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Call for Papers "Cultural Production and Negotiation of Borders" 2008 European Conference Association of Borderland Studies, University of Tromsø Barents Institute Kirkenes (Norway) 11-13 September 2008 __________________________________________________ This interdisciplinary conference will cross the academic divide between border studies in the social sciences and border theory/border poetics in the humanities in examining the ways cultural practices use discursive and semiotic strategies in order to imagine and negotiate the border in its social and historical context. It will attempt to further our understanding of the role of culture in subjective interactions with the border by border-crossers and by border zone dwellers. While focusing on these bottom-up perspectives, it will also raise questions about the need for localized solutions in top-down policy-making, actualised with the increasing economic significance of cultural production and consumption. It will ask who initiates and who benefits from such cultural practices, and what their symbolic effects are for social conditions. It aims to place cultural processes of bordering in historical contexts and show the role of cultural memory in the formation of borderscapes. It will trace the transferability of the border concept to questions of identity, subjectivity and medial exposition as facilitated by cultural practices. Suggested themes for panels: - cultural border practices and sociological concepts of cultural belonging - historical processes of cultural border-marking and negotiation - economic and political importance of cultural borderings and border zone culture - discursive, narrative, and symbolic strategies in border culture and border poetics - the cultural turn in sociogeographical border studies - cultural practice and social agency in border regions - border ethics and Kantian borderology in a cultural frame - culture as a source of critical perspectives on borders, justice and exclusion - psychoanalytic understandings of cultural articulation of border subjectivity - reflexivity in cultural border discourses and policy - gender in the cultural production of borders - the role of media as place of border dialogue - external and internal borders in culturally mediated migration narratives - new forms of art in the cultural negotiation of borders - cultural borderscapes and historical memory - border festivals, border art projects, border museums and border tourism - Arctic and Sub-Arctic borders - the cultural history of the Norwegian-Russian-Finnish borderland Papers on both theoretical questions and on border zones worldwide, and particularly on the Norwegian-Russian-Finnish borderland, are welcome. The conference will be held in Kirkenes, in cooperation with the Barents Institute, and will include a field trip to the border and to cultural sites on both sides of the border, along with a visit to the Borderlands Museum in Kirkenes. Please send abstracts for papers by 15 March 2008 to Johan Schimanski. The registration deadline will be 1 May 2008. The registration fee of NOK 4640 includes 3 hotel nights, full board and the field trip. For more information and updates, see: http://uit.no/humfak/borderpoetics/3 Arrangers: Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe, Border Poetics working group, University of Tromsø: http://uit.no/humfak/borderpoetics/ Einar Niemi, History Department, University of Tromsø: http://uit.no/historie/ Urban Wråkberg, Research Director, Barents Institute, Kirkenes: http://www.barentsinstitute.org/ Contact: Johan Schimanski & Stephen Wolfe Border Poetics Working Group Faculty of Humanities University of Tromsø NO-9037 Tromsø Norway PHONE: +47-77 64 42 31/77 64 42 72 Email: [email protected] Web: http://uit.no/humfak/borderpoetics/3 __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
