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Call for Papers "Traversing Transnationalism: The Horizons of Literary and Cultural Studies" Book project edited by Ronit Frenkel (University of Johannesburg), Pier Paolo Frassinelli (University of the Witwatersrand), David Watson (University of Uppsala) __________________________________________________ We are soliciting essays for a volume that aims to contribute to a consideration of the politics and aesthetics of transnationalism which currently figure prominently in both literary and cultural studies. With an avid reassertion of nationalism and national boundaries throughout the world post 9/11, coupled with the increase of debates regarding transnationalism and cosmopolitanism in academic circles, the need for such studies becomes increasingly important. What is the nature of transnationalism, and can it be differentiated from other ways of imagining overarching networks such as globalization? Is it a way of giving allegiance to a global community that emphasizes detachment from local cultures? Does it promote multiple attachments to more than one nation or community? Or is it, as its opponents suggest, an apolitical and celebratory cosmopolitanism that champions consumerism and elite mobility? What role does transnationalism play within a globalized paradigm that is often resisted through various nationalisms? What is the relationship between the ongoing erosion of cultural boundaries or territories of knowledge, traditionally marked by the nation-state, and the function still played by the state as a political and military apparatus? These are some of the questions that we wish to explore in this volume. We are interested in case studies ranging across sites from the Southern to the Northern hemisphere, and across the divide between East and West. We seek articles that explore the existence of more than one kind of cosmopolitanism, and more than one kind of transnational connection, between the local and the global. By focusing on transnational connectivity and redrawing rigid disciplinary contexts, that are often based in cold war geography, we want to draw attention to the different ways in which transnational practices are articulated in and across specific locations and/or periods. In considering transnationalism as both a form of politics, as well as an aesthetic, the essays hosted in this volume will depict a specter haunting national imaginaries in complicated and contradictory ways. The scope of this interdisciplinary collection is broad: it aims to deal with various forms of literary and non-literary texts, and to engage directly with urgent theoretical dilemmas. It has two types of readers in mind: readers interested in how transnational discourses have been articulated in specific contexts and circumstances, and readers looking for an intervention into debates on transnationalism that seeks to draw attention to its complex and plural character. Please send David Watson and/or Ronit Frenkel 250-300 word proposals for chapters before 15 May 2007. Selected articles will be due for submission (and blind review) by 1 October 2007. David Watson [email protected] Ronit Frenkel [email protected] Contact: Dr Ronit Frenkel English Department University of Johannesburg P.O. Box 524 Auckland Park, 2006 South Africa Tel: +27 (011) 489 2063 Fax: +27 (011) 489 3615 Email: [email protected] __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
