CFP: Counter-Image International Conference 2022 and Photo Impulse Final Conference - Decolonizing visuality: working towards sustainable sociocultural practices

  Counter-Image International Conference 2022 and Photo Impulse Final Conference - Decolonizing visuality: working towards sustainable sociocultural practices

Lisbon, 13th to 15th July 2022

 

 

This edition of the Counter Image International Conference is an association with Photo Impulse research project, funded by FCT (PTDC/COM-OUT/29608/2017). Photo Impulse investigates the photographic and film productions of the geodesic, geographical and anthropological missions to Portugal’s formerly occupied territories in Africa and Asia. The collections being investigated are curated by the Museum of Natural History and Science of Lisbon University, a partner of the project.

 

The final results of the project will be presented at the conference. The project raises many of the questions we wish to discuss: from the centre of the “Metropolis” to the periphery of the “Colonies”: how did images, in particular photography and film, reinforce these unbalanced places and disseminate within them? How do images contribute to shaping the past and the present? What can be done to decolonize the archives, museums and centres of knowledge? How is it possible to integrate other forms of knowledge and knowledge production? What is the role of the arts and artistic practices? Which were the visual practices of those who were colonized? How are the contemporary visual practices of postcolonial authors shaping societies? How important are vernacular images to this discussion? What is the role of global media systems such as social media, television and journalism? How can images contribute to a more sustainable and equitable world? The writer Chinua Achebe spoke of a “balance of stories”, we ask how important is a balance of images and what are their affordances in relation to textual accounts?

 

In short, the scope of the conference includes, but is not limited to the following topics:

• Colonial visual cultures and strategies for decolonization
• Colonial and postcolonial photography and film
• Museums and colonial heritage
• Social sustainability and image practices
• Counter-hegemonic narratives 
• Visual Culture of the “colonial sciences”
• Colonial cosmoramas, panoramas and other “ramas”
• Archive dynamics in relation to counter-power and counter-memory
• Artistic practices as resistance
• The use of vernacular images and processes in artistic production
• Ecocriticism in visual practices

 

Proposals

Abstracts are due by March 31st 2022. Portuguese and English languages are accepted.

We encourage proposals that are ACADEMIC, ARTISTIC or HYBRID in nature. Proposals will be for 20 minute time slots and must be sent through our Easy Chair Account, here. After creating a login, write a proposal with no more than 500 words, with 5 key-words and no more than 5 bibliographic references. Artistic/hybrid presentations should be time-based, including audiovisual or sound-based works, or performance-based actions. These proposals should be accompanied by a short 3-4min. sample and/or an illustrated description, along with the summary, key-words and bibliographic references (when relevant) previously mentioned. In all cases, a separate biographical note should be uploaded. Please make sure your name is not mentioned anywhere in the abstract. Proposals will be selected through a double blind referee system. Sessions will be organized based on thematic kinship, regardless of practices (academic/artistic/hybrid); all works will be considered equally valid scholarly outputs. Successful applicants will be contacted by April 30th, 2022.

 

The Organizing Committee of the CIIC22 has decided to offer a blended conference experience for the upcoming edition taking place 13 to 15 July. While submitting their abstracts, applicants should indicate their option for an online or on-site presentation. We look forward to meeting you in Lisbon!

 

Papers or visual essays may be submitted to a special issue of an academic journal (to be announced).

Contact Info: 

Organizing Committee

Contact Email: 

counterimageconference@fcsh.unl.pt

URL: 

https://counter-image.netlify.app

CFP: THE VIEW FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE: EXPLORING THE HUMAN EPOCH FROM POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVES on 15-16 October 2022

 The Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Debrecen, Hungary invites you to participate in the conference titled

THE VIEW FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE:
EXPLORING THE HUMAN EPOCH FROM POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVES

on 15-16 October 2022

 

“If the sadness of life makes you tired
And the failures of man make you sigh
You can look to the time soon arriving
When this noble experiment winds down and calls it a day”

In this age of ecological, economic and social crises, the notion of the Anthropocene is becoming ever more significant. Proposed by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in 2000, the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch highlights detrimental human impact on the planet, while as a critical notion it synthetises anti-, non- or post-anthropocentric views challenging the dominant discourses and practices that place humans at the centre of the world. However, with its scope incessantly expanding and its meanings ever in flux, the Anthropocene requires constant redefinition and reassessment. So far it has been criticised for its ideological implications and several terms such as Plantationocene (Haraway 2015), Capitalocene (Moore 2016, Davies 2016), and Occidentalocene (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017) have been offered as alternatives. Yet could we define the Anthropocene and its implications more clearly and harmoniously? Above all, it is an urgent warning about the future of ecosystems, cultures and societies alike, forcing us to realise that “we are embedded in various social, economic, and—especially—ecological contexts that are inseparably connected” (Kersten 2013). Addressing the need for coherence across versatile approaches, the conference calls for a transdisciplinary investigation of the challenges of our age.

We also realise that the Anthropocene must be acted upon, although its cry for action is crippling. As Judy Wilson put it during one of the panel discussions at COP26, “the human epoch is not only external, it is also internal”, for it not only denotes a number of ecological and social crises – including climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution, poverty and starvation in the global south, causing waves of migration which in turn fuel global conflict –, but it also involves anxiety and apathy that render us passive in the face of these crises. As Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna put it, it seems “as though humanity is being lethargic – waiting for the end of the film, when the heroes arrive to sort everything out, and we can all live happily ever after” (2018).

The conference aims to address some of the controversies, the lethargy and (wilful) ignorance that conceal the significance of the Anthropocene, exploring the notion itself as well as its theoretical and practical challenges from the perspectives of posthumanism, animal studies, ecocriticism and any other approaches that question anthropocentrism from their respective viewpoints. We invite proposals that may address, yet are not restricted to, the following topics:

• Critiques of and conceptual alternatives to the Anthropocene—Donna Haraway’s ‘Cthulhucene’, JasonMoore’s ‘Capitalocene’, Bernard Stiegler’s ‘neganthropocene’ and the like
• Cli-fi, dystopian and/or utopian responses to climate change
• Speculative and fantastic fiction related to the Anthropocene
• Eco-anxiety
• Fantastic texts exploring indigenous worldviews on ecology
• Literary fiction or other media that interrogate humanity’s relationship with other lifeforms
• Literary fiction or other media that question the human/animal boundary
• Human-Animal Studies, Literary and Cultural Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal Studies
• The non- and posthuman other (animals, plants, monsters, aliens, artificial intelligence) in art, literature, cinema and other media
• Nonhuman perspectives in literature and cinema; the nonhuman gaze
• Non-anthropocentric spaces and temporalities in literature and cinema
• Ecocriticism, environmental humanities, deep ecology and ecosophy
• Eco-horror; aesthetics and themes
• Bioethical considerations
• Posthumanism, post- and transhumanist frameworks, posthumanist ethics
• Anti-humanism, meta-humanism
• Speculative realism, object-oriented ontologies, new materialism, post-anthropocentric ecologytheories, theories of social assemblage
• Object-oriented art; bioart, microbial art
• Eco-art, eco-literature, eco-media, eco-cinema

Confirmed plenary speakers include Márk Horváth and Ádám Lovász who will give a talk on the post-anthropocentric turn, and László Nemes, who will speak about his current inquiry into the ethics of de-extinction. Accompanying programmes will include a roundtable discussion addressing the challenges of the Anthropocene, with participants from various fields including philosophy, literary and film criticism, biology, and psychology; a photography exhibition; and a multimedia art event organised by the members of Művészek a klímatudatosságért (Artists for Climate Awareness). With these programmes we hope to turn the collective experience of inertia symptomatic of the Anthropocene into awareness, new forms of agency, and action.

“Time has come now to stop being human
Time to find a new creature to be
Be a fish or a weed or a sparrow
For the earth has grown tired and all of your time has expired.”
(Thinking Fellers Union Local 282: “Noble Experiment”)

Technical details:

The conference is planned as an on-site event, to be held in English and Hungarian, on 15-16 October 2022at the University of Debrecen. Depending on the dynamics of the pandemic, we will nevertheless adapt and consider moving parts of or the whole conference to a digital platform. Participants will be informed about any changes via email in due time.

Please send a 250 word abstract of your proposed paper with a brief, max. 100 word biography to theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com
by June 30, 2022. Responses will be given by July 31, 2022.

It is intended that a selection of the papers based on the conference presentations will be published, either in a separate collection of articles or a thematic volume in a scholarly journal.

For more information please visit the event’s Facebook page or contact the organizers at the following e-mail address: theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com.

 

Co-organised and supported by the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE).
Supported by the Institute of English and American Studies (IEAS), University of Debrecen (UD).

Contact Info: 

For details, please visit the event’s Facebook page or contact the organizers at the following e-mail address: theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com.

Contact Email: 

theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com

URL: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9uf0qfpveBVfZbzmE0Szt620EG11_n4/view?usp=sharing

The conference is planned as an on-site event, to be held in English and Hungarian, on 15-16 October 2022at the University of Debrecen. Depending on the dynamics of the pandemic, we will nevertheless adapt and consider moving parts of or the whole conference to a digital platform. Participants will be informed about any changes via email in due time.

Please send a 250 word abstract of your proposed paper with a brief, max. 100 word biography to theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com
by June 30, 2022. Responses will be given by July 31, 2022.

It is intended that a selection of the papers based on the conference presentations will be published, either in a separate collection of articles or a thematic volume in a scholarly journal.

For more information please visit the event’s Facebook page or contact the organizers at the following e-mail address: theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com.

 

Co-organised and supported by the Hungarian Society for the Study of English (HUSSE).
Supported by the Institute of English and American Studies (IEAS), University of Debrecen (UD).

Contact Info: 

For details, please visit the event’s Facebook page or contact the organizers at the following e-mail address: theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com.

Contact Email: 

theviewfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com

URL: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9uf0qfpveBVfZbzmE0Szt620EG11_n4/view?usp=sharing

CfP: Caricatures and Satire in a Global Perspective: 1850–1950, 15-16. Dec. 2022, Germany

 Caricatures and Satire in a Global Perspective: 1850–1950, 15-16. Dec. 2022, Germany

Call for Papers: Caricatures and Satire in a Global Perspective: 1850–1950

 

University of Bonn, Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies, Department for Islamic Studies and Near Eastern Languages

Organizers: Dr. Anna Kollatz, Dr. Veruschka Wagner

Date: 15–16 Dec. 2022, Bonn

 

The century between 1850 and 1950 can be described, in a global perspective, as a century of transitions. During these years, a multitude of profound changes hit the world in many ways, such as in political, social and societal dimensions. Modernization processes, new concepts of education, the discussion of women’s rights and participation in political decision-making are just a few examples. The period is also strongly influenced by Western colonialism and imperialism, at least in its beginnings, while also seeing emancipation movements against these hegemonies.

In this very fluid transition period, which was of course also marked by conflicts, discourses emerged that were conducted with similar themes and similar communication media in different parts of the world, but also in global exchange. Among others, this period saw a veritable boom in satirical journals that addressed the mentioned transformative strands and conflicts, notably also by caricatures.

This conference ventures into taking stock of satirical discourses communicated in caricatures in a transcultural, comparative way. We invite colleagues from a wide range of disciplines to present case studies and engage in dialogue across disciplinary boundaries.

 

The conference will be organized along the following thematic lenses:

1. Comparing Style and Content
   1. Figures and stereotypes
   2. Painting techniques
   3. Settings
   4. Text-Context relations in (satire) journals
2. Functions and Objectives of Caricatures as
   1. Criticizing tools
   2. Propaganda
   3. Educative tools
   4. Entertainment (with a hidden agenda)
3. Thematic Strands
   1. Discussing modernization and progress
   2. Technological utopia and dystopia
   3. Gender questions
   4. Political and social questions

 

Proposals may be sent to caricatures@uni-bonn.de until March 15, 2022. Abstracts (roughly 200 words) should describe the proposed paper/panel, including topic, method, and used sources. Comparative papers/panels that examine a fixed topic in transcultural perspective (two or more regions, languages, etc. involved) are especially welcome.

Contact Info: 

Dr. Veruschka Wagner, Department for Islamic Studies and Near Eastern Languages, University of Bonn

Contact Email: 

caricatures@uni-bonn.de

CFP: Seventh OHAI Conference on Oral History in the Digital World- 2022-Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Seventh OHAI Conference 2022: Call for Papers

Oral History in the Digital World

organized by

Oral History Association of India

in association with

Jadavpur University, Kolkata

March 4-5, 2022

ONLINE

CALL FOR PAPERS

With the turn of the century, the transformation from the Oral to the Digital, in terms of practice as well as pedagogy had taken roots and is here to stay. Until recently, the work of oral historians resulted in taped audio or video recording stored in box on a shelf in a repository where a researcher had limited access. But modern expectations of immediate access are changing that practice; anyone on the Internet can listen to the recordings as and when desired. This is all the more evident as we stepped into the global pandemic in early 2020s.

The initial reaction to the Covid pandemic was to retreat, to slow down our work, reduce it to the essentials while we waited for the public health concerns to abate. As public spaces emptied and physical meetings ended, there was a sudden, panicked shift to the online, digital mode. Education and research, office work, trade and shopping, entertainment, all lurched in a panic – not just epidemiological but also moral – to a digitised, and sanitised, virtual world. The pandemic has taken its toll, not just in the loss of the “old” familiar ways of research and education, but in very real terms of illness and death.

And yet, over these two years the virtual and the digital have perhaps been domesticated. The virus has perhaps been the midwife of digitality as a state of being. As the waves of the pandemic have washed upon us over these two years, the tide has perhaps finally turned towards making the world virtual.

As oral history practitioners this is a good moment to pause and reflect on what the past two years have done to the field. Digital technologies and the practices they entail had been adopted by oral history practitioners for years now, and yet this moment can perhaps be seen as a watershed in how we self-consciously relate to the digital. What does it imply for oral history when the digital mutates from being a tool to being the ground on which we conduct our research? How does the structure, content, and context of the oral change in this pervasive digitality? What happens to oral history when the meeting of researcher and subject is irreducibly virtual? Does digitality erode the discursive power of the researcher, or does it entrench it? Can we think of the oral outside the digital anymore? How do we think of research practices which allow a more participative and democratic modes of oral history? How do we develop protocols which support those who find the digital turn overwhelming? How do we now work with questions of knowledge production, privacy, ownership and the global commons? How does Oral history practice deal with the digital panopticon?

In short, what happens, and has happened to oral history, both as practice and purpose, with this digital turn?

The 7^th Conference of the Oral History Association of India calls for papers, presentations and panels to explore and discuss the varied relations between orality and digitality.

Not surprisingly, this conference too will be held online.

Submission of abstract: February 5, 2022

Selection of abstracts: February 14, 2022

Final program: February 21, 2022

Last date of registration: Not yet open

Online login details sent to fully registered participants:

Abstract or session submission guidelines:

Your submission can be in the form of an online presentation of a paper/poster/slides/film/audio documentary/art, organizing a panel or discussion forum, or any other online mode you want to explore. Abstracts must be within 200 words. Participants who wish to present papers are requested to provide their name, designation & institution and email id along with the title of the paper. The abstract should be sent to: oralhistoryindia@gmail.com on or before the abstract submission deadline mentioned above.

CFP:ROME 30th International Conference on Language, Music, Education & Social Sciences (RLMES-2022)

 

ROME 30th International Conference on Language, Music, Education & Social Sciences (RLMES-22)

Early Bird Deadline of New Full Paper/Poster/Abstract Submissions ----- Feb. 01, 2022 (Early Bird)

ROME 30th International Conference on "Language, Music, Education & Social Sciences" (RLMES-22) scheduled on May 3-5, 2022 Rome (Italy) is for the researchers, social-scientists, scholars, engineers and practitioners from all around the world to present and share ongoing research activities. This conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration.

Presentation Options:

• Oral Presentation at Conference Venue (in Physical Presence)
• Poster Presentation at Conference Venue (in Physical Presence) 
• ONLINE (video presentation with WhatsApp/viber/Skype) 
• OFFLINE (creating PowerPoint presentation without/with recorded voice for conference participants)

All registered papers will be online at ISBN DOI Indexed Conference Proceedings OR in the ISSN journals.

SCOPUS / World of Science-ESCI Indexed Journals (OPTIONAL): All registered papers can be published online in the SCOPUS or World of Science-ESCI Indexed Journal with additional charges.

RLMES-22 is sponsored by Higher Education and Innovation Group (HEAIG).

All full paper submissions will be peer reviewed and evaluated based on originality, technical and/or research content/depth, correctness, relevance to conference, contributions, and readability. One Best Presenation Award from each session will also be distributed at the time of the conference

All accepted papers of RLMES-22 will be published in the printed conference proceedings with valid International ISBN number. Each Paper will be assigned unique Digital Object Identifier(DOI) from CROSSREF and the Proceedings of the Conference will be archived in HEAIG's Engineering & Technology Digital Library. The papers can be submitted to Emerging Sources Citation Index [THOMSON REUTERS] OR SCOPUS Indexed journals for review and possible indexing with additional charges (the conference fee is compulsory to be paid). Kindly email if interested. 

English is the official language of the conference. We welcome paper submissions. Prospective authors are invited to submit full (and original research) papers (which is NOT submitted or published or under consideration anywhere in other conferences/journal) in electronic (DOC or PDF) format alongwith the contact information.

SUBMISSION METHODS

1. Email: info@heaig.org
OR
2. Electronic Submission System ( .doc/.docx/.pdf formats)

Prospective authors are kindly invited to submit full text papers including results, tables, figures and references. Full text papers (.docx, .doc, .pdf) will be accepted by Electronic Submission System. Any question, please contact:info@heaig.org

DOWNLOADS

The following are the links to the HEAIG copyright form as well as the HEAIG conference's/Journal's template for the Camera ready Paper/Final paper:

• HEAIG Copyright Form
• HEAIG Conference .doc/.docx Template
• HEAIG Conference .doc/.docx Template ONLY Abstract

There are NO specific instructions for Poster preparation. Please print the poster of A1 size (portrait) on light weight paper and bring the printed poster at the time of the registration to the conference venue.

Contact Email:

For any inquiry about the submission and conference, please feel free to contact us at: info@heaig.org

All submitted articles should report original, previously unpublished research results, experimental or theoretical. Articles submitted to the Conference should meet these criteria and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts should follow the style of the Conference and are subject to both review and editing.

CFP: Three-Day International Conference on Comparative Literature: Frames, Methods and Practice

 Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University

Department of English and Department of Marathi

in Collaboration with

Calcutta Comparatists 1919 are

Organizing

A Virtual Three-Day International Conference

On

Comparative Literature: Frames, Methods and Practice 

4^th – 6^th March 2022

Concept Note

For its linguistic polyphony and cultural syncretism, India is one of the most curious literary sites to the comparatists. Indian Literature, since its very beginning, carries imprints of thoughts from different Parampara (traditions). Each Indian Literature is grounded within its own literary, historical and cultural receptions from other literary traditions.  In essence, any singular Indian literature is never single but comparative by nature. Due to shared access to English and the recorded histories of colonial modernity, Indian literary traditions find more common ‘comparative’ grounds with English or European Literature than Indian literary traditions and texts.

Despite the obvious scope of comparative frameworks in reading Indian literary practices, monolingual literary scholarship in Indian literature has flourished. Comparative approaches in the Indian context continue to be mediated through English largely in the form of translations. Comparative study of Indian Literature can be done best by establishing communications among people with expertise in multiple Indian languages and English. Gradual paradigm shifts in literary studies in different literature departments in India also promotes comparative approaches though not always in the name of Comparative Literature.  It often presents itself as ‘Indian Literature’, 'Indian Literature in Translation’, 'Indian Literature in English Translation', 'Literatures of the South-Asis', 'Marginal Literatures' or by introducing literary area studies, like 'North-East Indian Literature', etc. Moreover, various new approaches from social sciences also provoke comparative study of literature. The likes of Dalit Literature, Partition Literature, Literature of Migration, Minority Discourses, etc, often engage in comparative methodologies. 

Comparative Literature as a discipline re-examines the established canon of literature by historicising the literary system and establishing access into the source language of the origin of the texts and translations. Dialogue with source language in a literary study is required for foregrounding a text within and outside a particular knowledge system. That can be done best with a liberal study of literature in different disciplines. By the liberal study of Literature, we do not mean relinquishing single literature disciplines but establishing an easy dialogue between multiple traditions.

In the past few decades, literary practices have undergone momentous changes to actively challenge forms of ‘reading’ literature. This has meant that literatures often do not remain in their sanitized quarters but seek dialogues with multiplicitous literary practices and disciplines. As literatures broaden, mutate and expand we probably need to revisit ways and means of ‘doing’ comparative literature. This means re-thinking terms of exchange between various literary practices, revisiting comparative frameworks, reworking methodologies of ‘reading’ comparative networks. This conference is aimed at drawing from the complex intellectual history of comparative literature studies in India to respond to the growing need for new methods, frames and practices of comparative approaches. 

Call for Papers

A 300 word abstract of papers on the proposed concept is invited from the students, scholars and teachers from different fields by 10th February 2022. The papers for presentation should be no longer than 15 minutes followed by 5 minutes discussion. Besides, individual presentations, we also seek proposals for special panels on Comparative Literature. The first institutional comparative study of literature was conceptualised and introduced in India by Sir Asutosh Mookerjee in 1919 at the University of Calcutta. This conference pays homage to the pioneer of the discipline by naming a panel to discuss his idea and legacy. There will be a special panel called, “Sir Asutosh Mookerjee Panel on Comparative Indian Language and Literature in Single Literature Discipline” by Calcutta Comparatists 1919. Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, taught Comparative Literature, at the University of Hyderabad and contributed a lot in the discipline from South India. Her untimely demise is observed as an immense loss to the discipline. This conference also pays homage to Prof. Mukherjee by introducing a panel on her contribution. Another special panel called “Professor Tutun Mukherjee Memorial Panel on Comparative Literature” also will be there. 

Apart from these two panels, we will have several other panels. Panel proposal of 500 words on the relevant topic may be sent for a 45 minutes presentation followed by 15 minutes discussion. Each panel may contain 3 to 5 members. The papers may be focused on but not limited to the below-mentioned areas:

-        Comparative Literature in India and/or Comparative Indian Literature

-        Comparative Literature as a Course in a Single Literature Discipline

-        Comparative Literature as an Approach in the Single Literature Discipline

-        Single Literature as Comparative Literature

-     Bhakti and Sufi Traditions of India

-     Digital Humanities and Comparative literature 

-        History of Translation of Indian Literature into Indian Language/s

-        Indian Literature in English Translation and scope for Comparative Literature

-        Publishing Industry in India and Corpus of Indian Literature

-        Works on Comparative Literature in Indian Languages

-        Dalit Literature as/and Comparative Literature

-        Literature of Migration and Comparative Literature

The papers will be accepted in English, Bangla, Hindi and Marathi only. All the abstracts and queries related to the conference should be addressed to comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com . Authors of the selected papers will be intimated by 15^th February 2022 through an email. All the paper presenters and registered participants will be given a certificate for presentations/ participation. Full paper should be 5000 to 7000 words long excluding bibliography, notes, and bio. Author should follow MLA 7th edition for style sheet and end notes instead of footnotes. Full papers for peer-review for publication in a book to be published by a reputed international publishing house must be submitted by 15^th March 2022. Selected authors will be informed of the review result by 15^th April 2022. The final manuscript will be forwarded to the publisher by 7^th May 2022. Papers written in English only will be considered for this proposed book on Comparative Literature. Please note that No Extension about submitting papers at any stage will be entertained. 

Registration

There is no registration fee for the students, scholars and teachers of SNDTW University. Paper presenters from outside the university are required to pay registration fees as follows:  Participants (not presenters)- 150/-, MA- 150/-, PhD Scholars and Independent Researchers- 400/-, Faculty Members 700/-. The registration fee is the same for Indian and South Asian participants. Participants from outside South Asia requires to pay 30 US dollars as a registration fee. Registration fees should be deposited in the account of Calcutta Comparatists 1919. Registration details will be provided once the candidate is selected to present a paper at the conference. 

Coordinators

Dr Aruna Dubhashi, Head and Associate Professor, Dept. of Marathi, SNDTWU

Dr Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay, Head and Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, SNDTWU

Dr Manisha Ghatage, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, SNDTWU 

Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919

Contact Info: 

Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919Dr Mrinmoy Pramanick, Assistant Professor, Calcutta University and President, Calcutta Comparatists 1919

comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com

mpcill@caluniv.ac.in

 

Contact Email: 

comparativeliterature2022@gmail.com

URL: 

https://www.calcomp.org/

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures

 Keynotes/Plenaries/Writers

Sinan Antoon (Iraq/USA) | Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) | Blessing Obada (Germany/Nigeria) | Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya) | Michael Rothberg (UCLA) | Arundhati Roy (India)

Extended deadline for individual papers and panels: 15 February 2022

If Anglophone literatures and cultures worldwide once sprang from a contested terrain of solidarities emerging in the shadow of colonialism, many of them have been struggling with the legacies of these solidarities, with ideals of liberation that turned into new forms of oppression, and with the clamorous or muted appeal of old and new victimhoods for more than half a century now. Ethnic, racial or national victimhood and solidarity have been invoked in a cynical politics of exclusion all over the globe – from an aggressive assertion of Hindu hegemony in India to the militant Buddhism in the guise of nationalism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, the abuse of anticolonialism as an ideology of oppression in Zimbabwe. In a quite different setting, victimhood has also become a mainspring of the anxiety-infested xenophobia spawned by right-wing populism in contemporary Europe. At the same time, the oppression of minorities and the plight of political, economic and environmental refugees has generated new forms of sociality as well as solidarity.

While the 21st century has seen the exhaustion of ‘enchanted’ or ‘unconditional’ solidarities rallying around idealized images of oppressed ‘postcolonial’ or ‘third world’ collectivities, sections of academia continue to see ‘resistance’ as form of catharsis, or even a panacea for a myriad of victimhoods and grievances. Yet, Anglophone literary texts and cultural productions themselves have long since engaged in self-reflexive encounters that have undermined trite formulations of perpetrators and victims and have explored the tribulations of what Michael Rothberg has recently called ‘implicated subjects’ (2019): all modern subjects are involuntarily implicated both in the history of oppression and victimhood, often simultaneously – not only in the formerly colonizing, but also in the formerly colonized regions of the world. More often than not, these implications, which call for a ‘disenchanted’ or ‘conditional’ solidarity that holds the abuses of victimhood in the name of agency accountable, cut across habitual East/West or North/South divides: as large parts of the world are rightly admiring civil resistance against the current military rulers of Myanmar and deploring the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi, the memory of how her own government was complicit with the persecution of the Rohingya minority in Burma seems to be waning. At the same time, European admonitions to respect democracy and protect the Rohingya refugees are timely but hardly beyond reproof given the background of calculated misery in its refugee camps in the Mediterranean and unceasing daily deaths at its external frontiers.

The 2022 Annual Conference of the Association for Postcolonial Anglophone Studies (GAPS) will engage in a wide-ranging reassessment of implicated subjects, of the uses and abuses of victimhood, of different forms of agency, and of the manifold implications of English as a medium of literary and cultural expression in anglophone literatures, cultures and media. Participants are invited to scrutinize fictional encounters with ‘internal’ forms of oppression, with the ‘enemy within’ (Nandy) and ‘the danger of a single story’ (Adichie), or the excessive display of wealth and power by local bourgeoisies (Mbembe). They are also encouraged to engage in a self-reflexive discussion on the role of ‘unconditional’ and ‘conditional’ solidarities in Anglophone literary cultures and on the role of victimhood in recent debates on globalization, world literature and the Anthropocene. Furthermore, participants may wish to tackle the new solidarities expressed through concepts such as cosmopolitanism (Appiah), Afropolitanism (Selasi), conviviality (Gilroy) or environmental justice and to explore the role of anglophone literatures and cultures as ‘resources of hope’ (Raymond Williams). Participants are further welcome to focus on transitions from a politics of victimhood to a poetics of agency in anglophone literatures and cultures and to scrutinize the role of English in plurilingual contact zones across the world.

We invite contributions exploring the conference theme in areas such as:
⦁ Internal rifts: the struggle against oppressive populisms and authoritarian power in anglophone literatures and cultures
⦁ Unfinished business? The role of national and other liberations in contemporary literature and cultures
⦁ Three decades of Postcolonial Studies: Past and present understandings of agency and victimhood
⦁ Neoliberal and other capitalisms: critiques of globalization and populist resentment
⦁ The poetics and politics of indigenous sovereignty
⦁ Uneasy linkages: indigeneity and migration
⦁ Intimate enemies: “Traitors” in contemporary anglophone literatures and cultures
⦁ Civil war and after: reconciliatory imaginaries in literature, film and other media
⦁ Beyond victimology: war narratives in a decentred world
⦁ Convivial imaginaries: Resources of hope in Black and Asian British cultural production
⦁ Old and new South-South relations in anglophone studies
⦁ Victims or perpetrators? Implicated subjects in the Anthropocene
⦁ The New Anglophones: English-language writing in the Arab world
⦁ Comparisons: Franco-, hispano- and anglophone literatures in the contact zone
⦁ Teaching complexity: implicated subjects as a challenge to pedagogical practice

Work in progress in anglophone postcolonial studies – including M.A./M.Ed., PhD and Postdoc projects as well as ongoing research projects in general – can be presented in the “Under Construction” section, for which poster presentations are also welcome.

Conference Format:

Given the current dynamics of the Covid 19 pandemic, it is unlikely that we will be able to organize the conference as a full presence event. However, we remain hopeful that a hybrid format with some delegates and speakers being present at Goethe University and others joining via a video system will be possible. We are also prepared to set up the conference as a fully digital event if necessary. The final decision on the conference format will be taken at the beginning of the academic summer term at Goethe University and communicated by 15 April, 2022 at the latest.

Conference Fees:

Conference fees for those participating in presence at Goethe University (in case this will be possible) are:

GAPS members*                    Non-members/non-presenters

90 € employed **                    100 € employed **

45€ students                           50€ students

* all presenters, excluding invited speakers, are required to be GAPS members. GAPS membership form can be obtained here.

**full-time faculty and employed postdocs

For those participating digitally, there will be no conference fees.

Conference Registration:

Conference registration will open on 1 March, 2022. All conference delegates, including those participating digitally, will need to register. Access to all conference events will be possible after registration only.

If a hybrid conference format is possible, payments for those attending the conference at Goethe University will have to be made after 15 April, 2022. In this case, an early-bird rate will be available until 1 May, 2022.

Conference Dinner / Hospitality:

If a hybrid conference format is possible, delegates attending the conference at Goethe University will be informed about the conference dinner and hospitality arrangements by 15 April, 2022.

Conference convenors:Dr. Pavan Kumar Malreddy and Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler, Institute for English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Contact: info@gaps2022.com

Contact Info: 

Pavan Malreddy & Frank Schulze-Engler

Institut für England- und Amerikastudien
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
D-60629 Frankfurt a.M.

Office: IG-Farben-Haus, 4.156

 

 

 

Contact Email: 

malreddy@em.uni-frankfurt.de

URL: 

https://www.gaps2022.com/