Conferinte

ACED-15
 
THE 15TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES SECTION

CALL FOR PAPERS

The English Department of the University of Bucharest invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 15th Annual Conference:

 

Cultures of Memory, Memories of Culture

Dates: 6–8 June, 2013
Venue: The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
Str. Pitar Mos 7-13, Bucharest, Romania

Invited speakers:
Stef Craps, Ghent University
Carl Lavery, University of Aberystwyth
Victor Sage, University of East Anglia
    
The issue of memory is as difficult to approach as it is exciting to look into. Indissociable from current human activities, memory is obviously crucial in defining extraordinary situations, whether they be ‘great events’, path-breaking moments in history, or limit-cases. Memory is unavoidably related to the multifaceted reality of tradition/s and legacy/ies, to property rights and propriety of possession, to the ways, forms and places (lieux de mémoire) fleshing it out as values, practices and institutions at work in human communities. Needless to say, collective memory, coextensive with cultural inheritance, finds a necessary counterpart in, and holds a substantial relationship with, individual memory.  While this applies to every and any civilization, it definitely acts as an identitary mark of West. Civ., whose Judeo-Christian background finds its foundational texts in the testaments that inform it. Western culture is thus a culture of memory and a repository of memories of culture traceable in books, monuments and documents, museums, memoirs, archaeological sites, educational and artistic spaces, journals and diaries, newspapers and movies, electronic files and other virtual storage spaces.
Growing interest in the history – memory relationship, like the booming literature stemming from, and expanding as, Cultural Memory, have reinforced the stance according to which memory is a source of human identity, in both its personal and collective form. The art of memory (mnemonics) is coeval with the birth of literature and the arts, as suggested by the standing belief that memory is a spatial phenomenon, whose locative nature is per force intertwined with its temporal dimension.
Cultural History, and its relatively elder sisters, the History of Ideas, Intellectual History and Literary History itself, have developed into a sui generis market of cultural memory with a copious display of goods and values among which:
-    cultural objects and objets, cultural institutions, protocols and authority/ies
-    cultural nodes, be they temporal (occurrences, events, historical disruptions, etc.), topical (castles and palaces, battlefields, cities, etc.), institutional (educational sites, museum, arts galleries, etc.), or figurative (the old wise man, the lonely genius, the noble savage, etc.)
-    literature as cultural commodity, produced, disseminated and advertised in specific contexts, for specific consumption and serving specific aims
-    the cultural-historical embeddedness of literature and the arts
-    the meaning-instilling function of culture
-    the cultural imaginary and its icons, transactions and manifestations
-    the vécu quality of the time-space relationship (Period Studies, Area Studies, the chronotope, the espace-temps, the existential nature of culture and/as history)
-    identity-geared forms of cultural memory (foundational myths, national heroes, canonical writers and artists, etc.)
-    memory-centred literature (letters, epistolary writings, diaries, sentimental novels, historical narratives, etc.)
-    alternative memory/ies and history/ies (the forbidden or repressed past, non-/anti-official memory, underground literature, destabilizing documents, forgotten monuments, etc.)
-    literary and cultural texts as spaces of negotiation and retrieval of memory
-    the travel of memory within, between, and across, cultures
-    strategies and practices of memory-revival and meaning-decoding (cosmic landmarks, tables of correspondences, philosophical assessments, artistic illustrations, etc.)
-    from individual to collective memory (the Freudian into Jungian trajectory, from case studies to archetypal patterns, local into universal values, etc.)
-    memory and the human instance (remembrance/s and the self, stories of the body, avatars of history, etc.)
-    memory and modernity (the modo of the canonicals into the now of the contemporaries, etc.)
While these are possible items to place in our intellectual and academic basket for the forthcoming event, they are by no means restrictive or of the nature of imposition. Rather, we will be only too glad to welcome proposals on adjacent or different issues that participants deem relevant to our conference theme.

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 be considered.

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

Deadline for proposals: 16 March 2013.
Please send proposals (and enquiries) to litcultstbucharest@gmail.com
The conference fee of 50 euro or equivalent in Romanian Lei is payable in cash on registration, and covers lunches and refreshments during the conference, but not evening meals.

For further details and updates, see http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php .
Enquiries regarding the Linguistics section of the conference should be sent to ACED.15th@gmail.com .

We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest.
The organizing team
Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
James Brown
Daniela Cârstea
Eliana Ionoaia
Martin Potter
Ruxandra Rădulescu
Ioana Zirra

The Program of the International Workshop on “The Syntax and Semantics of Specificity”, 12-13 December 2012 Workshop Program 2012

Between History and Personal Narrative: East-European Women’s Stories of Migration in the New Millennium  21-22 September 2012

ACED-15

THE 15^th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST, ROMANIA 

The English Department of the University of Bucharest will hold its 15^th Annual Conference from 6–8 June, 2013.

The Conference will be organized in two sections:

LINGUISTICS

Papers are invited in:

General Linguistics

Linguistic Theories

Theoretical Linguistics (syntax, phonology, semantics and the interfaces)

Language acquisition

Applied Linguistics

LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

General theme: “Cultures of Memory, Memories of Culture”,

Papers are invited in:

British, Irish and Commonwealth Literatures

American Literature

Cultural Studies

Intellectual and Cultural History

Literary Theory

Translation Studies

Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts in Word format*. Proposals should  include title of paper, name and institutional affiliation, a short bio (no more than 100 words), and e-mail address.

Conference fee: 50 euro (covering lunches and refreshments during the conference, but not evening meals).

Deadline for of proposals: 16 March 2013.

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in University of Bucharest Review and in Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics.

Please send proposals (and enquiries) to the following e-mail addresses:

For the Linguistics section: ACED.15th@gmail.com

For the Literature and Cultural Studies section: litcultstbucharest@gmail.com  

Further details about the Conference will be posted at http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php

We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest.

Assoc. Prof. Octavian Roske

Head of Department

* Abstracts for the Literature and Cultural Studies Section should be of maximum 200 words, including a list of keywords. Abstracts for the Linguistics section should be between one and two A4 pages, Times New Roman 12, single spaced.

2012 CONFERENCE PROGRAM: literature  and linguistics sections

Conference poster

În zilele de 31 mai–2 iunie 2012, Facultatea de Limbi și Literaturi Străine, Universitatea din București, are plăcerea a-i invita pe cei interesați să fie prezenți la sesiunile celei de-a 14-a Conferințe Anuale a Departamentului de Engleză pe tematica „(M)other Nature? Inscriptions, Locations, Revolutions”. Vor prezenta lucrări cei aproape 110 de participanți din 17 țări. Prelegerile plenare vor fi susținute de Franc Chamberlain (University of Huddersfield), Gabi Danon (Bar-Ilan University), Martin Everaert (Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS), Àngel J. Gallego (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Katalin É. Kiss (Academia Ungară de Ştiințe), Idan Landau (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), Carl Lavery (University of Aberystwyth), Jaume Mateu (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg University), Ralph Yarrow (University of East Anglia) şi Priscilla Solis Ybarra (University of North Texas). Evenimentul se va desfășura la Facultatea de Limbi și Literaturi Străine, Str. Pitar Moș nr. 7-13, București. 

From 31 May to 2 June 2012, the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Bucharest is pleased to invite those interested to attend the sessions of the 14^th Annual Conference of the English Department, on the theme “(M)other Nature? Inscriptions, Locations, Revolutions”. Papers will be presented by around 110 participants from seventeen countries. Plenary talks will be delivered by Franc Chamberlain (University of Huddersfield), Gabi Danon (Bar-Ilan University), Martin Everaert (Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS), Àngel J. Gallego (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Katalin É. Kiss (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Idan Landau (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), Carl Lavery (University of Aberystwyth), Jaume Mateu (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg University), Ralph Yarrow (University of East Anglia) and Priscilla Solis Ybarra (University of North Texas). The conference will take place at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Str. Pitar Moș 7-13, Bucharest.

Call for papers

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