HT 2018 Week 4 Updates

The book Minding Borders: Resilient Divisions in Literature, the Body and the Academy, edited by Nicola Gardini, Adriana X. Jacobs, Ben Morgan, Mohamed-Salah Omri and Matthew Reynolds, is out with Legenda. Rather than celebrating the crossing of borders, or dreaming of their abolition, Minding Borders traces their troubling and yet generative resilience. It explores how borders define as well as exclude, protect as well as violate, and nurture some identities while negating others. The contributors range comparatively across geography, politics, cultural circulation, creativity, and the structuration of academic disciplines, hoping that the analysis of borders in one domain may illuminate their workings in another. Whatever other form a border takes it is always also a border in the mind. For further information, see here: http://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Minding-Borders.

In Week 4 OCCT hosted Journeys in Translation, a poetry reading and discussion. Poets and translators Flair Donglai Shi, Antonella Delmestri, Ambrose Musiyiwa, and Kathleen Bell discussed their work and looked at the 14 poems from the anthology Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) that are being translated into other languages and art forms as part of Journeys in Translation. On Monday of Week 4, the Discussion Group took place in the brand New Library and Academic Centre at St Anne's. 

 

CFPs and Events

1. Please note that the deadline for the session below  has been extended to February 14. This session is part of the Intersections/Intersezioni conference which will take place in Florence (May 31, June 1).

https://sites.google.com/site/intersezioni2018/home/intersections---call-for-papers/2017---proposed-sessions-1

BELONGING AND UNBELONGING: SPACE, IDENTITY & IMAGINATION

It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

If nations are “imagined communities”, as Benedict Anderson wrote, some are more imagined than most. In the recent years, Europe has seen an upsurge in nationalism. In an era of increasing interconnectedness and globalisation, several ‘small homelands’ harbour movements claiming independence. Where does this drive for secession and self-determination come from? As Montserrat Guibernau writes in Belonging: Solidarity and Division in Modern Societies (Polity, 2013), “although Western societies are profoundly individualistic, […] there is a dimension of the individual that can only be satisfied by his or her sense of belonging to a group. This social aspect is generally fulfilled in situations within which individuality is transcended though experiences of feeling in unison with others: that is, by sharing some common interests or objectives which enable individuals to rise above their isolation and feelings of ontological insecurity.”

The aim of this panel is to discuss the intersections between place and identity that create feelings of belonging or unbelonging. What does it mean to belong to a place? In which way does space shape identity and viceversa? Is the idea of ‘cosmopolitan belonging’ a contradiction in terms? Does cosmopolitan identity require the weakening of national or local identity? What does it mean to ‘come’ from a country? Should we ask, instead of “where are you from”, “where are you a local”? Since nations are fictional realities, how do literature, philosophy, art and cinema contribute to their imagining and creation? And, how can we use literature, art, cinema literature, philosophy, art and cinema to deconstruct such realities?

I invite papers that examine the following issues:

·         Nationalism and its intersection with literature, philosophy, cinema, and art
·         The relationship between belonging and exclusion
·         The relationship between belonging and territory
·         Boundaries and group identity, ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’
·         Space and its relationship with identity
·         How literature, philosophy, cinema, and art are used to foster nationalism or to debunk its narrative and myths
·         Italian nationalism in comparison with other types of nationalism
·         Secessionisms within Italy and in other parts of Europe
·         Italians and their different ways or feelings of belonging

I encourage applications that compare Italy with other countries, cultures or political situations.

Please contact Stefano Bellin by February 14th. 

University College London – s.bellin@ucl.ac.uk  

 

2. CALL FOR PAPERS

Learning from Cultural Literacy: Practice and Theory

Monday 9 – Tuesday 10 July 2018

Monash University Prato Centre, Via Pugliesi 26, 59100 Prato, Italy

Symposium of the Cultural Literacy in Europe Forum [CLE], organised by Monash University, with the support of the Monash Education Academy. All info: http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/cle-symposium-2018/

Founded in 2007 and grounded in Literary and Cultural Studies, CLE aims to bring together academics, artists, policy-makers and members of the cultural industries, as well as a growing number of partner institutions, in a Forum for discussion and development across Europe and beyond. Cultural Literacy addresses cultures and cultural artefacts as text-like constructions that are inherently readable and subject to interpretation. All info: http://cleurope.eu/

The first biennial Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference took place in London in April 2015, the second in Warsaw in 2017. We are now pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the second Interim Symposium of the Cultural Literacy in Europe forum. The Symposium serves a dual purpose – as an independent event, and as an introductory session to the biennial Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference (next to be held in Lisbon in 2019).

Under the broad thematic umbrella of Learning from Cultural Literacy, this interdisciplinary Symposium aims to share new research on Cultural Literacy and its application to different fields. We welcome proposals that touch on one or more of the following areas:

·         Pedagogical approaches to Cultural Literacy: how can we best teach/learn using Cultural Literacy as a pedagogical method, or how can we teach/learn about Cultural Literacy, as a subject matter?
·         What can translation teach us about Cultural Literacy?
·         Creative representations of Cultural Literacy.
·         Semiotics and cultural readability, different approaches to reading and interpreting the world.
·         Cultural Literacy and digital humanities.
·         Literature and Cultural Literacy: literary theory vs. literary practice.
·         Cultural Literacy and inter/transdisciplinarity.

 

The Symposium will include presentations, discussion papers, workshop sessions and roundtables on potential research areas for collaborative international projects through publications and grants, in Europe and abroad.

FORMAT

The proposed format will include practice-based workshops, paper presentations, and roundtables. We will also have a forum for doctoral student presentations in the evenings.

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Contributions will be in English. Papers will be a maximum of 10 minutes long.

Proposals for workshops must be at least one hour long.

The themes for the roundtable discussions will be determined by the Programme Committee, and announced in advance. Please send a 200-300 word abstract of your proposed paper or workshop including the title of your proposal, your name, contact details, and affiliation to Ms Eloise Faichney at: eloise.faichney@monash.edu.au.

Deadline for proposals: 5pm Monday 19 March 2018 (CET)

Registration (includes lunch, coffee, programme):

 

Standard                                   95 euros            CLE Member: 75 euros
Student/Unwaged                       45 euros            CLE Member: 36 euros
Early Bird (by 14th May 2018)      60 euros            CLE Member: 48 euros

 

To become a CLE Member, see info & application form at http://cleurope.eu/membership/

 

Accommodation:

See: http://monash.it/facilities/accommodation

 

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Prof Loredana Polezzi                 (Cardiff University)
Prof Naomi Segal                       (Birkbeck, University of London)
Prof Rita Wilson                         (Monash University)
Assoc Prof Sarah McDonald         (Monash University)
Dr Heather Connelly                   (Lincoln University)
Dr Gabriel García Ochoa             (Monash University)

 

 

Dr Eleni Philippou

Comparative Criticism and Translation

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