CALL FOR PAPERS:
Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood: Integration, Community, and Co-Habitation
Deadline: 10 January 2019
Conference: 24-26 June 2019:
UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin
In collaboration with the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and supported by OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community
Global mass migration on an unprecedented scale; dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean by refugees fleeing persecution and warfare; the loss of family and friends; the loss of home; the challenge of integrating the arrivants / arrivantes;
and conflicting notions of identity and belonging - these are some of the transcultural predicaments of the globalisation processes of the 21st century coming to a head in the local encounters of urban (and rural) neighbourhoods. Whereas Singapore’s Holland
Village, London’s Brixton and Berlin’s Kreuzberg have grown into trendy multi- and transcultural neighbourhoods coined by creativity and a newly affluent cosmopolitan class, others seem troubled by disenfranchisement, discord, and/or feelings of social dislocation,
with Molenbeek in Brussels and the Clichy-sous-Bois banlieue in Paris being perhaps the most notorious examples.
Transnational neighbourhoods are frequently depicted as the ‘other’ and – as Gillian Jein notes – a ‘deviant terrain’. However, voices from within often emphasise different perceptions and have the potential to challenge and counter discourses
emerging in the context of the rapid rise of populist right-wing parties across Europe that aim to reinstate or “protect” ethnic nationalism, Christianity as the dominant religion, a national language and organic culture, ancestry and lineage, and membership
of a dominant ethnic or racial group as the bases for national membership. The current political debate is highly polarised, binary and often dominated by quantitative arguments concerning the number of refugees, and the social, economic and political impact
of their integration. Against this backdrop, our conference seeks to shift focus by exploring transcultural encounters in the urban neighbourhood.
We posit that the urban neighbourhood is a social microcosm that allows for a more nuanced discussion of transculturality as lived practice. The urban neighbourhood is local but not provincial; it is a fluid space in which various temporal
and spatial axes intersect; it is the locus where diverse trans/cultural practices can engender togetherness as well as differences and conflict. It is the contact zone where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, fostering processes
of hybridisation, creolisation and neoculturation. The neighbourhood is open to the type of multi-scalar perspective that, according to Ann Rigney, avoids entrapment in a binary discourse.
The urban neighbourhood lends itself to a broad multi-perspectival and interdisciplinary exploration of transcultural practices. We invite papers from a broad range of disciplines and fields, including urban geography, urban planning, architecture,
memory studies, film studies, visual and performance arts, contemporary literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, practice-based research and linguistics. Possible lines of investigation include:
Please send an abstract of approx.
250 words and a short biographical note of about 50 words to:
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Conference Organisers:
Prof. Anne Fuchs, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Godela Weiss-Sussex, IMLR, University of London/King’s College Cambridge ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Britta C. Jung, IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin([log in to unmask])
Dr. Maria Roca Lizarazu, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Birmingham ([log in to unmask])
Dr. Stephan Ehrig, IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin ([log in to unmask])
Jon Millington
Events and Research Projects Officer
OWRI Project Administrator (Translingual Strand)
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