CFP:
1.1 Writing for Liberty. Lancaster.
1.2 “After Revolution: Versions and Re-visions of Haiti.” Preston.
Call for contributions:
2.1 CELAAN: SPECIAL ISSUE: LEILA SEBBAR
New titles:
3.1 Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance
Events:
4.1 Beyond exoticism: opening up remote cultures. Liverpool.
4.2 Across the Indian Ocean symposium. London.
4.3 Colloque “La guerre d’Algérie, le sexe et l’effroi.” Paris.
4.4 Caribbean Research Seminar in the North. Stirling.
Calls for Papers
1.1 Writing for Liberty
Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research
Lancaster University, 17-18 April 2015
Keynote speaker: Véronique Tadjo, University of the Witwatersrand
Second Call for Papers
Writing for Liberty is a two-day conference hosted by the Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research at Lancaster University to be held in April 2015. This conference builds specifically on Writing for Liberty, a series of readings by established creative writers (Selma Dabbagh, Aminatta Forna, Gillian Slovo) held in 2013/14 which aimed to promote debate around fundamental issues of human liberty through the agency of creative and critical writings. In the wider context of the Centre’s work, this conference also responds to recent projects in Europe, Africa and Kurdistan and the establishment of a new authorship hub, Authors and the World, within the Centre. www.transcultualwriting.com
We are now requesting academic papers and new creative writings for reading and performance. The Writing for Liberty Conference will focus on the relationship between forms of creative writing and questions of personal, artistic, social, and political liberty. Contributions may refer to any period in history and to any social, political or cultural context, though our main emphasis will be on contemporary writing practice and critical/theoretical response.
Topics for proposals may include, but are not limited to:
– Writing and questions of textual authority
– Writing and political authority
– Writing and artistic/personal/political freedom
– Writing as resistance
– Writing as liberation
– Writing and censorship
– Writing and the nation state
– Writing beyond national contexts
The Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research
The Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (CTWR) links writers, academics and Lancaster University’s postgraduate student community to extensive research activity in creative writing and its impact on society. Our aim is to create a transnational and interdisciplinary environment. We are committed to promoting creative writing across cultures and to studying the work of writers from a wide range of social and cultural contexts. The Centre encompasses research-as-practice, action-research projects, study of historical and contemporary creative practice, the innovative application of information technology through e-science and the interrelationship between writing and social change. We promote critical, pedagogical and theoretical accounts of praxis with special emphasis on cultural exchange between practitioners and with social and political institutions.
Proposals
Please e mail your proposal to writingforliberty@lancaster.ac.uk by Friday 3 October 2014. Proposals should include a 200 word abstract (for academic papers) or summary (for creative contributions) and a 100 word bio. Panel proposals should include the panel title, abstracts or summaries and bios for all presenters. Presenters will be invited to speak for 20 minutes.
1.2 “After Revolution: Versions and Re-visions of Haiti,” Institute for Black Atlantic Research, University of Central Lancashire, Preston 9-10 July 2015
As a dual struggle against both slavery and colonialism, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) challenged and shattered the fundamental ideologies and material practices of the transatlantic world. This was founded upon the racialised and super-exploitative transatlantic slave economy and – what Aimé Césaire and others have regarded as – its proto-fascist, colonial regimes of violence.
Whereas for a long time the Haitian Revolution and its challenges were “silenced” (Trouillot) in mainstream historiography, the event has received significant attention over the last two decades, even from Western scholars at the heart of Western academe. For instance, it has been cast as the birthplace of modern philosophy (Buck-Morss), of human rights and “universal emancipation” (Nesbitt), of Black Atlantic discourse (Jenson) and as a source of alternative modernities (Fischer).
Yet, despite this recent “Haitian Turn” (Joseph) in transatlantic studies (and with notable exceptions such as the work of Ramsay, Smith, Ulysse and others), post-revolutionary Haiti continues to receive comparatively little attention. In an orientalist vein, Haiti’s post-independence history has often been depicted as a steady decline from its ground-breaking “glorious” revolution to its current state as “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.”
This conference seeks to take the centenary of the beginning of the US occupation of Haiti as an occasion to challenge such views and explore Haiti after the Revolution. While the Revolution will remain a key reference point, this conference hopes to trigger debates and discussion which will interrogate such uni-dimensional visions and versions of Haiti and explore alternatives to them. In doing so this it aims to generate a fuller picture of Haiti’s rich history and vibrant culture beyond the current focus on its revolutionary origins.
Potential topics include (but of course are not limited to)
– Post-Revolution: making sense of the Haitian Revolution
– Post-revolutionary Haiti and visual/literary culture
– Stereotypical narratives of Haiti and challenges to them
– Nineteenth-century Haiti at the intersection of slavery, anti-slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism
– Haiti on the world stage: international responses to Haitian independence and its aftermath
– Haiti and its Visitors: travel writing and the ‘Black Republic’ – Haitian national political culture since 1804
– Uneasy relations? Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean
– Haiti and 20th century anthropology/ethnography
– The U.S. Occupation and the Haitian Revolution
– The U.S. Occupation and its afterlives
– The U.S. Occupation and culture (U.S. cultural production, Haitian culture)
– Haiti and the Harlem Renaissance
– Haiti and the antebellum/post-bellum USA
– Haiti and postcolonialism
– Haiti and reparations
– Haiti in contemporary commemorative discourses on slavery and its abolition (on a local and global level)
Confirmed keynote speakers are Matthew J. Smith (University of the West Indies, Mona) and Gina A. Ulysse (Wesleyan University).
Please send an abstract for a 20 minutes paper (max. 300 words) and a short biography (max. 200 words) to the conference organisers by October 15th 2014, using the following email address:
We are looking forward to hearing from you:
The organising committee
Kate Hodgson (University of Liverpool)
Wendy Asquith (University of Liverpool)
Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool)
Jack Webb (University of Liverpool)
Raphael Hoermann (University of Central Lancashire)
Calls for Contributions
2.1 CELAAN: SPECIAL ISSUE
LEILA SEBBAR
“I write books. I write about the violence of imposed silence, exile, division. I write about my father’s land which was colonized, badly treated even still today and cruelly deported, but all this I write in my mother’s language. This is how I can actually, through fiction, live as my father’s and mother’s daughter. I trace my Algerian roads in France.”
( L’arabe comme un chant secret, Bleu Autour, 2010.)
Leila Sebbar, author, novelist and essayist, has published an impressive number of books during the past 40 years. She does not speak Arabic, the maternal language of her Algerian father, but rather that of her French mother, and this has become a richly defining theme throughout her work.
Her writing reconnects fragments of memory, explores gender issues and recomposes the shards of exiled lives. Her work is a repeated attempt to sow back and bring together the two banks of the Mediterranean: France and the Maghreb. In addition to her personal writing, she has also published many works of a collective nature, bringing together different authors addressing such shared themes as colonial Algeria, growing up Jewish in Muslim Mediterranean, to name a few.
We would would to invite your participation in the special edition of CELAAN devoted to the work of Leila Sebbar, which we anticipate will be diverse and interdisciplinary. Your texts may be in English or French, from 10 to 12 pages double-spaced, MLA style, and must be received by us no later than March 1, 2014. Please send to: ikummer@unis.org, guest editor.
Articles may deal with (but won’t be limited to) the following suggestions/themes:
the relationship to the Arabic language, the confrontation between Western and Eastern worlds, the Algerian war, the poetry of exile, History and memory, the “Other”, the mixing of cultures, women of the Maghreb in revolt, the role of images in some of Leila Sebbar’s work, the impact of Isabelle Eberhardt in Leila Sebbar’s work.
CELAAN: Numéro spécial
LEÏLA SEBBAR
« J’écris. Des livres. J’écris la violence du silence imposé, de l’exil, de la division, j’écris la terre de mon père colonisée, maltraitée (aujourd’hui encore), déportée sauvagement, je l’écris dans la langue de ma mère. C’est ainsi que je peux vivre, dans la fiction, fille de mon père et de ma mère. Je trace mes routes algériennes dans la France » (L’arabe comme un chant secret, Bleu Autour 2010)
Leïla Sebbar, romancière, nouvelliste, essayiste, a publié dans les quarante années passées, un nombre important de textes variés: romans, essais, récits. Elle est née d’un père algérien et d’une mère française, et ne parle pas la langue de son père, thème qui parcourt son oeuvre et tisse autour de la langue de nombreuses problématiques.
Ses écrits recomposent des fragments de mémoire, des déchirures du genre, des lambeaux d’exil. Elle s’est ainsi employée à recoudre les deux rives de la Méditerranée, tout en faisant entendre d’autres voix que la sienne dans bon nombre d’ouvrages collectifs qu’elle a dirigés. ( Mes Algéries en France, Enfance juive en Méditerranée musulmane…pour ne citer que ceux-ci)
Nous vous invitons à nous faire parvenir vos textes en français ou en anglais de 10 à 12 pages, double interligne, modèle MLA, avant le 1er mars, 2015 pour ce numéro spécial qui se veut éclectique et transdisciplinaire. A envoyer à: ikumer@unis.org
Quelques pistes de travail qui ne se veulent pas exhaustives:
La question de la langue arabe
Orient/occident
La guerre d’Algérie
La poétique de l’exil
Histoire et mémoire
L’étranger, le métissage
Femmes/Jeunes filles du Maghreb en révolte
Le rôle de l’image dans certaines de ses oeuvres
Isabelle Eberhardt dans l’oeuvre de Leila Sebbar
New Titles
3.1 Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014).
by Ronald Angelo
Diplomacy in Black and White reflects the capacity of leaders from disparate backgrounds to negotiate political and societal constraints to make lives better for the groups they represent. From 1798 to 1801, during the Haitian Revolution, President John Adams and Toussaint Louverture forged diplomatic relations that empowered white Americans to embrace freedom and independence for people of color in Saint-Domingue. The United States supported the Dominguan revolutionaries with economic assistance and arms and munitions; the conflict was also the U.S. Navy’s first military action on behalf of a foreign ally. This cross-cultural cooperation was of immense and strategic importance as it helped to bring forth a new nation: Haiti.
Information available at: http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/diplomacy_in_black_and_white/1/0
Events
4.1 Beyond exoticism: opening up remote cultures
British Academy Early Career Networking Event
University of Liverpool, Monday 8th September 2014
This one-day forum is one of a series of events being sponsored by the British Academy with the objective of encouraging networks of younger scholars in the fields of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The event will draw together a mix of contributors: both early-career and more experienced researchers (in disciplines including Classics, Archaeology, Egyptology, Ancient Near-Eastern Studies, Evolutionary Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Modern Languages; print journalists and others working in the broadcast media; museum professionals, publishers, and others).
The purpose of the event is to focus on the challenges that confront all academics who study cultures and regions that are remote either in time or space, and which may seem to have little ‘relevance’ to the concerns of contemporary society:
how can such studies be made comprehensible, attractive, or of value to the world outside academia?
how do we widen the range of material that receives broader coverage?
how do we avoid repeating the same narratives or approaches?
how do we ensure that our disciplines survive in a harsh climate for Higher Education?
The event will take the form of a series of debates examining (amongst other topics): the narratives by which we ‘sell’ our subjects; the audiences for our research activity and how to reach them; the obstacles to broader impact for our research (including research policy, instititutional structures, attitudes).
The event will also showcase a range of projects or activities where (potentially abstruse) subject matter has translated well for a broad audience. We will be inviting ECR’s to present their research via poster presentations which will be on display throughout the day and by participating in active debates. We will also ask all ECR’s to provide a biography with an outline of their career to date and wider research interests which will be included in the programme.
We expect to publish the outcomes of the event in a number of ways, including a short film of the day’s proceedings, a feature (by Matthew Reisz) in the Times Higher, and a publication through the British Academy’s Annual Review.
Confirmed speakers include: Professor Charles Forsdick (Liverpool, AHRC Theme Leadership Fellow, ‘Translating Cultures’), Dr Alice Stevenson (Curator Petrie Museum), Dean Paton (founder of Big Heritage, www.bigheritage.co.uk), Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck, author of The Mummy’s Curse), David Wilson (documentary-maker of ‘Who were the Greeks?’, Guilty Pleasures and other programmes), Matthew Reisz (Times Higher), Anthony Cond (Chief Executive, Liverpool University Press).
Call for participants
The event is open to early career researchers (in fixed term appointments and early in permanent appointments), advanced postgraduates (years 3 and 4), and postdoctoral fellows (especially those funded by the British Academy). If you would like to contribute/attend please send us a brief summary (no more than 200 / 300 words) of your main research areas and current research topics, including a list of planned and published outputs. Please also indicate if you would like to present a poster presentation at the event.
Where and when?
The venue will be the University’s Foresight Centre, close to Liverpool city centre and a short walk from Lime Street Station. For details of the venue and how to reach it, go to http://www.foresightcentre.co.uk/
It will run from 10.30 am till 5 pm on Monday 8th September. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
We may have some limited funds to assist with travel costs, where participants are unable to obtain funding from their own institutions please indicate in your application if you would like to be considered.
To apply or for further information please contact either Sally Hoare s.a.hoare@liv.ac.uk or Anne Landborg landborg@liv.ac.uk
4.2 Across the Indian Ocean symposium
Senate House
Wed 29th October 2014.
The Indian Ocean region has been marked as ‘hybrid’, ‘creole’, ‘creolised’, and ‘plural’. These ongoing processes have been analysed across a raft of disciplines and media and have also acted as theoretical inroads into inequalities linked to the region’s colonial past and its current economic and geostrategic positioning. Much like the Caribbean region, the Indian Ocean region experienced not only encounters between African slaves and European colonial masters and resulting cleavages created by hierarchies of race, class, gender, sexuality and language, but also great social complexity through cross-cultural exchanges in trade, labour, religion and culture.
In the way in which the politics of the past is similar to the Caribbean, this symposium seeks to explore the politics of the present across the Indian Ocean region. These comprise Mauritius, Seychelles, Réunion Island, Comoros and Madagascar.
The speakers will be Professor Francoise Vergès and Dr Shihan de Silva.
4.3 Colloque “La guerre d’Algérie, le sexe et l’effroi”
9-10 octobre 2014, la Bibliothèque nationale de France et l’Institut du Monde Arabe.
http://www.imarabe.org/colloque/la-guerre-d-algerie-le-sexe-et-l-effroi
4.4 SOCIETY FOR CARIBBEAN STUDIES
Caribbean Research Seminar in the North
Friday 26 September 2014
A7, Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA
13:00-13:30 Registration and tea/coffee
13:30-14:20
Bill Marshall (Stirling)
Speaking and Dancing in Cayenne
14:20-15:10
Silvia Espelt Bombín (St Andrews)
Frontier Alliances and Rebellions: Indigenous people and Europeans in French Guiana and Brazil (Amapá state), 17th-18th Centuries
15:10-15:40 tea/coffee
15:40-16:30
Karen Salt (Aberdeen)
All Hail the Queen: Haiti, Black Sovereignty and the Power of Recognition in the 19th-Century Atlantic World
16:30-17:20
Vahni Capildeo (Cambridge) and Kei Miller (Royal Holloway)
Poetry reading and conversation
Speakers
Bill Marshall is Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies in the Division of Literature and Languages at the University of Stirling. He is the author of The French Atlantic: Travels in Culture and History.
Silvia Espelt Bombín is a Research Fellow in Latin American History in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She is currently working on two related research projects with Mark Harris (St Andrews): Past lessons for future challenges in the Brazilian Amazon
and Rebellions, Alliances and Politics http://rebellions.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/project/.
Karen Salt is a Caribbeanist with an interest in the construction and representation of race and power, with a particular focus on Haitian politics and culture. At the University of Aberdeen, she works in the departments of English and French, and is currently completing two book projects: All Hail the Queen: Haiti, Black Sovereignty and the Power of Recognition in the 19th century Atlantic World and Twilight Spaces: Caribbean Political Ecology Amidst the Islands.
Vahni Capildeo is a Trinidadian writer of poetry and prose. She is the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow 2014-15, and is the author of No Traveller Returns, Person Animal Figure, Undraining Sea, Dark and Unaccustomed Words, and Utter.
Kei Miller was born in Jamaica and writes across a range genres. He is the author of Kingdom of Empty Bellies, There Is an Anger That Moves, The Same Earth, The Last Warner Woman, A Light Song of Light, Writing Down the Vision: Essays & Prophecies, and The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion.
Information
For travel information, please visit http://www.stir.ac.uk/about/getting-here/
For maps of the campus, please visit http://www.stir.ac.uk/about/getting-here/maps/
Registration is free, but compulsory. Please email gemma.robinson@stir.ac.uk.
A reservation will be made at a local restaurant for those wishing to go to dinner after the seminar. Please contact gemma.robinson@stir.ac.uk for booking, and with any other enquiries/dietary requirements.
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