Dear All,

I pologize in advance for double-posting. Please make note and spread
the new call for papers of the Italian journal "Snodi" (also in the
attachment).

Snodi. Public and private in contemporary history



Call for papers (deadline: 30 April 2014)



Borders



According to the classical definition (Ratzel 1897), borders
circumscribe a portion of territory and the extension of the
sovereignty there exercised. The aspiration towards a coincidence
between State, population and territory has strongly influenced
European and extra-European history during the last two centuries,
characterised by political conflicts whose origins can be traced in
the attempt of defining or redefining the space occupied by states.
This is the case, for example, of the 19th-century construction of the
nation states, with the revision of pre-existing political entities.
Or of colonialism, which extended on a global scale the juridical idea
of border with its political and symbolic dynamics, while at the same
time (because of the territorial discontinuity and disparity of status
between colonies and fatherlands) showing the first cracks in the
supposed original compactness of the concept.

The latter was then re-established during the world wars, when the
theme of sovereignty was also interpreted alongside ethnic and racial
discourses. Post-war borders revealed in a few decades to be
arbitrary, drawn, as they were, on the basis of the principle of
nationality, or on alleged historical, linguistic, cultural and
religious characters. The Cold War, with the formation of
geo-political super-national blocs, at the same time both disputed and
reaffirmed territorial frontiers. Instead, since the last years of the
20th century, we have witnessed fast movements and transfers across
continents, the simultaneity of communication networks, and a growing
economic, social and cultural integration between different areas of
the planet, which appear to anticipate unknown settings. On the one
hand, some scholars have forecast the development of a
de-territorialisation of cultural belonging, of state sovereignty and
of national economies, through the construction of a homogenous space.
On the other hand, we witness the appearance of new unbalances and
polarisations (north-south, east-west) and the mass exodus from poor
to rich areas. As it occurred in the past, barriers are now emerging
from the encounter between culturally heterogeneous individuals and
groups. These barriers act within different political and
institutional borders, and foster identity claims, localisms,
tribalism, discriminatory practices and xenophobic manifestations.



The fourteenth issue of Snodi proposes to explore the ways in which
the dialectic I/us, public/private is affected by the processes
outlined above. How did spaces and borders interact with personal and
collective identities between the 19th and the 21st centuries? Which
dynamics of juridical, social and political inclusion and exclusion
they arouse in relation, for example, to minorities or to colonial
populations? How have borders, migrations, and exiles modified
structures, conditions, practices, feelings, and (men's and women's)
individual, family or national memories? Which phenomena of resistance
and which dynamics of discontent can be perceived in border cities or
regions, at the moment when new frontiers or administrative areas are
created, or during migrations or forced population movements?



Please send:



- For the articles section ('Scrivere'): a half-page abstract for a
20-page article (40.000 characters, including spaces).

- For the section 'Sources of the individual self/sources of the
collective self' ('Fonti dell'io/fonti del noi'): a half-page abstract
for a 10-page article (20.000 characters, including spaces) which
analyses methodological problems raised by the sources examined,
discussing their peculiarity and traceability, and re-elaborating an
already conducted enquiry. We are therefore not looking for an
argumentative analysis of the theme, but for a meta-analysis on the
work carried out during a research on the theme.



Proposals should be sent to the address:
[log in to unmask], including a short CV and a list of
your main publications. Authors of articles in English should have the
final version of their texts read and edited by a mother-tongue
reader, if English is not their first language.

The articles selected for publication will be peer reviewed.



Proposals will be selected by 15 May 2014, and the deadline for chosen
articles is 15 September 2014. The issue will be published in autumn
2014.



 Thank you!

Simone Bellezza