Polish Association for American Studies

Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów Amerykanistycznych

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Postcolonial Discourse, Ethnicity, and Race in the United States: Past and Present

Postcolonial Discourse, Ethnicity, and Race in the United States: Past and Present

University of Warsaw
Institute of English Studies
May 13-14, 2010

We are proud to announce a conference that addresses the topic of a dialogue between the discourse(s) on postcolonialism and ethnicity/race in the United States. Our special key-note speaker is Professor Gerald Vizenor.

If the 1950s witnessed the forging of a link between anti-colonial struggles world-wide and ethnic movements in the United States, intellectuals of later decades have challenged what they perceived to be a simple way of relating race and ethnicity to the global postcolonialism. Nowadays scholars from various ethnic groups in the United States either suppress commonalities between postcolonialism and ethnicity/race or enthusiastically endorse postcolonial studies as offering a useful paradigm to discuss political dominance, victimization and resistance to hegemonic power.

Enthusiasts argue that post-colonial discourse provides a way out of American exceptionalism, encourages seeing parallels in the world outside the United States and leads to the strengthening of global solidarity, coalition building and comparative research. They point out that both postcolonial and ethnic studies have resorted to similar concepts such as double-consciousness, multiple identities, hybridity and/or contamination, and a “third space” that is neither essentialist, nationalist culture zone nor assimilation. Enthusiasts frequently use postcolonial studies to theorize the cultural space of exchange and resistance between the centre and the periphery, and among different ethnic groups.

Skeptics point out that applying postcolonial discourse in ethnic studies may lead to reductionism and offer a faulty perspective on ethnic identity. They warn against the danger of a hasty enunciation of the end of ethnicity in an inexorable victory of hybridity and point out that a principled rejection of ethnic difference, congruent with a post-ethnic paradigm, is at odds with an everyday practice in which racial and ethnic differences still matter.

We welcome submissions from the field of American Studies, thus encourage presentations which would use insight from political social, religious, cultural, media and literary studies. We invite papers that refer both to earlier historical periods and those that are interested in diagnosing the present moment. Theoretical analyses and case studies are equally welcome.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Postcolonial and ethnic identities
  • Postcolonialism and ethnic histories
  • Re-writing national narratives
  • Postcolonialism and/or ethnic criticism
  • The problematics of the term “post-colonialism”
  • Diaspora spaces and communities
  • Nationalism/transnationalism/tribalism/sovereignty
  • Domestic and (neo)colonial violence
  • Decolonization and resistance
  • Resistance to (neo)colonial discourse (law, politics, economy, medicine)
  • Postcolonial bodies
  • Border studies

Please send an abstract of 400 words, by 30 January 2010, to Dr. Ewa Luczak at e.b.luczak@uw.edu.pl or Dr. Joanna Ziarkowska at j.ziarkowska@uw.edu.pl

Full conference fee: 50 EURO
Postgraduate conference fee: 40 EURO – Limited places available

A selection of the conference papers will be published in a collection edited by the conference organizers.

 

 

CFP: The Dream. Readings in English and American Literature and Culture III

We are seeking contributions to the volume entitled The Dream, hopefully a sequel to two previous volumes in our “Readings in English and American Literature and Culture” series: Community and Nearness (2007) and The Body (2009). As with these earlier books, we are interested in critical papers dealing with the literature and culture of the last three centuries. All kinds of approaches and perspectives are welcome.

The Dream (and the Text)

Each text has its own dream: a dark character, a mysterious passage or turn, some repressed feelings, and even writing itself, dumb and blind. Dreams are interwoven into the very texture of literature, either as its potential or its negative. It is interesting to see how a text reveals its latent dreamy aspect and how criticism helps in the process. As the editors of The Dream, we want to give opportunity for analyzing the modes and strategies in which such revelations take place in a literary text or by means of cultural phenomena. Possible topics include:

  • dreams in literary texts; texts about dreams and as dreams; literary space of the visionary, the gothic, etc.
  • the notion of the Uncanny; psychoanalytical discourses; fiction of the repressed and repressed fictions; the subconscious and the unconscious
  • applications of Freudian and Jungian dream theories to literary texts and cultural phenomena
  • dream-sequences and the like literary strategies (e.g. tropism, ecriture feminine, cut-up technique)
  • surrealism and its legacies
  • magic realism
  • the notions of the dreaming body and dream bodies; “altered states of consciousness”; fiction and rhetoric of the irrational

Our deadlines:

  • proposal (300-400 words) – December 31th 2009;
  • notification of acceptance – January 31th 2010;
  • full text – September 30th 2010;
  • publication of the volume (University of Opole Press) – first half of 2011.

Please contact Ilona Dobosiewicz (dobosiewicz@interia.pl) or Jacek Gutorow (dreadwork@interia.pl), the editors of the series.

 

 

CFP – Theory That Matters: What Practice after Theory?

Theory That Matters: What Practice after Theory?
University of Lodz
Department of American Literature and Culture
7-9 April 2010

“Theory is practice.”

– Michel Foucault

In his 1995 book-length introduction to literary and cultural theory, Peter Barry observed that while the 1980s “saw the high-water mark of literary theory,” the 1990s spawned much more critical approaches, and formulated both some radically skeptical responses and various ‘postscripts’ to the broadly understood field of critical theory. According to Barry, the mid-1990s brought a realization that the “moment of theory” had probably already passed. Well over a decade after his reflection, we would like to return to the “ticklish subject” of theory during an interdisciplinary conference that would serve as a platform for addressing the present-day efficacy of theory, its limits, uses, or, possibly, abuses.

Since 1960′s, the term “critical theory” has widened its scope. The changes taking place over several recent decades have introduced a shift in the understanding of the status of the literary text, the critical text, the function of the critic, and the ability of texts, and genres, to exchange identities. Such confluence may have been inspirational and enriching. Judith Butler claimed: “Theory is an activity that does not remain restricted to the academy. It takes place every time a possibility is imagined, a collective self-reflection takes place, a dispute over values, priorities, and language emerges.” For others, however, the burgeoning of theory may have invaded reading practices with academic dryness. In his 1992 essay, Richard Rorty complained that, in an anthology of critical readings of Heart of Darkness, “none of the readers had been enraptured or destabilized by [the novel].”

In relation to such conflicting perspectives, we are interested in how theoretical approaches and formations have been affecting the work of literary critics, writers, academics, scholars and practitioners who focus their research on texts, not only literary. We welcome presentations on the usefulness of theory. When confronted with the work of writers, artists, film directors, or with phenomena or processes of culture, is theory a revealing tool or does it sometimes appear as a too limiting professional frame? Does theory allow the critic to do justice to the object of the study, or does it abuse it, by depleting the text’s energy? Another question is whether engagements with theory help develop some new, specific approaches? Perhaps in the interpretive encounters of texts and “theory” new energy is released: textual, formal, artistic. If the theoretical moment at its most intense is now past, are there practices in our critical interactions and activities that have evolved from theory?

Please send a paper proposal and 200 word abstract, by 10 January 2010, to Dr Malgorzata Myk and Dr Kacper Bartczak.

 

 

 

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