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SFPS Monthly Mailing: September 2012

11th September 2012

CFP
1.1 ASMCF Annual Conference, 2013
1.2 Writing through the Visual/Virtual: Inscribing Language, Literature, and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean
1.3 Inaugural day conference of the Centre for Quebec and French-Canadian studies
1.4 Screening atrocity: Cinema, decolonisation and the Holocaust
1.5 Ahmadou Kourouma : Un écrivain total
1.6 « Roman francophone et figuration du monde »

CFP

1.1 ASMCF Annual Conference, 2013

University of Leicester, 5-7 September 2013

First Call for Papers

“Renegotiating social divisions in France and the Francophone world/ Les divisions sociales en France et dans le monde francophone en renégociation ?”

In recent decades profound socio-political and cultural changes in French and Francophone societies have acted to shape and reshape notions of citizenship, individual rights and social classifications. Within this context, are social divisions and class identifications still relevant constructs? What does it mean in actual fact to participate in the public sphere? This interdisciplinary conference aims to examine how social boundaries and hierarchies are produced, reproduced and renegotiated over time. It will explore the complex ways in which social groups, classes and identities in French and Francophone cultures are maintained and (re)configured through various modes of mobilisation and cultural representation.

Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited on the following, non-exhaustive topics:

  • Social identity and (self)representations in France and the Francophone world
  • Ideals and ideologies of social equality
  • Diverging discourses on gender and ethnicity
  • Visibility/ Invisibility of social hierarchies
  • Power relationships in and between ‘communities’
  • Migration and social belonging
  • Political constructions and re-appropriations of social divisions
  • Emergence of new social groups and shifting social boundaries
  • Visual, literary and cultural representations of hierarchies and social divisions
  • Social heritage and renegotiations of the past
  • Renegotiation of language boundaries in Francophone cultures

The conference organisers welcome proposals from individuals or ready-formed panels of two or three speakers, and from the wide range of disciplines to be found within the ASMCF taking either an historical or a contemporary approach.

Postgraduate students are strongly encouraged to present papers. Papers may be delivered in English or in French.

A publication connected with the theme of the Conference is planned.

Proposals for papers, featuring abstracts of up to 250 words in either English or French, should be sent in word format (doc. or .docx) to ASMCF2013@le.ac.uk by 15 October 2012. Please putASMCF 2013 proposal in the subject line of your e-mail.

1.2 Writing through the Visual/Virtual: Inscribing Language, Literature, and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean

Center for African Studies 2013
March 7-9 2013

This two-day conference at Rutgers University (New Brunswick) is designed to foster trans-disciplinary understanding of the complex interplay between language/literature/arts and the visual and virtual domains of expressive culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. It will explore the varied patterns of cultural, and especially writing, formations and practices arising from contemporary and historical forces that have impacted on the cultures and peoples of this trans-Atlantic region that includes countries such as Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Comoro Islands, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (DR), Dominica, Guadeloupe, Guiana, Haiti, Louisiana (USA), Mali, Martinique, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles. Special attention will be paid to how scripts, though appearing to be merely decorative in function, are often used by artists and performers in the production of material and non-material culture to tell “stories” of great significance, co-mingling words and images in a way that leads to a creative synthesis that links the local and the global, the “classical” and the “popular” in new ways.

Possible topics for the conference include (but are not limited) to the following:
A. Graphic symbols and collective memory
B. Politics of fashion/political pagnes/proverbs on pagnes
C. Gendered spaces of writing (on walls, cooking pots, the ground, taps-taps)
D. Comics/bandes dessinées, books, film and literacy
E. Body art (tattooing, scarification) using henna, ink
F. Reading relief, surface scripts, vèvè et vaudou
G. Inscribing orality: history, Hip-Hop, and rap
H. Scripts: Bagam, calligraphy, graffiti, ideograms
I. Creation, publication, consumption, consumerism
J. Langue vernaculaire/langue véhiculaire : Kreyòl, Wolof, Lingala/French, Arabic
K. Intracultural/Intercultural communication and new technologies : blogs, Facebook, Twitter
L. Languages in contact: creolization, translation, and transnational dynamics

Proposals are invited from all disciplines. Proposals will be accepted for individual papers or for panels. Paper proposals must include the author’s name, the paper title, an abstract, and the author’s brief biography. Panel proposals must include a chair, list of no more than 4 presenters, a one‐page summary of the session theme, short bio and abstracts for all papers. In addition to papers, we also invite artists to submit their work for display. The conference will also include film screenings, art exhibitions, fashion shows.

Please submit electronically a 100 to 200-word abstract and panel proposal by November 1, 2012 to Writing through the Visual/Virtual _2012@email.rutgers.edu

Renée Larrier and Ousseina Alidou
Rutgers University Center for African Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Lucy Stone Hall A346, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue
Piscataway, NJ 08854
t:848.445.6638 | f:732.445.6637 | http://ruafrica.rutgers.edu

1.3 Inaugural day conference of the Centre for Quebec and French-Canadian studies

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies

Senate House, University of London

Saturday 3 November 2012, SH Room 261

Call for papers

Thanks to generous funding from the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the United Kingdom, a Centre for Quebec and French-Canadian Studies is being set up at the IGRS. The first event will be on 3 November 2012, when we shall be holding a one day-conference to bring together Quebec and French-Canadian specialists in the UK to give presentations on their current research. Speakers will include: Rosemary Chapman, Bill Marshall, Ceri Morgan, Leigh Oakes, and Rachel Killick. There are also some limited funds to enable postgraduate research students to attend to give papers and participate in a poster session.

If you would like to propose a 15-20 minute paper to this conference, please contact Bill Marshall at IGRS by 30 September 2012 at: william.marshall@sas.ac.uk.

A full programme and registration details will be available in the first week of October.

1.4 Screening atrocity: Cinema, Decolonisation and the Holocaust

A one-day postgraduate workshop at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, 10 January 2013

Keynote speaker: Professor Maxim Silverman

Traditionally, the fields of postcolonial, cultural, and memory studies have tended to regard the discourses of the Holocaust and the Algerian War of decolonisation (1954-1962) as separated by an invisible ‘colour line’- propagating a notion of collective memory as competitive and Nazi genocide as a paradigmatic, sui generis (singular) event which ‘differs from every case said to compare to it’ (Steven Katz). On the other hand, a comparatively nuanced approach to collective memory and discourse has recently emerged through the work of Michel Rothberg (2009), whose close analysis of cultural artefacts as sites of palimpsestic, ‘multidirectional memory’ has had profound ramifications for the fields of Holocaust and postcolonial studies. Applying Rothberg’s theories exclusively  to the discourse of cinema, this postgraduate workshop will thus discuss the extent to which filmic representations of the Holocaust can be said to parallel (and diverge from) representations of France’s colonial legacy, through a structured, comparative exploration of cinematic themes and visual tropes (see below). This one-day event willultimately involve the aim of re-inscribing both discourses within a dialogical space of intercultural convergence as opposed to inassimilable difference and alterity.

Twenty minute papers may address any style of filmmaking including; classical/hegemonic Hollywood cinema, American ‘Jewish Revenge cinema,’ Israeli Second Generation Cinema, East/West German cinema, the French New Wave, Left Bank, cinéma vérité, Algerian cinéma moudjahid (freedom-fighter cinema) and Third/Fourth Cinema (although this list is far from exhaustive). Participants are encouraged to focus uponeither representations of the Holocaust or the Algerian War, whilst possible papers could focus upon the themes of;

·       Gender and atrocity

·       Concentrationary spaces

·       ‘Screen memories’

·       Torture

·       Trauma

·       The concept of truth (la vérité)

·       The notion of home/homeland/Heimat

·       Nostalgia

·       The figure of the child

·       The figure of the ‘resistant’

·       The figure of the ‘survivor’

·       Fragmentations of identity

·       Testimonial narratives

·       Concepts of arriving and returning

·       Repression- ‘Vichy/Algeria Syndrome’

Please send abstracts of 250 words to either Mani Sharpe m.sharpe@newcastle.ac.uk or Gary Jenkinsg.jenkins@newcastle.ac.uk by the 31st of October 2012

1.5 Ahmadou Kourouma : Un écrivain total

A l’Université de Cocody/Abidjan, les

18, 19 et 20 Septembre 2013

Le propos de ce colloque vise à lire et/ou à relire l’œuvre d’Ahmadou Kourouma à l’aune de son talent et de son engagement, de son silence et de son militantisme. Nous nous proposons de dégager les enseignements, les subtilités, les perles mais aussi des ratés d’une création qui ne laisse finalement personne indifférent. Auteur électrique, logothète et militant, la totalité de Kourouma réside dans son entier engagement dans la création littéraire où les précieux apports de l’esthète le disputent avantageusement au cri de cœur du citoyen ivoirien, aux attentes déçues et aux espérances d’une Autre Afrique, au rêve du citoyen du monde tout court. Engagement total de Kourouma donc par un investissement ‘’jusqu’auboutiste’’ dans le projet scriptural de faire dire le personnage de l’intérieur à travers une expression qui assujettit le français à la « pensée africaine », mais également engagement total de l’homme dans la  dénonciation caustique des tribulations des siens et la revendication d’une société plus humaine. Ce colloque veut marquer les 10 ans d’anniversaire du décès d’un immense auteur par la stature et le talent.

Axes de reflexion :

CREATION LITTERAIRE

Style et discours

Histoire et écriture

Mythe et création

LANGUE ET LANGAGE

Société et littérature

Politique et écriture romanesque

Oralité et écriture

Personnes et personnages

Espaces littéraires

THEMATIQUE ET CREATION

La colonisation

Les indépendances

La guerre

Le travail

Les culture(s) et tradition(s) africaines

Date de réception des résumés des contributions :

Septembre 2012 à fin février 2013, (Institution d’origine, titre de communication, résumé du texte en 200 mots, 5 mots clé, contacts), à l’adresse abidjancolloquekourouma@yahoo.fr

Porteurs du projet : Pr BOHUI Djédjé Hilaire, Pr DIANDUE Bi Kacou Parfait

1.6 « Roman francophone et figuration du monde »

Colloque Jeunes Chercheurs 2013

*Organisé avec Olga Hél-Bongo et Kasereka Kavwahirehi***

La Chaire de recherche du Canada en littératures africaines et  francophonie organise, les 29 et 30 avril 2013, à l’Université Laval, à  Québec, un colloque international destiné aux jeunes chercheurs en littératures francophones.

Les historiens des littératures francophones s’accordent généralement  à reconnaître des phases et des périodes dans l’émergence et l’évolution du roman francophone. Ils inventorient également une constellation de  thèmes divers qui, selon eux, caractérisent ce roman : contestation de l’ordre colonial, dénonciation du « désenchantement du monde » lié aux nouveaux pouvoirs, déliquescence de l’État postcolonial, problèmes identitaires, dictatures, violation des droits humains, falsification de la mémoire, chaos, absurdité, traditions en opposition à la « modernité occidentale », immigration, métissage, etc. Ces traits ne sont pas spécifiques au roman francophone; leur agencement et la mise-en-intrigue, qui sont déjà une lecture du réel, assurent l’avènement du sens.

L’objectif de ce colloque est d’amener à rendre compte de l’ambition du roman à travers les âges et les littératures du monde, celle de parler au monde et du monde, c’est-à-dire d’être un puissant instrument d’exploration du réel, de figuration de l’histoire et du monde, d’analyse des rouages et des mécanismes sociaux. En ce sens, cette figuration aide à mettre en lumière la formation sociale dans son intégralité et dans ses mécanismes les plus élaborés. La fiction représente la machinerie sociale avec ses féroces rapports de domination, dans sa sournoiserie, dans sa dérision.Elle peut aussi inventer des mondes possibles et plausibles.

Il s’agira de montrer, à même les textes, que, en dépit de ce qui les distingue, les romanciers francophones sont tous animés par une urgence et une pression aveuglante de faire entendre une parole prise sur l’imagerie sociale, la dialectique des rapports, les antagonismes entre vastes groupements sociaux (ou classes?) et sur l’histoire. Ce qui contribuera à montrer l’expérience de la singularité de chaque romancier dans l’articulation de son écriture et du monde.

Veuillez envoyer votre proposition de communication (15 lignes au maximum), accompagné d’un CV (de 5 lignes tout au plus, précisant votre statut et votre institution universitaire, vos publications et votre participation à des colloques), au plus tard le 31 décembre 2012, à l’adresse suivante : _jeunes.francophonie@fl.ulaval.ca_

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