Call for papers: Location/Dislocation

California State University, Sacramento
Sixth Annual Festival of the Arts Art History Symposium
Symposium date: Saturday, March 21, 2009
Proposal deadline: January 16, 2009

We invite 300-word proposals for 20-minute lectures on the theme of “location and dislocation” in the history of art. The symposium is open to a wide range of historical and contemporary topics on the placement and displacement of artists, identities, artworks, texts, collections, and cultures. “Location” is broadly defined as geographic, temporal, racial, sexual, virtual, invented, or actual. We welcome proposals from historians and theorists of early modern, modern, and contemporary art of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas with research interests in architecture, design, visual culture, and cross-disciplinary studies.

Please email your proposal with a one-paragraph professional biography to
eobrien@csus.edu or mail them to Elaine O’Brien, Art Department, California
State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819-6061.

Call for papers: Transnationalism and beyond: Travelling Terms in Literary and Critical Discourse

The Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (Carleton University), in association with the Canadian Comparative Literature Association and the Association des professeur-e-s de français des universités et collèges canadiens

Carleton University, 23-24-25 May 2009

Transnationalism, transculturation, diaspora, migrancy, postcoloniality, ethnicity, mestizaje, multiculturalism, creolization, these are only some of the rubrics that literary critics employ as a corrective to the national paradigm of literary study and to call into question singular cultural, national and linguistic allegiances. Such terms are variously evoked in discussions of immigration, mobility, temporary and permanent forms of displacement, and other forms of cultural and geographic flow. Indeed, closely related phenomena connected to globalization are being analysed through divergent theoretical frameworks and the vocabularies that attend these frameworks. This panel will explore the root causes of these divergences in terminology. More specifically, we will ask:

* Do these terminological divergences point to different methods of literary analysis that offer distinct advantages or disadvantages?

* How much overlap or mutual influence exists among these models? Should there be more dialogue between them?

* To what extent do these critical vocabularies reflect divergences among disciplinary traditions or among national, linguistic and regional traditions of literary practice and study?

* Are there tensions created by the movement across fields and disciplines of vocabularies that have specific, local origins?

* What do these terms tell us about particular historical, geopolitical and ideological considerations and their impact on critical discourse?

We invite proposals for papers that will engage with some of the above questions in relation to a range of literary traditions. Please forward your proposals (300 to 400 words) to one of the following organizers by January 15, 2009:

Sarah Casteel;Pascal Gin;Catherine Khordoc

Call for papers: Mediating Ethnic Identity in the Americas: Ethnic Filmmaking and Film Politics in Globalizing Markets

As part of the year-long research group entitled “E Pluribus Unum?: Ethnic Identities in Transnational Integration Processes in the Americas,” this conference aims to analyze the multivalent roles of media in the construction of ethnic identities in the Americas. We will explore how cultural production, as it moves across borders, continually reshapes ethnicity in the public imaginary. Moreover we will address the complexities surrounding ethnic self-representations and regimes of representation in the context of mass media. For this interdisciplinary conference, we invite scholars, film and video makers and producers, representatives of festival circuits and government institutions, as well as cultural policy makers and television producers to examine formations of ethnic identities in the media.

The following topics are especially welcome: • Appropriation of modes of production and self-representation • Uses of media as strategies of cultural resistance • Conflicting ethnicities: Media as a resource of identity politics • Signifying practices: Aesthetics and performativity in the field of identity politics • Impact of cultural politics and financing on the construction of ethnic identity and self-representation • The role of cultural festivals in the construction and dissemination of ethnic identities • Cultural industries and discourses on ethnic identities
Conference languages are English and Spanish. Travel and accommodation costs may be covered depending on the success of a funding application – we will inform participants about this closer to the date of the conference.

Organizers: JProf. Dr. Sebastian Thies and Dr. Libia Villazana
Abstracts: Please send abstracts (between 150 and 250 words) in English or Spanish for 20-minute papers by December 31, 2009 to: Trixi.Valentin@uni-bielefeld.de

Your abstracts should include:
A. Your name, contact details and institutional affiliation;
B. Title and topic of presentation;
C. Three to five key words, which will help the reviewers classify your proposal;
D. Technical requirements for presentation.
Notification of acceptance will be sent out in January 2009.

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Call for papers – Yet Another Media Conference 2009 – Adopted/Adapted Images*

Early February 2009 / Berlin / At the short film festival *EMERGEANDSEE /
*In cooperation with the European Media Studies of the University Potsdam
and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam

*Adoption/Adaptation*

Against the background of the modern age and the progressing globalisation,
cultures are meeting in films. These allow you to catch a glimpse of
an unknown environment. But in the context of globalisation, can there still
exist any “new” images? Looking at a worldwide media industry, one could
assume that images are recomposed out of past ones and multiply themselves
through reciprocal exchange. One speaks of “Migrating Images”, “Hybrid
Pictures” and similar terms.
The subject of the *Yet Another Media Conference *in February 2009 will be
“Adopted/Adapted Images”, that means the re-interpretation and adaptation of
cultural images through film.

The emphasis is not on questioning the origin of images, but on examining the
productivity of such processes, as the conference title suggests. The gesture
of adoption is used as a central question. Does adoption mean to give shelter
or to take possession? How do adaptation and adoption correspondent to each
other? Not the Remake should be in focus, but cultural images and the
potential of their reception, transformation or re-interpretation.

*Production/reception of images*

Globalisation and cinematic Post-Modernism have not only brought us a new
production attitude but also a new reception attitude of films. The task
today is to handle the images that roam about, to use them, to reflect them
and to be aware of the possibly existing incongruence between production and
reception.

Our everyday reception is increasingly based on cinematic images that are no
longer assigned to another culture, but that are re-interpreted as a part of
our own culture of reception. The question arises again if the origin is
registered into the image? Can images be newly implemented in other cultures?
Will they receive any change there? How do we understand “foreign” images? Or
do we just find what we are looking for, anyway?

On the side of the production, both global and local interests accompany the
creation of films. Not only in the field of film funding and international
co-production. How much does its production environment influence a film and its
images, but also its reception? Does film play with these influences or does
it respond to the requirements of a market? Are images globally
market-orientated or are they developed through an intercultural exchange?

*Yet Another Media Conference*

The focus of the conference is on the mechanisms, which stand behind
adoption/adaptation. Which ways do cultural identities take (or that what
pretends to be an identity)? Which need stands behind the gradual
re-interpretation of “the other”?

What happens to the structures and mechanisms of cultural comprehension? Do
frontiers appear through the world wide cultural exchange? Which problems and
disturbances are possibly arising?

*/Conditions/*

* Lecture: 20min + 20min discussion
* One page A4 abstract has to be handed in
* Conference language: German or English (in case of a German
lecture we ask for an English summary as handout)
* Deadline: 30.11.2008
* Short CV: relevant stages of scientific/professional background__
* informations: conference@emergeandsee.org