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: [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: [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.
------------------------------------------------------------------
University of St Andrews Webmail: https://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk
|
