British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA)/ SOAS Research Students
Conference: 19-21 Jan 2012, SOAS, UK
Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries
Keynote speakers: Prof. Susan Bassnett (Warwick), TBA
How do we, as young researchers in the humanities, identify what is central
and peripheral to our topics, fields, academic circles? How does our work
follow and challenge existing positionings?
The problematic of the centre and the periphery presents itself as crucial
for comparative research in the humanities. For example, literary or
cultural comparison and translation are employed and studied as means of
understanding what is relatively peripheral or unknown in terms of what is
more central or familiar. Work on national literatures reveals intricate
dynamics between the central and the peripheral, as well as the past and the
present. Postcolonial research examines constructions of centres and margins
in colonial, postcolonial, or neo-colonial settings, while studies of 'world
literature' attempt to map literary capitals and provinces.
The conference intends to bring together postgraduate researchers from all
universities working in comparative literature, literary studies,
postcolonial studies, translation studies, world literature, or other
related fields. N.B.: students whose research has a non-literary focus while
engaging with these themes are also welcome.
Papers may address questions which include, but are not limited to, the
following:
- Comparison as a movement from centre to periphery or in reverse
- Translation as an exchange between centres and peripheries
- Postcolonial challenge to the opposition of centrality and marginality
- World literature, its capitals, provinces, and geographies
- Relationships between comparative literature, postcolonial studies,
translation studies, world literature, and other related fields: perceived
centres, overlaps, and peripheries
- Topics and concerns at the centres of our disciplines; topics marginalized
within those disciplines; new research shifting the centres of the
disciplinesCentrifugal and centripetal forces in interdisciplinary research
- Relationship between the core/periphery binary and contemporary academic
practice
- Academic centres and margins; publishing centres and margins
- Centres and margins of the past, as seen today
- Centres in dialogue and conflict
- Peripheral traffic, bypassing the centre
- Peripheries within centres and centres of peripheries
Please send a 250 word proposal for a 20 minute paper and a short bio to
Dorota Goluch and Rashi Rohatgi at <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by 20 November 2011. Please
use the same contacts for queries.
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