Author: modernistudies

I am pleased to announce that the Call for Papers and website are now active for the ASAP/8 Symposium in Tartu, Estonia, September.  Our theme is “Alternatives to the Present.”  The complete CFP is at http://asap8.ut.ee/call-for-papers/ .  It is also attached to this message as a PDF.

The website can be accessed at http://asap8.ut.ee/ .  DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS MARCH 26, 2016.

Yours,
Robyn Warhol, ASAP President

ASAP/8 CFP: Alternatives to the Present 
How and to what ends do the contemporary arts conceptualize, represent, and model new spaces and temporalities?
In recent years, much has been said about the difficulty of representing new spaces and times at “the end of history.” Fredric Jameson and Mark Fisher have famously pronounced that it is nowadays easier to imagine apocalypse on Earth than it is to conceive of an alternative to the timespace of capitalism. And yet surely there are still possibilities for introducing temporal and spatial otherness to the imagination in the forms of heterochrony, alternate futures and histories, and alternate conceptions of temporality and spatiality based in nonwestern cultures, affective perception, digital media, and barter or gift economies (not to mention altered states both geopolitical and cognitive).

The manifold practices of today’s literary, visual, media, and performing arts are in fact often devoted precisely to conceiving of such alternatives. Indeed, a minimal impulse towards some kind of “alterity” could be said to penetrate all art, irrespective of its medium, genre, place of origin, or ideological orientation. Therefore, we invite papers that examine the present status of imagining alternative spaces and times in all forms of contemporary art and artistic practice.

Possible topics include
·     possibilities for hybrid genres and artistic mediums
·     new narrative forms and unnatural narratives
·     art and theory that imagines the future or past
·     the artistic possibilities of imagining radical difference today
·     utopias, dystopias, and the changing status of utopian thinking as “social dreaming”
·     heterotopia and heterochrony
·     “zones” (of fantastic origin, of heterotopic space, of multidimensional time)
·     the contemporary practice of futurisms (“Afro-Futurism,” “Sino-Futurism,” etc.
·     architectural alternatives: ecotopia, ecopolis, etc.
·     sciences and the arts of the present
·     the timespace of augmented reality and digital gaming
·     time and the aural, the times/space of soundscape, music and heterotopia
·     dramatic timing, reimaginings of time and space as performance
·     manifesting alternative spaces and times specific to various artistic mediums: literature, visual arts, installation art, film, TV, theatre, music, digital arts, street art, performance art, architecture, urban planning

In keeping with the ASAP mission, we are especially interested in sessions that feature more than one artistic medium and more than one national tradition. The program committee will give preference to panels and roundtables that feature papers by scholars and artists working across and between disciplines.

Proposals should include 300-word abstracts for papers or 700-word abstracts for roundtables or panels, with email addresses and brief biographical statement for each speaker. See [asap8.ut.ee] for more information or contact [asap8info@gmail.com] with inquiries.

ASAP/8: “Artistic Alternatives to the Present” is hosted by University of Tartu in collaboration with the Program Committee of A.S.A.P. The symposium’s host organizers are Marina Grishakova and Jaak Tomberg, University of Tartu.

Deadline for submitting proposals: MARCH 26, 2016.
Please send submissions in Microsoft Word format to [asap8info@gmail.com].

ASAP 8 call for papers

Transnational French Modernisms

7^th-8^th July 2016, Durham University, UK

Keynote speakers: 

Dr. Jonathan Eburne (Penn State)

Professor Susan Harrow (Bristol)

Professor Debarati Sanyal (Berkeley)

The rise of France’s colonial empire in the 19^th century shaped French culture as a global arena and framed the emergence of modernism. Anxieties around the foreign, the exotic, and otherness animated iconic metropolitan works. Writers and artists from the colonies, such as Aimé Césaire and Assia Djebar, later used modernist aesthetics to challenge dominant historical narratives and state power. From the nineteenth century to decolonization, the modernist map of francophonie stretched across North America and the Caribbean to West Africa and South-East Asia. French modernism and empire building are intertwined (Lebovics 2014), but the relationship between French colonial expansion and modernist aesthetics remains unexplored. Debates about the racial and colonial dimension of modernism are largely confined to Anglophone modernism (Walkowitz 2006; Sheshagiri 2010), while francophone postcolonial theory often emphasizes literature’s political message over its aesthetic dimension (Bishop 2014). Without an understanding of the way colonialism and transnational exchanges shaped the French modernist imaginary, however, we elide the ethnic and cultural diversity of French culture.

This conference will connect debates about colonialism in Anglophone modernism to francophone writing, visual culture, and performance. By shifting attention away from the metropolitan, urban experience of modernity towards the transnational scope of modernisms in French, the conference will explore the interconnection of French colonial power and modernist aesthetics. In contrast to the metropolis-colony model, our conference will rethink French modernism as a transnational constellation of colonial and metropolitan spaces. Our animating question will be where was modernism, rather than when was modernism. What institutional, disciplinary, and ideological investments prevent thinking French modernism as transnational? What is the relation between modernist aesthetics and the global flow of capital, goods, and people? Do we maintain cultural imperialism by imposing a metropolitan concept of literary history on francophone artistic production?

We encourage submissions that cover the global map of francophone modernisms, including the Levant, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, Louisiana and Quebec, the Indian subcontinent, and the South Pacific. Submissions can cover but are not limited to the following questions and topics:

• Race, empire, and modernism;
• Decolonization, the ‘postcolonial’, and aesthetics;
• Colonial writers and artists imagining ‘post’-colonial communities;
• Cultural exchanges between colonies;
• Tensions between autonomous and committed art;
• Transnational political communities and modernism (communism in Vietnam and Algeria; fascism in Romania and Tunisia);
• The intersectionality of sexuality, gender, and class in transnational French modernisms;
• Modernist memory cultures;
• Tensions and differences between avant-gardes and modernism in French transnational cultures.
• Alternative geographies of modernity.

Supported by the Modern Humanities Research Association and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Durham University.

Abstracts (no longer than 300 words) should be sent to transnationalfrenchmodernisms@gmail.com by January 30, 2016.

Modernismes et francophonie: regards croisés

Conférenciers: 

Dr. Jonathan Eburne (Penn State)

Professor Susan Harrow (Bristol)

Professor Debarati Sanyal (Berkeley)

L’ambition coloniale de l’hexagone au XIXème siècle renforça la présence de la culture française sur la scène internationale et influença l’émergence du mouvement moderniste. On trouve en effet dans les grandes œuvres de la métropole, les traces d’une anxiété au sujet de l’étranger, de l’exotique et de l’altérité. Des écrivains et artistes issus des colonies comme Aimé Césaire et Assia Djebar utiliseront plus tard l’esthétique moderniste pour remettre en cause l’hégémonie de certains discours sur l’histoire et le pouvoir de l’Etat. Du XIXème siècle à la décolonisation, la carte moderniste de la francophonie s’étendit de l’Amérique du Nord aux Caraïbes en passant par l’Afrique de l’Ouest et l’Asie du Sud-Est. Si le lien entre modernisme et impérialisme français a été établi (Lebovics 2014), la relation entre expansion coloniale et esthétiques modernistes est encore méconnue. Les débats sur la dimension coloniale et raciale du modernisme sont encore largement confinés aux recherches sur la littérature anglophone (Walkowitz 2006; Sheshagiri 2010). Cependant, sans une compréhension approfondie de la relation entre colonialisme, échanges transnationaux et imaginaire moderniste français, nous éludons la diversité ethnique et artistique de la culture française.

Cette conférence a pour but de rassembler les théories sur le colonialisme dans le modernisme anglais, et les arts de la francophonie. S’éloignant d’une vision métropolitaine et urbaine de la modernité, la conférence explorera l’interconnexion du pouvoir colonial français et de l’esthétique moderniste. Notre conférence définira le modernisme français comme une constellation transnationale d’espaces coloniaux et métropolitains. Nous nous concentrerons sur la localisation du modernisme, plutôt que sur sa périodisation. Nous poserons les questions suivantes : quels intérêts institutionnels, disciplinaires et idéologiques empêchent de penser un modernisme français transnational et une culture francophone moderniste ? Quelle est la relation entre l’esthétique moderniste et le flux mondial de capitaux, de biens et de personnes ? Perpétuons-nous l’impérialisme culturel en imposant une conception métropolitaine de l’histoire littéraire à la production artistique francophone?

Nous invitons des communications qui couvrent la carte mondiale des modernismes français: le Levant, l’Afrique Sub-Saharienne, les Caraïbes, la Louisiane, le Québec, le sous-continent indien et le Pacific Sud.

Nous suggérons les thèmes suivants:

• Race, empire, et modernisme;
• Décolonisation, le ‘postcolonial’, et l’esthétique;
• Artistes coloniaux imaginant des communautés ‘post’-coloniales;
• Echanges culturels entre les colonies;
• Tensions entre arts autonome et engagé;
• Communautés politiques transnationales et modernisme (communisme au Vietnam et en Algérie; fascisme en Roumanie et en Tunisie);
• Sexualité, genre, et classe sociale dans le modernisme transnational français
• Cultures modernistes de la mémoire
• Tensions et différences entre avant-gardes et modernisme dans les cultures transnationales françaises
• Géographies modernistes de la modernité

La conférence est financée par la Modern Humanities Research Association et la Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Durham University.

Les propositions de communication (300 mots maximum) sont à envoyer à transnationalfrenchmodernisms@gmail.com avant le 30 Janvier 2016.

Dear friends,

You are warmly invited to the Literary London Society’s annual conference on 6-8 July 2016. To acknowledge this year of Shakespearean celebrations, the conference theme will be ‘London and the Globe’. This event will follow the trace of London’s transnational connections across historical periods and through novelistic, dramatic, poetic and other modes of expression.

Please follow this link for the call for papers: http://www.literarylondon.org/conference/