Calls for Papers
1.1 Research in African Literatures special issue: “Post-Nation” in African Literary Writing: Globalities and Localities
1.2. Crisis and Beyond: The Literatures of Canada and Quebec
1.3 International Conference: Progress, change and development: past, present and future (University of Portsmouth, 4- 6 June 2015)
1.4 International Conference: “What is Postcolonial Thought?” (University of the Antilles, Schoelcher Campus, Martinique, November 2015)
1.5 RAL Special Issue on Ken Saro-Wiwa as Public Intellectual
New Titles
2.1 Special Issue: “War, Memory, Amnesia: Postwar Lebanon.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies (Volume 18, Issue 5, 2014)
Announcements
3.1 SFPS on Twitter (@SFPS_UK) and Facebook
3.2 Postdocs at the Univ. of Pittsburgh
3.3 New Series: Transcript
3.4 Summer School: Black Europe
3.5 Postcolonial Studies Association: Postgraduate Essay Prize
Calls for Papers
1.1 Research in African Literatures special issue: “Post-Nation” in African Literary Writing: Globalities and Localities
Calls for Papers
Research in African Literatures Special Issue on Interrogating the “Post-Nation” in African Literary Writing: Globalities and Localities
Guest Editor: Madhu Krishnan
What is Africa? Where is Africa written and in whose image is Africa constructed? These questions have become commonplace refrains in discussions surrounding African literary writing, appearing on the pages of scholarly journals, at large-scale celebrations of African writing around the globe, and through often-vitriolic debates held in cyberspace. Despite, or indeed because of, the global expansion of Anglophone African literature over the last ten years, the tensions that mediate the fraught relationship between aesthetic and political representation in the dissemination of this body of work remain as acute as ever.
At the center of the debates and conflicts that mark the continued emergence of African literatures in a global literary market has been the role of the nation and the author’s position within it. Helon Habila, in a Guardian review of NoViolet Bulawayo’s Booker prize–nominated We Need New Names, for instance, castigates the appearance of what he calls an “aesthetic of suffering” in African literature, an aesthetics which, he argues, evokes “pity and fear, but not in a real tragic sense, more in a CNN, Western-media-coverage-of-Africa, poverty-porn sense,” pandering to an authorized global image of Africa. Instead, Habila calls for writers of African literatures to strive toward what he terms a post-nationalist aesthetic as “the best potential [for African writing] to liberate itself from the often predictable, almost obligatory obsession of the African writer with the nation and with national politics.”
While not unwarranted as a commentary on the voyeuristic aesthetics that have enveloped much contemporary African fiction published in North America and Europe, Habila’s comments have not been without rebuttal. Brian Bwesigye, writing on the influential African arts blog This Is Africa, for instance, accuses Habila of imposing his own “single story” (c.f. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s now-famous TED talk) on the continent through an insistence on what Ghanaian writer Taiye Selasi has dubbed “Afropolitianism,” a sense of simultaneously situated and diffuse cosmopolitanism particular to Africa. Indeed, Bwesigye highlights the importance, for writers from the continent, of engaging with the social and political issues most pressing to their respective localities, no matter how bleak, a view seemingly supported by the emergence of locally based and nationally rooted independent publishers across Africa.
Taking Habila’s comments and the responses they have engendered as its premise, this special issue invites papers that explore the following questions:
• What does it mean to suggest that African writing today is “post-nationalist?”
• Is post-nationalist the same as post-national?
• How does the ethnonation interact with the notion of post-nationalist African writing?
• Under the imperatives of transnational capital, what forms of “post-nationalism” are available to the African writer?
• Has the label “African writer” outgrown its utility?
• What sorts of localities and globalities are being constructed in writing from the African continent?
• Can we make distinctions between “local” and “global” African literatures?
• Is the notion of the post-national inherently incompatible with a literary vision bounded within the nation?
• How do language, location, and aesthetic forms contribute to the vision of the (post)-nation in African literature today?
Proposals are welcomed for papers within the field of literature, but also film, music, and the visual arts. Comparative and cross-geographical approaches are particularly welcomed, as are papers that take a critical view toward the construction of the “global” and the “local.”
All finished manuscripts are expected to conform to the standard RAL guidelines published in every issue of the journal. Abstracts of no more than 500 words are due by March 15, 2015 and notification of selection will be made by April 30, 2015. Final papers are due November 2015 and will be subject to peer review. The guest editor encourages potential contributors to establish early contact via email to madhu.krishnan@bristol.ac.uk (Madhu Krishnan).
1.2 Crisis and Beyond: The Literatures of Canada and Quebec
CALL FOR PAPERS
APPEL À COMMUNICATIONS
Crisis and Beyond: The Literatures of Canada and Quebec
Écriture de la crise : dans la tourmente et au-delà
Les littératures au Canada et au Québec
Part 1: September 2015, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Part 2: September 2016, The Banff Centre, Canada
In the midst of global violence, unrest, and environmental disaster, a sense of crisis encapsulates us. According to Slavoj Žižek in Living in the End Times (2010), “the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero point,” comprised of “the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.” On the other hand, recent theorizations in the field of affect studies, such as Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (2011), prompt us not only to rethink our attachments to previously held notions of the good life – attachments that have led to our contemporary crises – but to articulate new modes of being or becoming. Writers in turn intervene in ways of thinking about and relating to a time of crisis. In the post-9/11 backdrop of the critical essays of L’horizon du fragment (2004) Nicole Brossard articulates her “desire to take up again the senseless quest for meaning and beauty” while other writers rely on derision, humor, and irony to show ways and means of “how to succeed in one’s hypermodernity and save the rest of one’s life” (see Nicolas Langelier, 2010; Nicolas Dickner, 2009).
Organized by the Canadian Studies Centre (CSC) at the University of Innsbruck and the Canadian Literature Centre (CLC) at the University of Alberta, this two-part bilingual (English-French) conference seeks to explore how crisis directs or transforms First Nations, Québécois, and Canadian writings in English and French, and how authors and intellectuals endeavour to counterbalance the social, economic, and ideological insecurities we live in. Are there identifiable thematic or stylistic characteristics that mark a literature of crisis, in crisis, and leading beyond it? We seek to understand how writing deals – on either an aesthetic, a thematic, a political, or a personal plane – with global disorder and which strategies it employs to stand up against the hauntings of planetary death, ideological and epistemological collapse, financial breakdown, the contemporary legacies of history, environmental disaster, or the electronic age. How can crisis merge, through writing, with deliberate mobilization, political resistance, radical transgression, and agency towards social change and transformation? Can irony – or even humor – counterbalance disaster and give humanity new hope? We are interested in all forms of narratives (fictional, poetic, non-fictional, theoretical, cinematic, performative) of vulnerability, trauma or dystopia, and in ways that lead beyond crisis. Of particular interest are productions that reveal First Nations, Québécois, and Canadian literatures as transnational, cross-border, postcolonial, feminist, or transgender practices.
Among other related lines of critical inquiry, participants are encouraged to consider the following questions:
● What is the relationship between crisis and vulnerability, fatigue, or nostalgia? Can these elements figure as a position of connection, openness, ethics, and social change?
● How do uncertainties about the present – conveyed through a sense of lateness, ending, or apocalyptic apprehension – emerge in literature?
● How are historiographical writing, testimony, and the ethics of those practices determined by crisis?
● How can feminist, queer, and transgender readings reconfigure our understanding of crisis?
● How does the electronic shift in communication produce a sense of instantaneity and anxiety of unmapped and rapidly transformed territories? What are the positive effects of modern communication methods and how do they affect literary production?
● How does the body experience crisis? What are the relationships between crisis, trauma, writing, corporeality, affect, and embodiment?
● How do literatures negotiate boundaries: between the local and the global, between material and virtual environments, between different times and spaces, between the human and the non-human?
● Does the critical predominance of the prefix “post” (postmodernism, postcolonialism, postfeminism, postnationalism, or more recently, posthuman) figure today as a sense of an ending or of a dawning? Does the “post” announce the creation of new and alternative poetic and political paradigms?
● What new ethical, political, and aesthetic constructions emerge in literature in an age of information and surveillance and in the very decry of damage, violence, and the violation of human rights?
● What new futurities emerge from dystopian writing? Does dystopian writing substitute the need for new utopias?
● Is the writing of crisis at the beginning of the 21st century a “First World” (Alfred Sauvy) phenomenon? How do the literatures of the so-called developed, capitalist, and industrial countries extend to concrete experiences of Canada’s First Nations and of the so-called “Third World”?
● Is crisis writing a prerogative of the privileged?
In the treatment of any of these possible and other related topics, we encourage comparative, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies. We invite proposals of traditional 20-minute papers as well as other forms of presentation such as short 10-minute position papers, panel discussions, or pecha kucha presentations.
Conference or 3-4 people panel proposals (250 words), in English or French, with a short biographical note (50 words), should be submitted to Ursula Moser (ursula.moser@uibk.ac.at) and Marie Carrière (carriere@ualberta.ca) by January 1, 2015.
Organizers
● Ursula Moser, Director, Canadian Studies Centre, University of Innsbruck, Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
● Marie Carrière, Director, Canadian Literature Center/Centre de littérature canadienne, University of Alberta
Conference Committee 2015
● Birgit Däwes, University of Vienna
● Kit Dobson, Mount Royal University
● Doris G. Eibl, University of Innsbruck
● Evelyne Gagnon, University of Alberta
● Adrien Guyot, University of Alberta
● Libe Garcia Zarranz, University of Innsbruck
● Gudrun M. Grabher, University of Innsbruck
● Daniel Laforest, University of Alberta
● Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner, University of Innsbruck
● Katharina Pöllmann, University of Innsbruck
● Helga Ramsey-Kurz, University of Innsbruck
● Srilata Ravi, University of Alberta
The first symposium will take place in the beautiful historic city of Innsbruck from September 30th to October 3rd, 2015. Innsbruck is situated in the valley of the river Inn at the heart of the Alps in the west of Austria. It is close both to the Italian and to the German borders. For further information concerning the Canadian Studies Centre of the University of Innsbruck please consult www.uibk.ac.at/canada.
The second symposium will take place at the Banff Centre in Canada in September 2016. There will be a separate call for papers. Situated in the Banff National Park, surrounded by the magnificent scenery of the Rockies, the Banff Centre is a unique place to promote the arts and all scientific disciplines on a Canadian and on an international level. For further information concerning the Canadian Literature Centre of the University of Alberta please consult www.abclc.ca.
1.3 International Conference: Progress, change and development: past, present and future (University of Portsmouth, 4- 6 June 2015)
Progress, change and development: past, present and future
An international conference, to be held at University of Portsmouth, 4- 6 June 2015
First call for papers
The aim of this interdisciplinary conference will be to bring some of the generation who were involved in attempts to bring about change in the 1960s and 1970s together with researchers, theorists, practitioners, activists from the younger generations today. It will examine and debate how progress and development were conceptualised, practised and imagined during the periods of national liberation struggles, of decolonisation and its aftermath, of political and social upheaval and change. It will analyse successes and failures on all levels and explore new ways of thinking that are being developed at the present time, particularly those that break with the prevailing consensus.
By bringing the different generations into contact and interaction with each other, it is hoped to create a forum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and understanding of the earlier period, on the one hand, and the expression and elaboration of new ideas of progress and development and how they might be achieved, on the other.
It will look at specific struggles in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, as well as the international links connecting these movements. Possible themes will include the following:
● National liberation and nation-building
● Globalisation and anti-capitalism
● Transnational movements
● Economic and social development
● Theoretical, philosophical and other considerations
● Race
● Gender
● Education and new academic approaches
● Young people
● Progress in the cultural field
● Media, information and communication
Confirmed speakers include Samir Amin (Third World Forum, Dakar), Alice Cherki (psychoanalyst), Beïda Chikhi (Université de Paris – Sorbonne), Catherine Lévy (CNRS) and Jacques Sauvageot (Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rennes).
Proposed papers should be 20 minutes in length, in English or in French. Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to the organisers, Prof Margaret Majumdar and Dr Joanna Warson, at francophone@port.ac.uk<mailto:francophone@port.ac.uk> by Friday 7th November 2014.
Progrès et développement: hier, aujourd’hui et demain Colloque international, Université de Portsmouth, Royaume-Uni, 4-6 juin 2015 Premier appel à communications
L’objectif de ce colloque pluridisciplinaire est de faciliter la rencontre entre les générations – plus précisément, entre ceux qui œuvraient pour le changement économique, social et politique dans les années soixante et soixante-dix et ceux de la génération actuelle (jeunes chercheurs, théoriciens, militants, artistes) qui travaillent aujourd’hui dans le même domaine. On examinera comment, au cours de cette époque des luttes de libération nationale, de la décolonisation et ses suites, des bouleversements politiques et sociaux, les notions de progrès et de développement étaient théorisées, mises en œuvre en pratique et imaginées. On analysera des réussites et des échecs sur tous les plans, en même temps qu’on explorera les nouveaux modes de pensée qui se développent à l’heure actuelle, surtout ceux qui rompent avec le consensus dominant et la pensée normalisée.
En mettant en contact les générations différentes et en facilitant cette interaction, on espère créer un espace pour la transmission des connaissances par rapport à l’époque antérieure, en même temps que l’expression et l’élaboration de nouvelles idées sur le progrès et le développement tout comme les possibilités et les modalités de leur mise en œuvre.
Le colloque examinera des luttes spécifiques en Afrique du Nord et Sub-Saharienne, Asie, Europe, Amérique du Nord et du Sud, ainsi que les liens internationaux entre ces mouvements. Parmi les thèmes possibles on citera les suivants:
● Libération nationale et construction de la nation
● Mondialisation et anticapitalisme
● Mouvements transnationaux
● Développement économique et social
● Questions de théorie, pensée et réflexion philosophique
● Race
● Sexe
● Pédagogie et nouvelles formations universitaires
● Jeunesse
● Progrès culturel
● Médias, information et communication
Parmi les conférenciers invités : Samir Amin (Third World Forum, Dakar), Alice Cherki (psychanalyste), Beïda Chikhi (Université de Paris – Sorbonne), Catherine Lévy (CNRS) and Jacques Sauvageot (Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rennes).
Ce colloque accueillera des contributions d’une durée de 20 minutes maximum, en anglais ou en français. Les organisateurs Prof Margaret Majumdar et Dr Joanna Warson, vous invitent à soumettre des propositions de communication de 250 mots maximum à francophone@port.ac.uk<mailto:francophone@port.ac.uk>. Date limite: le 7 novembre 2014.
1.4 International Conference: “What is Postcolonial Thought?” (University of the Antilles, Schoelcher Campus, Martinique, November 2015)
Call for papers
International Conference
“What is Postcolonial Thought?”
University of the Antilles
Schoelcher Campus
Martinique
November 2015
Alexandre Alaric, Associate Professor of French and Francophone studies is organizing, in collaboration with Dominique Aurelia Associate Professor of English, Rodolphe Solbiac Associate Professor of English, Olivier Pulvar,Associate Professor in Communication Studies, an international conference entitled “What is Postcolonial Thought?,” for November 4-6, 2015 at the University of the Antilles Campus of Schoelcher Martinique, FWI.
The first objective of this conference is to prepare the launching and the effectuation of two new projects, The Postcolonial French and Francophone Letters of the Americas project (for the refounding of French and Francophone Studies at the UA) and The Frantz Fanon Institute of Postcolonial Studies of the University of the Antilles.
Though they are two distinct projects, The Postcolonial French and Francophone Letters of the Americas and the Frantz Fanon Institute of Postcolonial Studies of the University of the Antilles are backed by the idea that there is a need to introduce the postcolonial in the curriculum of the University of the Antilles and that is could be at center of a multidisciplinary platform.
Accordingly the form and presentation of this conference reflects a preoccupation for a multidisciplinary approach of contemporary forms of knowledge and merge the capabilities of searchers belonging to the University of the Antilles or coming from other universities for the advancement of this project. Thus its objective is quite easily identifiable: enhancing the international profile of the UA, through the creation of clusters of teaching and research programs that will help develop its visibility and distinctive character.
Therefore, this conference seeks to prepare a new reception of research in postcolonial studies in the field of French and French Caribbean scholarship. In fact, as the postcolonial appeared and developed in relation to such spaces as Great Britain, Australia, India, Africa, the Anglophone Caribbean and the United States, and has been studied through Anglo-Saxon, as well as Anglophone Caribbean approaches, it has been insufficiently interrogated in France and the Francophone Caribbean.
What can be the meanings of a Postcolonial thought? How does it relate to such categories as modernity, postmodernity or the contemporary? How does it compare to the thoughts of globalization, of creolization, and to other new forms of political and cultural anthropologies? What can postcolonial thought point to in a conversation with the emergence of “new psychic structures”? In what way does it contribute to the understanding of new symbolicities, of new forms of suffering and enjoyment? How does it illuminate the way discourses are articulated through new forms of creative movement, the new discursive postures and correspondingly the practices and creations in the field of lively scenes? In what way can postcolonial thought help us grasp new forms of political practices and of political thought?
In what way can postcolonial thought be related to anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles?
In addition, and concerning in a more direct way literary and arts studies:
What benefit can we derive from the articulation of contemporary issues in dramaturgy, poetology and translation studies using the postcolonial stance?
What can be the postcolonial contribution to the paradigm of Contemporary Art?
At last, can the new paradigms in Information and Communication studies bring to this field?
It is quite obvious now that postcolonial thought engages with many issues and presents us with many perspectives for the better understanding of our contemporary world.
Therefore, the purpose of this conference is to initiate a debate on these questions in order to tackle the issue of how to teach together in the future University of the Antilles. The objective of this conference is to work for the establishment of a Caribbean platform of postcolonial studies at the University of the Antilles founded on its networking with French universities, Caribbean universities and other universities which seek to interrogate postcolonial thought, in order to promote research as well as teachers and students exchanges.
Consequently, one of the major goals of this conference is to prepare the launch of Postcolonial Studies of the University of the Antilles designed as an instrument for the establishment of this Caribbean platform of postcolonial studies and the promotion of the international visibility of the University of the Antilles. This conference also seeks to bring a contribution to the development of “Francophonie.”
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is March, 1st of 2015.
Abstracts should be sent to : Alexandre Alaric MCF HDR: alexandre.alaric@wanadoo.fr , Dominique Aurélia MCF: dominiqueaurelia@hotmail.com, Patricia Donatien MCF HDR: patricia.donatien-yssa@wanadoo.fr, Olivier Pulvar MCF: olivier.pulvar@hotmail.fr, Rodolphe Solbiac MCF: rosolbiac@yahoo.fr
1.5 Research in African Literatures Special Issue on Ken Saro-Wiwa as Public Intellectual
CALL FOR PAPERS—Research in African Literatures Special Issue on Ken Saro-Wiwa as Public Intellectual
Guest Editor: Stephanie Newell
Since his execution by the Nigerian authorities in 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa has received global recognition as a key figure in the struggle for minority people’s environmental and political rights. This special issue of Research in African Literatures focuses on Saro-Wiwa’s textual outputs and literary experiments and his legacy as a Nigerian and African “literary activist.” Contributions are invited from scholars with an interest in Saro-Wiwa’s popular media productions and political writings, in his poetry and creative prose, and in his broader influence over Nigerian literary culture. The aim of the volume is to debate Saro-Wiwa’s role as a public intellectual in all senses of the term and to highlight the ways in which his controversial appeal to local audiences (through TV series such asBasi & Co and books from Saros International) coexisted with his status as a political activist.
Close readings of Saro-Wiwa’s individual works are welcome, but the editor particularly invites comparative and contextual approaches and essays in which Saro-Wiwa’s significance to African public culture is addressed. Areas of interest may include:
● Media, Creativity, and Publics: Saro-Wiwa’s television productions, journalism, YouTube/web presence, and popular media audiences;
● Book History: Saros International Publishers and post-Independence publishing in Nigeria;
● Local History: the ways in which Saro-Wiwa’s life and works are remembered and discussed locally;
● Social and Political Satire: the operation and effects of humor and satire in Saro-Wiwa’s work;
● Biafran War: Saro-Wiwa’s place in the canon of Biafran War writers;
● After Saro-Wiwa: literary engagements with political activism, environmentalism, and ecocriticism since 1995.
All finished manuscripts are expected to conform to the standard RAL guidelines published in every issue of the journal and all submissions will be subject to peer review. Prospective contributors should send their 300–500 word abstracts by 31 May 2015 and expect notification of selection by 30 June 2015. Final papers are due by 30 November 2015 and will be subject to peer review. The guest editor encourages potential contributors to establish early contact via email to ral@osu.edu (with the subject line “Ken Saro-Wiwa Special Issue”).
New Titles
2.1 Special Issue: “War, Memory, Amnesia: Postwar Lebanon.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies (Volume 18, Issue 5, 2014)
This special issue of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies guest edited by Claire Launchbury (UNSW) and Nayla Tamraz (USJ) brings together a collection of articles following the international conference ‘War, Memory, Amnesia: Francophone Perspectives on Postwar Lebanon’ organised at the University of Leeds in June 2013. In addition to thirteen articles covering literature, theatre, documentary, film, art installations and photography, the volume includes poetry by Wael Koudeih, who performs as a ‘rappeur militant’ under the name of Rayess Bek and an unpublished work by Antoine Boulad written presciently on the eve of Rafic Hariri’s assassination on 14 Feb 2005. Leslie Hakim-Dowek publishes here her photo-text ‘The city that exploded slowly’ from 2009 and Max Silverman, a fascinating interview with filmmakers and artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige on their 2007 film, Je veux voir.
Announcements
3.1 SFPS on Facebook and Twitter:
SFPS now has a Facebook and Twitter feed:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/societyforfrancophonepostcolonialstudies
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SFPS_UK
We’re planning to feature a ‘book of the week’ and would welcome suggestions from members who would like to promote their research.
3.2 Postdocs at the Univ. of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences is offering approximately five postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities and social sciences for the academic year 2015-2016. Fellows will teach one course each semester, complete scholarly work, and participate in the academic and intellectual communities of the departments with which they are affiliated and across the Dietrich School. Within the Dietrich School, rich opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange are available in the Humanities Center, the World History Center and in a number of vibrant multidisciplinary programs.
We invite applications from qualified candidates in the humanities and social sciences who have completed the oral defense at the time of application and who will graduate with the PhD by August 2015. Individuals who graduated before September 1, 2013 are not eligible; there will be no exceptions to these criteria. The annual stipend will be $45,000. Fellows may apply for an additional one-year renewal.
Applications must be received by 5 p.m. EST on February 13, 2015. Letters of recommendation must be received by 5 p.m. EST on February 20, 2015. No exceptions to deadlines are granted. We expect to announce the awards by April 15, 2015.
For more info, see:
http://www.as.pitt.edu/postdoctoral-fellowship-program
3.3 New Series: Transcript
Transcript publishes books about all kinds of imagining across languages, media and cultures: translations and versions, inter-cultural and multi-lingual writing, illustrations and musical settings, adaptation for theatre, film, TV and new media, creative and critical responses. We are open to studies of any combination of languages and media, in any historical moments, and are keen to reach beyond Legenda’s traditional focus on modern European languages to embrace anglophone and world cultures and the classics. We are interested in innovative critical approaches: we welcome not only the most rigorous scholarship and sharpest theory, but modes of writing that stretch or cross the boundaries of those discourses. ISSN: 2056-7014.
More details: http://www.legendabooks.com/series/t
3.4 Summer School on Black Europe
8th Annual Summer School on Black Europe
Interrogating Citizenship, Race and Ethnic Relations
Amsterdam, Netherlands – June 22 – July 3, 2015
The Summer School on Black Europe is an intensive two week course offered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The 8th annual Summer School on Black Europe will take place from June 22nd to July 3rd, 2015 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in collaboration with The Center of Study and Investigation for Global Dialogues (Barcelona, Spain).
The Summer School on Black Europe will be held at:
International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE)
Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The overall goal of this course is to examine the contemporary circumstances of the African Diaspora (and “other” immigrants of color) in Europe. We will focus on and discuss the origins of Black Europe and investigate the impact of these legacies on policies, social organizations and legislation today. This course will begin with a historical overview of the African Diaspora in Europe that traces the involvement of European nations in the colonization of the Americas. We will address the migration and settlement of Blacks in Europe, and examine immigration and citizenship laws that regulated their settlement. We will also look at anti-discrimination laws as they have arisen in various European countries. We compare the history of regulation and management of race and ethnic relations and the discourse surrounding the concept of Blackness and self-identification. Historically, social forces and social movements within Europe have given rise to policies to combat racism. We will trace the chain of events following social and civil conflicts that prompted these policies and analyze the legislative and intellectual discourse produced in the aftermath. In addition, we will explore notions of Blackness as official categorization; as a social construction employed by the dominant groups to indicate (non) belonging; as a Diaspora living within Europe; and as a contestation of the dominant (White) paradigm. In this way, we examine the social mobilization of Blacks to resist domination.
The above issues will be considered in light of the immediacy of contemporary global and European forces, including competing issues and discourses on Islamophobia, increased non-Black migration into and across Europe, and the debt crisis in the European Union.
This course will also seek to address the dimensions of race and ethnic relations that are unique to Europe; examining the ways in which conceptions of the “other” are institutionalized and reproduced; the rise of xenophobia in various EU countries; issues such as global racisms, everyday racism and epistemic racism; the legal definitions and discourse surrounding the conceptualized “other”; and examining the ways in which each country has dealt with issues of race and national identity. To this effect guest speakers for the 2015 program will be drawn from Germany, Italy and Portugal for case studies in those countries.
Affiliated Faculty Members include:
● DR. MARTA ARAUJO, UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA (PORTUGAL)
● DR. PHILOMENA ESSED, ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY
● DR. JEANETTE DAVIDSON, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
● DR. DAVID THEO GOLDBERG, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE
● DR. RAMON GROSFOGUEL, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
● DR. DIENKE HONDIUS, VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM
● DR. KWAME NIMAKO, UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
● DR. STEPHEN SMALL, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
● DR. MELISSA F. WEINER, COLLEGE OF THE HOLY CROSS
● DR. GLORIA WEKKER, UNIVERSITEIT VAN UTRECHT
● DR. DONNA DRIVER-ZWARTKRUIS, VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT
Tuition
The tuition for this course is € 1600 (or € 1300 without housing) .
Tuition includes housing, the opening reception, lunches on all class days, weekly get-togethers with faculty, a course reader, a public transportation pass, and travel costs and entrance to museums and exhibitions during excursions.
The excursions are coordinated through Black Heritage Amsterdam Tours.
Tuition does not include travel to and from Amsterdam.
More details: http://www.dialogoglobal.com/amsterdam/
3.5 Postcolonial Studies Association: Postgraduate Essay Prize
Postgraduate Essay Prize
The sixth annual Postcolonial Studies Association / Journal of Postcolonial Writing Postgraduate Essay Prize 2015
The Postcolonial Studies Association and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing are pleased to announce details of the 2015 postgraduate essay prize. Now in its sixth year, this competition provides a fantastic opportunity for postgraduate scholars to showcase their work and secure publication in a leading academic journal. Previous winners have contributed work of an extremely high standard, demonstrating the original and timely contributions that postgraduate academics are making across disciplines in postcolonial studies.
Applicants are invited to submit an essay on any topic relating to postcolonial studies. We welcome essays from all disciplines, including cultural studies, geography, politics, history, literature, film, and development studies. The competition is open to any postgraduate student who is registered at any institution worldwide by, or within three months of, the submission deadline (1st April 2015). Entries will be accepted from 1st November 2014 and the winner will be notified on 1st July 2015.
All essays are subject to an anonymous peer review by a panel of professional experts. The winning essay will, subject to editorial approval, be published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, a journal that has a long tradition of publishing innovative work in the field.
In addition, the winner will be awarded £250 prize money, and, should they not already be a member, will receive a complementary year-long membership to the PSA. The runner-up will also have their work notably mentioned.
Guidelines for applicants
1. Essays should be no longer than 7500 words (including bibliography and any additional notes), and must conform to the MLA referencing style.
2. The author’s identity must not be identifiable in any way from the essay (electronic tags, such as those on Microsoft word, should be removed).
3. Only one submission per person is allowed. Candidates who have previously entered the competition are welcome to enter again, but must submit a different piece of work.
4. No essay will be considered that has been published in any form elsewhere.
5. No essay, in whole or part, should be submitted for consideration for publication elsewhere before the winner is announced on 1st July 2015.
The essay should be emailed, along with a completed submission form, to the following address from 1st November 2014: psajpw@postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk
For more information, visit: http://www.postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk/postgraduate-essay-prize/
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