ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 20 NOV 2010
British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA)/ SOAS Research
Students Society Conference: 19-21 Jan 2012, SOAS, UK
Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries
Keynote speakers: Prof. Susan Bassnett (Warwick), Prof. Donna Landry
(Kent), Prof. Caroline Rooney (Kent)
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
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by 20 November
2011. Please use the same contacts for queries.
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