed in political and cultural terms, have influenced and
interfered with those of other regions. It is also interested in the way
that the ideas, trends and customs of Europe's ‘others’ have been equally
influential in challenging and changing Eurocentric traditions. The focus
of the symposium will be inter-disciplinary and open to studies concerned
with regions from across the world. Papers will typically be expected to
tackle issues such as the impact of European constitutionalist thought in
its former colonies, the influence of ‘peripheral’ literary movements on
European fiction, or expressions of syncretism and hybridity that have
surfaced both in and outside Europe.
The Macro and the Micro: Europe and the Province
Convenor: Dr Rossella Riccobono, [log in to unmask]
This panel will look at writers and film directors of the last thirty years
who perceive themselves and their social, geographical, cultural and
literary reality as regional, and therefore as marginal. Nevertheless in
their work the province is often turned into a micro symbol of the larger
culturally overpowering European tradition. How do these artists express
their marginal self in terms of centrality? How is the representation of
the micro narrated as significant in relation to the macro? Issues of
identity, nomadism, voluntary exile (both linguistic, cultural, and
geographical), and travel will be explored.
Dr Rossella Riccobono
Lecturer in Italian
University of St Andrews
School of Modern Languages
Buchanan Building
Union Street
St Andrews
KY16 9PH
Tel. +44 (0)1334 463669
Fax. +44 (0)1334463677
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join italian-studies YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave italian-studies
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies.html
|