__________________________________________________
Call for Papers "Postcolonial Translocations" 20th Annual GNEL/ASNEL Conference Gesellschaft für die Neuen Englischsprachigen Literaturen (GNEL) Association for the New Literatures in English (ASNEL) University of Münster Münster (Germany) 21-24 May 2009 __________________________________________________ Cultural products emerge from ever more shifting grounds, and translocation is becoming increasingly significant: narrative fiction, poetry, drama, and film are created with a view to being marketed in several languages and markets; authors and producers move from one country to another; global audiences consume cultural products in different locales, creating demands in several marketplaces; national borders are fought over and redrawn, materially as well as textually, further undermining any sense of a stable location. Translocation denotes more than a simple change of location or dislocation (which often implies a privileging of origins over new locations), because this concept can leave open points of departure and destination. Translocation is not only a process (the transfer of people, cultural products, borders), but can also mean a new kind of location, a trans-location consisting of fractured and variously connected spaces. Postcolonialists read contemporary and historical texts across disparate geographic and temporal spaces. In the context of globalisation and neo-imperialisms, not only unequal development and political instability but also violence and gender inequality continue to shape complex postcolonial realities; nation and narration, place and displacement, location and migration remain major paradigms of postcolonial critique. The postcolonial lexicon clearly indicates our concern with placement, movement and interconnection. But arguably our understanding of what constitutes a specific location has dramatically changed over the last few decades and requires reading practices which reflect the communicative, political and aesthetic concerns of translocal representation. The growing body of texts which linguistically, aesthetically, and thematically draw on and combine distinct cultural repertoires is an indication of the increasing relevance of postcolonial translocations today. Under the sign of translocation, this conference promotes a critical evaluation of postcolonial texts and media whilst also investigating their institutional academic contexts. Possible topics for papers and panels include: - Border regimes and border-crossings - Imagining translocal space - Representations of forced and voluntary relocations (incl. slavery, indentureship, transportation, migration) - Postcolonial cultural transformations - Authority and authenticity in postcolonial texts - Transmigration - Translation and translocation - Translocal food and its representations - Moving species: biological transfers - Online writing, online reading - Cyber diasporas - Diaspora literature - Travel writing - Academic locations and reallocations of Postcolonial Studies - 20 years on: GNEL/ASNEL and its institutional locations You can email abstracts of papers (20 minutes) or proposals for panels comprising three papers (90 minutes) to the following address: [email protected] The first call for papers will close on 30 September 2008. Contact: GNEL 2009 Conference Team Johannisstr. 12-20 48143 Münster Germany Tel.: +49 251 83-24593 Fax: +49 251 83-25621 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.gnel2009.de __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
