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Call for Papers Theme: Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners Type: 7th Global Conference Institution: Inter-Disciplinary.Net Mansfield College, University of Oxford Location: Oxford (United Kingdom) Date: 14.–16.7.2016 Deadline: 29.1.2016 __________________________________________________ Strangers: in tattered clothes, in masks, in dark alleys or migrating across frozen fields… Aliens: living next door, just arrived, long-time residents, trying to stand out or trying to fit in… Foreigners: in desperate need, invited in or kept out, scapegoated, used, necessary… Strangers, Aliens, and Foreigners: All of us, you, me, your family, your history, everyone is a stranger to someone, an alien in some country, a foreigner abroad or at home… The Strangers, Aliens, and Foreigners research project invites you to explore the crucial place that “outsiders” have for the constitution of self, communities and societies. In particular, the 2016 conference seeks to assess world transformations brought about by new forms of migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as well as the impact they have on the conceptions we hold of self and other. Looking to encourage innovative trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers, narratives, presentations, artwork, or performances from all disciplines, professions, and vocations which struggle to understand what it means for people, the world over, to forge a sense of self in rapidly changing contexts where it is no longer possible to ignore the importance of strangers, aliens, and foreigners for our contemporary nations, societies and cultures. Spanning 7 years, the project has, through five previous conferences and multiple publications, addressed diverse topics including: - Imagining Strangers, Aliens, and Foreigners - Acquiring and Gendering Strangeness - Place and Strangeness - Work, Migration and Emotion - Representing and integrating Foreigners - Integration Challenges - The Weight of History - Political Imagination The sixth meeting of this global project on Strangers, Aliens, and Foreigners will examine the important issue of migrants and the representation of foreigners in politics and culture. Recent refugee crises in Europe, Africa, Australia and elsewhere have highlighted the critical issue of the response to “strangers” and the willingness or unwillingness to of citizens to integrate strangers into society. More importantly, the view of the “strangers” themselves and how they are created as alien to society will be explored. In exploring these issues, we will necessarily look to history and the theoretical conception of the “other” in considering the present and future of strangers, aliens, and foreigners. The focus of the conference will be on the creation of and uses for foreignness (by institutions, culture, media, education, etc), migrations, and the impact of strangers on the self and society: - Demarcating Strangers, Aliens, and Foreigners - The experience of and creation of alien spaces and strangeness - The language of “Alien-ness”: how strangers are described in the media and how this shapes the perception of foreigners - Depictions of Strangers, Aliens, Foreigners in art, film, videogames, online forums, political speech, advertising, and other media - Nationalism and how nationalism is used to create fear or acceptance of strangers - How humour, literature, and performance are impacted and enhanced by the concept of foreignness - The needs of foreigners and the creation of new communities - How to mediate and defuse tensions in communities affected by strangers - Mapping strangeness: the cartography of alien landscapes - Acceptance / rejection of otherness - Cultures of strangeness: food, family, music - Migration and its effects on self-conception - Narratives, recordings, discourses of otherness Presentations which deal with related themes will also be considered. Call for Cross-Over Presentations The Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners project will be meeting at the same time as a project on Torture and another project on Empathy. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission “Crossover Submission”. What to Send 300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 29th January 2016. All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed. You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 12th February 2016. If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 3rd June 2016. Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order: a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords. E-mails should be entitled: Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners Abstract Submission Where to Send Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chairs with listed emails: Organising Chairs: Jonathan Gourlay: [email protected] Rob Fisher: [email protected] This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. A number of eBooks and paperback books have emerged from the work of the project. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference. Ethos Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation. Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence. For further details and information please visit the conference website: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/cultures-traditions-societies/research-streams/strangers-aliens-and-foreigners/call-for-papers/ __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
