ACLALS Conference: AUCKLAND 2019
The Uncommon Commonwealth
The job of holding the center . . . is often done by the men from the provinces, from the outskirts. Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends—they are precisely where it begins to unfurl.
~Joseph Brodsky
Is heaven also made in Taiwan? And does Jesus really know how to speak Samoan?
~Sia Figiel, The Girl in the Moon Circle
In its modern history, the Commonwealth has provided an uncommonly flexible set of social, political, legal and economic forms of association. Founded in British colonialism, it conducts its business in a more or less common language, English and, arguably, shares core cultural values. But the Commonwealth is marked by the distinct topographies, histories, ethnicities and indigenous languages of its member states, variously confronting post-independence, the legacy of Britain’s “masks of conquest”.
It is uncommon in that it survives — albeit haphazardly — as its members are drawn into new strategic alliances and loyalties. But how successful is this survival? Does this new Commonwealth matter, and how long will it last? How important are the traditional commonalities of language, legal systems and political values among countries of such different experiences and concerns? How does literature figure in this mix? Is it less or more truly the case that, as Rushdie asserted thirty years ago, “Commonwealth literature does not exist”? If so, does it not-exist differently? Has Commonwealth culture, including its literatures, been overtaken by new forms of transnational association driven by globalising forces? The Commonwealth now looks unfixed, in ways that mesh with notions of postcoloniality, yet it refuses to accommodate strictly to postcolonial theory. This Commonwealth, no longer dominated or unified by the traditional metropole, increasingly seems structured by rhizomatic connections, converting traditional passages of migration and commerce into reversals and redirections, speaking sideways or talking back.
How does this work out for language and literature? In particular, acknowledging the venue for this conference, how does this work out within the South Pacific? How does the South Pacific, including the settler societies of New Zealand and Australia, now relate to major continental Commonwealth neighbours like Canada, South Africa and India? Is the cultural orientation of India and Canada intra-continental, rather than intra-Commonwealth?
Within this re-shaping of Commonwealth identities lies another uncommonality: the various dismantlings of British colonies have resulted in new modes of regional alliance; paradoxically, perhaps, they also prompt efforts to articulate a new cosmopolitanism. Who is our neighbour? In an age of mass travel and unbounded popular culture, Commonwealth countries are inevitably engaged in globally current issues; new technologies give a place in popular consciousness to crises of famine, population displacement and massive inequality. Does contemporary literature work this way? Correlatively, it might be argued that cosmopolitanism, a new order of universal sympathy – including its claimed association with the novel – has emerged from the patched up history of this uncommon Commonwealth.
What we share may no longer be our unifying factor: commonly, now, we seek instead to restore, document, celebrate and develop our differences. To be uncommon in this fashion, however, may still be to participate in the unfurling of the world, with the peculiar support of Commonwealth histories of dismantling and re-formation. Or to be uncommon may be to speak with our own voices and to determine our own trajectories, to do “unheard of things” with English, our uncommonly common tongue.
CALL FOR PAPERSConference abstracts to be sent to:
Dr Claudia Marquis: c.marquis@auckland.ac.nz
Abstract length: there is a word limit of 250-300 words for abstracts
We invite proposals for papers and creative submissions that tackle how new cultural and literary formations have emerged in the modern Commonwealth, or ways in which writing and culture address this pluri-form modern order. The following list of topics is indicative, not exclusive. We are keen to receive proposals for linked or associated papers from panels of speakers.
Topics:
Professor Tom Bishop
Professor Malcolm Campbell
Assoc Professor Paula Morris
Dr Claudia Marquis
The Uncommon Commonwealth
The job of holding the center . . . is often done by the men from the provinces, from the outskirts. Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends—they are precisely where it begins to unfurl.
~Joseph Brodsky
Is heaven also made in Taiwan? And does Jesus really know how to speak Samoan?
~Sia Figiel, The Girl in the Moon Circle
In its modern history, the Commonwealth has provided an uncommonly flexible set of social, political, legal and economic forms of association. Founded in British colonialism, it conducts its business in a more or less common language, English and, arguably, shares core cultural values. But the Commonwealth is marked by the distinct topographies, histories, ethnicities and indigenous languages of its member states, variously confronting post-independence, the legacy of Britain’s “masks of conquest”.
It is uncommon in that it survives — albeit haphazardly — as its members are drawn into new strategic alliances and loyalties. But how successful is this survival? Does this new Commonwealth matter, and how long will it last? How important are the traditional commonalities of language, legal systems and political values among countries of such different experiences and concerns? How does literature figure in this mix? Is it less or more truly the case that, as Rushdie asserted thirty years ago, “Commonwealth literature does not exist”? If so, does it not-exist differently? Has Commonwealth culture, including its literatures, been overtaken by new forms of transnational association driven by globalising forces? The Commonwealth now looks unfixed, in ways that mesh with notions of postcoloniality, yet it refuses to accommodate strictly to postcolonial theory. This Commonwealth, no longer dominated or unified by the traditional metropole, increasingly seems structured by rhizomatic connections, converting traditional passages of migration and commerce into reversals and redirections, speaking sideways or talking back.
How does this work out for language and literature? In particular, acknowledging the venue for this conference, how does this work out within the South Pacific? How does the South Pacific, including the settler societies of New Zealand and Australia, now relate to major continental Commonwealth neighbours like Canada, South Africa and India? Is the cultural orientation of India and Canada intra-continental, rather than intra-Commonwealth?
Within this re-shaping of Commonwealth identities lies another uncommonality: the various dismantlings of British colonies have resulted in new modes of regional alliance; paradoxically, perhaps, they also prompt efforts to articulate a new cosmopolitanism. Who is our neighbour? In an age of mass travel and unbounded popular culture, Commonwealth countries are inevitably engaged in globally current issues; new technologies give a place in popular consciousness to crises of famine, population displacement and massive inequality. Does contemporary literature work this way? Correlatively, it might be argued that cosmopolitanism, a new order of universal sympathy – including its claimed association with the novel – has emerged from the patched up history of this uncommon Commonwealth.
What we share may no longer be our unifying factor: commonly, now, we seek instead to restore, document, celebrate and develop our differences. To be uncommon in this fashion, however, may still be to participate in the unfurling of the world, with the peculiar support of Commonwealth histories of dismantling and re-formation. Or to be uncommon may be to speak with our own voices and to determine our own trajectories, to do “unheard of things” with English, our uncommonly common tongue.
CALL FOR PAPERSConference abstracts to be sent to:
Dr Claudia Marquis: c.marquis@auckland.ac.nz
Abstract length: there is a word limit of 250-300 words for abstracts
We invite proposals for papers and creative submissions that tackle how new cultural and literary formations have emerged in the modern Commonwealth, or ways in which writing and culture address this pluri-form modern order. The following list of topics is indicative, not exclusive. We are keen to receive proposals for linked or associated papers from panels of speakers.
Topics:
- ‘Unheard of things’: Indigenous languages and literatures.
- ‘Imaginary Homelands’: migration, metamorphosis and nostalgia.
- Living on the edge: islands and beaches.
- Nationhood, nationalism and internationalism.
- Transnationalism, regionalism, south-to-south relationships.
- New migrants, refugees and cultural transplantation.
- Racism and tribalism.
- New definitions of race, ethnicity and language.
- Colonial vestiges and ruins: monuments, public spaces, architecture.
- New spaces, identities and/or hybridity.
- Cosmopolitanism, or ‘cosmopolitical community’.
- Travel writing: beyond mapping and canvassing empire.
- Sports alliances, rivalries and competitions.
- Redefining magic realism and fantasy; reclaiming myth.
- Building ‘houses’ of literature.
- ‘World’ and ‘Nation’ literatures.
- The multicultural text; or Comparative Literature within the Commonwealth.
- International and local publishing and national/regional/global book prizes.
- Creative and critical collaborations.
- Political transitions and new economic alliances.
- An eco-critical commonwealth.
- Post-imperial imaginaries.
Professor Tom Bishop
Professor Malcolm Campbell
Assoc Professor Paula Morris
Dr Claudia Marquis
- Key DatesCall for Papers: March 2018
Earlybird Registration Opens: TBC
Earlybird Registrations close: TBC
Closing date for Submissions: 30 October 2018
Author notifications: 30 November 2018
ACLALS 2019 conference dates: 15 – 19 July 2019 - ContactBrent Hemi
Event Manager
e: b.hemi@auckland.ac.nz
Assoc. Prof Selina Tusitala Marsh
Conference Convenor
e: s.marsh@auckland.ac.nz
SPECIAL ISSUE ON ASIAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, FILM, AND ANIMATION
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on Asian Children’s Literature,
Film, and Animation
December 2018
Guest Editor: Bernard Wilson
This special edition of SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English invites papers on Asian children’s literature, film and animation, and on intercultural and cross-cultural comparisons between Asian (Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern) cultures and other children’s literature and film. Papers may include - but are not limited to - analyses and comparisons of traditional children’s stories such as fairy tales, folklore, myths, fables and legends, as well as young adult fiction, such as fantasy and realistic fiction and film. Papers may deal with one specific genre or culture, or may involve cross-cultural comparisons.
SARE is particularly interested in these thematic areas:
Further submission guidelines can be found on our website.
If you have any questions related to the special issue, please send an e-mail to sarejournal@gmail.com.
About our Guest Editor:
Associate Professor Bernard Wilson teaches at the University of the Sacred Heart, Rikkyo University, and Gakushuin University. He has spent the past two decades teaching at universities in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and specializes in postcolonial literature, children's literature, and cinema. He is widely published in Southeast Asian literature in English, Indian and Chinese diaspora literatures, and East/West theory, and his work has appeared in leading international journals in the United States, Asia, Australia, and the U.K. He is currently writing a monograph on Western cinematic interpretations of Asia.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue on Asian Children’s Literature,
Film, and Animation
December 2018
Guest Editor: Bernard Wilson
This special edition of SARE: Southeast Asian Review of English invites papers on Asian children’s literature, film and animation, and on intercultural and cross-cultural comparisons between Asian (Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern) cultures and other children’s literature and film. Papers may include - but are not limited to - analyses and comparisons of traditional children’s stories such as fairy tales, folklore, myths, fables and legends, as well as young adult fiction, such as fantasy and realistic fiction and film. Papers may deal with one specific genre or culture, or may involve cross-cultural comparisons.
SARE is particularly interested in these thematic areas:
- Southeast Asian children’s literature and film.
- Representations of other Asian societies or cultures in children’s literature, film or animation.
- Representations of gender expectations and gender roles in children’s literature, film or animation from these regions.
- Representations of cultural and ethnic aspects in Asian children’s literature, film or animation.
- Crossing borders in children’s literature, film, or animation, which may also include translated texts.
Further submission guidelines can be found on our website.
If you have any questions related to the special issue, please send an e-mail to sarejournal@gmail.com.
About our Guest Editor:
Associate Professor Bernard Wilson teaches at the University of the Sacred Heart, Rikkyo University, and Gakushuin University. He has spent the past two decades teaching at universities in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and specializes in postcolonial literature, children's literature, and cinema. He is widely published in Southeast Asian literature in English, Indian and Chinese diaspora literatures, and East/West theory, and his work has appeared in leading international journals in the United States, Asia, Australia, and the U.K. He is currently writing a monograph on Western cinematic interpretations of Asia.
Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) 2018 Inaugural Conference-June 1 and 2, 2018
Venue: IIT INDORE and IIM INDORE
In his recent polemical piece, noted academic and cultural critic, Timothy Brennan calls Digital Humanities, a “bust” and declares: “[a]fter a decade of investment and hype, what has the field accomplished? Not much.” Brennan’s critique of DH, amongst others, is that “[DH] promises to break the book format without explaining why one might want to — even as books, against all predictions, doggedly persist, filling the airplane hangar- sized warehouses of Amazon.com.” What remains potently interesting is that Brennan’s questioning of DH and its machine-oriented methodology[ies] is itself rooted in an Anglo-American episteme: one that has continuously promoted the “print medium” as the only legitimate paradigm for advancing worthwhile humanistic inquiry. We juxtapose Brennan’s provocative piece with the experience of disparate and disruptive forms of DH in India—often an outlier to Anglo-American argument strains— to frame this CFP for the first Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) Conference in June 2018.
Taking off from Padmini Ray Murray’s comment at the Digital Diversity 2015 conference: “your DH is not my DH,” the DHAI 2018 conference hopes to critically discuss the possibility of disrupting dominant assumptions about the nature and form of DH. Through a self-reflexive reminder that DH practices are contingent and situated, we would like to explore how postcolonial digital performances are about the need to forge our own (humanistic) practices that may find overlaps but may possibly and necessarily be divergent from Euro-American DH methodologies. Deeply cognizant of the fundamentally different terrains as well as institutional and national histories that shape our experiences in India, the inaugural DHAI conference is committed to deciphering through interrogations, intersections and rigorous deliberations how DH theory and praxis converge (or not), within these physically and discursively diverse spaces.
For this first edition of the Annual DHAI conference, we invite academics, scholars, practitioners, artists, students and interested stakeholders to not only propose operational questions like “Does India have the required technological framework and/or the required levels of access provided to different intersectional identities to implement a DH curriculum at the school and university levels?” but also questions of ontology: should knowledge frameworks be substantially reconceptualized keeping in mind technological exigencies and if so, what is the role of the Humanities in developing the contextual (local) theoretical vocabulary? In other words, what are the methodological challenges in decolonizing knowledge structures? Does the Digital matter and does it matter differently in a postcolonial space such as India?
Paper/Panel topics might include (but are not limited to) those that address:
● Digital Pedagogy ● Digital Literacy ● New knowledge archives ● Cultural heritage work ● Digital genealogies ● The role of the Digital in Social justice in South Asia
Please submit your panel and paper proposals to the conference organisers at dibyadyutir@iimidr.ac.in and nmenon@iiti.ac.in by April 30, 2018
● Panel proposals (150-200 word abstract). Panels will last for 90 minutes, and it is advisable that proposals allow sufficient time for the presentation of papers as well as discussion.
● Independent papers (100-150 word abstract). These will be allocated to suitable panels by the conference organizers.
The Conference is expected to be held in Indore during June 1-2, 2018. More information about the venues, dates as well travel support for student delegates will be shared soon.
We will be grateful if you can please share this call for sessions with your colleagues and networks.
Warm regards,
Dibya and Nirmala
Dr. Dibyadyuti Roy
Assistant Professor|Department of Communication |Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore
PhD (West Virginia University) | MLitt (University of Glasgow) |BA (Presidency College)
+91-731-2439450 |+91-7471122851
Venue: IIT INDORE and IIM INDORE
In his recent polemical piece, noted academic and cultural critic, Timothy Brennan calls Digital Humanities, a “bust” and declares: “[a]fter a decade of investment and hype, what has the field accomplished? Not much.” Brennan’s critique of DH, amongst others, is that “[DH] promises to break the book format without explaining why one might want to — even as books, against all predictions, doggedly persist, filling the airplane hangar- sized warehouses of Amazon.com.” What remains potently interesting is that Brennan’s questioning of DH and its machine-oriented methodology[ies] is itself rooted in an Anglo-American episteme: one that has continuously promoted the “print medium” as the only legitimate paradigm for advancing worthwhile humanistic inquiry. We juxtapose Brennan’s provocative piece with the experience of disparate and disruptive forms of DH in India—often an outlier to Anglo-American argument strains— to frame this CFP for the first Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) Conference in June 2018.
Taking off from Padmini Ray Murray’s comment at the Digital Diversity 2015 conference: “your DH is not my DH,” the DHAI 2018 conference hopes to critically discuss the possibility of disrupting dominant assumptions about the nature and form of DH. Through a self-reflexive reminder that DH practices are contingent and situated, we would like to explore how postcolonial digital performances are about the need to forge our own (humanistic) practices that may find overlaps but may possibly and necessarily be divergent from Euro-American DH methodologies. Deeply cognizant of the fundamentally different terrains as well as institutional and national histories that shape our experiences in India, the inaugural DHAI conference is committed to deciphering through interrogations, intersections and rigorous deliberations how DH theory and praxis converge (or not), within these physically and discursively diverse spaces.
For this first edition of the Annual DHAI conference, we invite academics, scholars, practitioners, artists, students and interested stakeholders to not only propose operational questions like “Does India have the required technological framework and/or the required levels of access provided to different intersectional identities to implement a DH curriculum at the school and university levels?” but also questions of ontology: should knowledge frameworks be substantially reconceptualized keeping in mind technological exigencies and if so, what is the role of the Humanities in developing the contextual (local) theoretical vocabulary? In other words, what are the methodological challenges in decolonizing knowledge structures? Does the Digital matter and does it matter differently in a postcolonial space such as India?
Paper/Panel topics might include (but are not limited to) those that address:
● Digital Pedagogy ● Digital Literacy ● New knowledge archives ● Cultural heritage work ● Digital genealogies ● The role of the Digital in Social justice in South Asia
Please submit your panel and paper proposals to the conference organisers at dibyadyutir@iimidr.ac.in and nmenon@iiti.ac.in by April 30, 2018
● Panel proposals (150-200 word abstract). Panels will last for 90 minutes, and it is advisable that proposals allow sufficient time for the presentation of papers as well as discussion.
● Independent papers (100-150 word abstract). These will be allocated to suitable panels by the conference organizers.
The Conference is expected to be held in Indore during June 1-2, 2018. More information about the venues, dates as well travel support for student delegates will be shared soon.
We will be grateful if you can please share this call for sessions with your colleagues and networks.
Warm regards,
Dibya and Nirmala
Dr. Dibyadyuti Roy
Assistant Professor|Department of Communication |Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore
PhD (West Virginia University) | MLitt (University of Glasgow) |BA (Presidency College)
+91-731-2439450 |+91-7471122851
