Conferinte

The English Department of the University of Bucharest invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 14th Annual Conference:

(M)other Nature?
Inscriptions, Locations, Revolutions

        Dates: 31 May–2 June, 2012
Venue: The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
Str. Pitar Mos 7-13, Bucharest, Romania

Invited speakers:

Franc Chamberlain (University of Huddersfield)

Carl Lavery (University of Aberystwyth)

Ralph Yarrow (University of East Anglia)

Priscilla Solis Ybarra (University of North Texas)

The conference invites papers on the theme of “nature” from a variety of interpretative approaches, to discuss modes in which the continuous present of (mother) nature – as concept, reality, representation – is configured in conjunction with expressions of  cultural history, literary and visual texts, as well as a controversial discourse of immanent otherness, of disjunctive forms, of ironic identity constructions, of equivocation and power codes.

An abstraction or a cryptic restatement of the notion, an “alibi”, an “elsewhere” of the human subject, the discourse of nature (the equivalent of Lacan’s “lettered unconscious”) and the repertoire of conflictual positions displayed by (m)other nature contribute in various modes  to the configuration of natural identity and to fantasies of originality and origination. However, the tropes, stereotypes, fetishes of mothering and otherness playing out their differences, and metaphors and metonymies of (m)other nature articulating a (natural?) imaginary all remain marked by an irreconcilable dualism: (m)other natures are “spoken” both as spaces of plenitude and enlargement, beyond logical, visual and geometrical limitations and as forms of duration, as time comprehensive of anteriority and posteriority in fluid intimacy. Nature energized by imagination, reinvented by memory, governing the poets’ “rhythmic body”, a discordia concors on the stage of the world is still generative of dilemmas: is it an illusion of truth, musealized, denied. or simply “occulted”? An affirmation of the transience and the nearness of the real, the interpretation of nature is, for the “the history man” of contemporaneity, not only a fictional space of freedom, but also a mirage providing social, political, economic and psychological contexts, as well as the aesthetic substitute of adventure, the boundary of selfhood, a state of mind and a signifying tale of both exilic distanciation and compensatory homecoming.

Suggested topics:
 
Art and nature
Environmentalism and literary studies
Eco- / environmental criticism
Mythical translations of nature
Nature and feminism
Nature and spirituality
Nature and mortality
Nature and mothering
Nature and memory
Nature and/in performance
Mother country / tongue v. alterity
The location(s) of nature
Psychoanalytical views on nature
Performance and the environment
Race and literary environmental studies
Colonialism / postcolonialism and the environment
(M)othering signatures and appropriations
(Re)writing nature
(Re)inventing nature
Nature and history
Nature and the technologies of control
Utopias of nature
Spectres of Nature
 

It is anticipated that participants will adopt a variety of approaches, including examinations of individual works in various genres and media, comparative, transcultural and interdisciplinary studies, and discussions of theoretical issues.

Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words (including a list of keywords) in Word format, with an indication of their institutional affiliation, a telephone number and e-mail address at which they can be contacted, and a short bio of up to 100 words. Proposals for panel discussions (to be organized by the participant) will also considered.

A selection of papers will be published in University of Bucharest Review (listed on EBSCO, CEEOL and Ulrichsweb).



Conference fee: 50 euro or equivalent in Romanian Lei
The fee is payable in cash on registration, and covers the opening reception, conference materials, and refreshments during the conference.

Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2012.
Please send proposals (and enquiries) to litcultstbucharest@gmail.com


We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest.

The organizing team
Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
James Brown
Daniela Cârstea
Eliana Ionoaia
Ruxandra Rădulescu
Ioana Zirra

Centrul de Excelenta pentru Studiul Identitatii Culturale - Literature and the Long Modernity international conference - 10-12 noiembrie 2011 Literature and the Long Modernity (programul conferintei).

2011

The 13th Annual Conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest
Tales of War: Expressions of Conflict and Reconciliation
2-4 June 2011

Conference program: literature and cultural studies, theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics

Call for papers 2011 (Tales of War: Expressions of Conflict and Reconciliation)

Invited speakers (literature section):
Heinz Antor (University of Cologne)
Andrei Cornea (University of Bucharest)
José Manuel Estévez-Saá (University of A Coruña)
Radu Surdulescu (University of Bucharest)

Papers are invited in the following areas:

    British, Irish and Commonwealth Literatures
    American Literature
    Cultural Studies
    Literary Theory
    Theoretical Linguistics
    Applied Linguistics
    Translation Studies

Conflict, as well as versions of antagonistic and paradoxical affinities in war-related, real and fictional situations, are at the centre of current preoccupations of critical theory, literature, visual arts, the media, historical and political discourse and at the centre of ontological concern for the contemporary world. As a phenomenological issue, as the privileged subject matter of cultural debates, historiography, theology, philosophy, interpretation strategies and anthropological research the problematic of war appears to illustrate and confirm, beyond Eliade’s “terror of history” or Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion”, the correlatives of subjectivity, as well as a richly connotative “existential heritage” of the “fallable man”. As (remembered?) pastness, as the counter-possibility of freedom, as an account of empathy with the Other, as illustrative of a “limit situation”, as a set of empirical appearances or a utopian pact, as a figure of (repetitive) mortality or a marker of identity, warfare remains an issue of signification comprehensible through a series of disconcerting aporias, a category of both active and meditative attitude related to the “primordial conflict” and at the same time to the affirmation of hope for a time of both memorial and prophetic war-free “ideal history”.

The aim of the conference is to explore and highlight modalities through which expressions, representations or perceptions of “warfare”, as well as contemporary interpretative approaches to the development, resolution or effects of conflict deal with the significance of antagonism in various cultural and historical contexts and contribute to the comprehension and redefinition of the authorial message.

Suggested topics: Visions and connotations of warfare; War – myths, symbolism, iconography; War as allegory and metaphor; Representations of conflict; War and psychoanalysis; War between reality and fiction; The space of war; War and temporality; Wartime affinities; War narratives; War protagonists; War and peace; The political and historical discourse of war; War and memory; War and identity

It is anticipated that participants will adopt a variety of approaches, including examinations of individual works in various genres and media, comparative, transcultural and interdisciplinary studies, and discussions of theoretical issues.

Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words (including a list of keywords) in Word format, with an indication of their institutional affiliation, and a telephone number and e-mail address at which they can be contacted. Proposals for panel discussions (to be organized by the participant) will also considered.

A selection of papers will be published in University of Bucharest Review (listed on EBSCO, CEEOL and Ulrichsweb).

Conference fee: 50 euro or equivalent in Romanian Lei
The fee is payable in cash on registration, and covers the opening reception, conference materials, and refreshments during the conference.

Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2011 (literature section).

Please send proposals (and enquiries) to litcultstbucharest@gmail.com

For Linguistics and Translation Studies: linguisticsbucharest2010@yahoo.com

Assoc. Prof. Octavian Roske
Head of Department

Prof. Irina Pana
Dr. James Brown
Chair of the Conference Committee

Conference committee (literature section):

Prof. Irina Pana
Dr. James Brown
Dr. Ioana Zirra
Dr. Maria Sabina Draga Alexandru
Ruxandra Radulescu
Daniela Carstea

2010 conference program (literature and cultural studies section): Genres and Historicity - Text, Cotext, Context Bucharest 2010 programme

2009 conference program (literature and cultural studies section): Durability and Transience - Cultural Borders of Temporality Conference programme 2009

2008 conference program (literature and cultural studies section): Writing the Self - Modes of Self-Portrayal in the Cultural Text Conference program 2008