Call For Papers

Conference website

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most seminal events in modern American poetry, the Vancouver Poetry Conference 1963. Following the publication of Donald Allen’s prescient The New American Poetry in 1960, Warren Tallman and Robert Creeley gathered together a number of the New American poets (including Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, and Allen Ginsberg) in Vancouver for three weeks of poetry readings, public lectures, workshops and roundtable discussions on contemporary experimental poetics. This occasion helped to consolidate some of the primary theoretical arguments informing American experimental poetry of the period and facilitated an unprecedented level of cross-fertilisation and dialogic exchange between current and successive generations of experimental poets.

To coincide with UEA’s own fiftieth anniversary, the School of American Studies will be hosting a one day conference to reassesses the continuing legacies of the Vancouver Poetry Conference and its participants. We welcome proposals on topics related, but not limited, to:

•  The poetry/poetics of the contributors to the conference; Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Philip Whalen, Margaret Avison, etc.
• A cross-border (Am-Can) avant-garde: for example, the influence of the conference in establishing a relationship between experimental poets associated with Robin Blaser in British Columbia and those associated with Robert Duncan in San Francisco.
• The transgression of borders in experimental American poetry (formal, stylistic, thematic, etc and/or political, philosophical, sexual, religious, etc)
• The importance of the border (spatial, conceptual, literal, ethical, textual, etc) in experimental American poetry
• Instances of direct inter-generational influence and/or dialogue between the contributors and successive experimental poets/poetry collectives

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to davidmccarthy.uea@gmail.com by 31^st August 2013. The conference poster can be found Here.

University of Manchester’s School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Graduate School Inaugural Conference for Academic Year 2013-2014

Writing Beyond Borders

The University of Manchester, 20^th September 2013

Opening Keynote Speaker: Dr Jean-Marc Dreyfus (Religion and Theology, Manchester)

Closing Keynote Speaker: Dr Claire Chambers (English Literature, York)

This conference aims to examine the ways in which reading, writing and researching literature intersects with conceptions of borders and border crossing. The conference arises from and seeks to expand debates in postcolonial studies and criticism surrounding boundaries (whether cultural, linguistic, historical, personal, economic, etc). As such, we welcome contributions from literary studies and complementary fields. Through this interdisciplinary approach, we aim to understand the varying methods used to answer questions such as:

• Does a border inherently imply a binary, and on what terms?
• It is possible to remove a border without removing one ‘side’, or to have two sides without a border?
• Can individuals choose (how) to position themselves in relation to borders, or is a side inherently imposed? Can we inhabit borders?
• Is a postcolonial world moving towards a borderless world, and if so, what would this look like or mean?
• Are borderlines inevitable in a capitalist society?
• How do human borderlines manifest themselves in the formal space of a text or book? How does this impact on our work as researchers?
• What does it mean to write in a language other than your ‘mother tongue’? Does the concept of ‘mother tongue’ itself create or reinforce socio-historic borders?
• Do changing borders demand changing methods?
• Is there a possibility of border-transcending or borderless literature, or are such borderlines as language, gender, religion and nationality essential to literature?
• What are the implications of a future borderless space?

We invite responses to these and related questions in the form of a maximum 300-word abstract for a 15-minute paper. Please email abstracts to writingbeyondborders@gmail.com by 5^th July, 2013.

Please also include a title for the proposed presentation and details of your PhD topic, discipline and University.

Call for Proposals, Food Across Borders

CALL FOR PAPERS

Food Across Borders:

Production, Consumption, and Boundary Crossing in North America

Recent criticism of our global food system has obscured a longer, and still healthy, tradition of food cultivation and circulation among nations.  Our own national diets are a product of long-existing agricultural empires across the North American continent.  This is especially true in relationship to Mexico: corn, chocolate and peppers are just three of the many indigenous foods that became central to the diets of other nations, including cuisines of the United States.  North of the border, Canada has played a significant role in the cultivation of grain for both nations and is a consumer of many U.S. products.  In terms of U.S. agriculture, without Mexican workers, our national food production system would not function.  These conditions reveal a transnational project, north and south, which have existed for more than a century.  Food Across Borders seeks to examine this world in which boundaries create exclusions and dialogs, coercions and collaborations.  In our examination we hope to uncover both the ways that boundaries represent true divides in terms of rights and power, and also create and reify false categories of “inside” and “outside” that often do not fit the realities of our current food system.

The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies is joining with Comparative Border Studies at Arizona State University for the 2014-2015 symposia on Food Across Borders.  On behalf of the conference organizers/editors, Matt Garcia, E. Melanie DuPuis, and Don Mitchell, we invite proposals for scholarly papers dealing with food and boundary crossings in North America.  We welcome a range of interpretations, from the movement of people and goods across land and bodies of water to the passage of food over and through our bodily boundaries.  We welcome proposals that explore these issues historically and/or in the contemporary moment.  Possible subjects for exploration include:

• The dependency of the North American food system, from farm to food preparation, on the migration of guest and immigrant labor, and the effects of that dependency on source countries, cities, and villages.
• The ways in which climate change will result in the adaptive migration of agricultural ecosystems and social systems across northern and southern borders, and what that might mean for local, regional, and larger food cultures and practices.
• The public health implications for one nation when it embraces the food consumption and production practices of another.
• The ways in which media represent and reify the boundaries of territory and identity in food discourses.
• The challenges of cross-border food justice organizing in light of the “liberalization” of agricultural trade and the changing geography of agricultural production.

The Food Across Borders symposia will occur in two stages and in two places.  The first will be held on October 3-4, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona, where there will be a workshop for participants and an opportunity to give initial public presentations of their work.  The second scholars’ workshop and public symposium will be held in Dallas, Texas at SMU in spring 2015.  Each Clements Center symposium follows a similar model and each has resulted in a book or a soon-to-be published book (http://smu.edu/swcenter/Symposia.htm).

We welcome submissions from scholars of any rank—from graduate students to full professors.  Please send a CV and description of an original proposal to Matt Garcia (Matthew.J.Garcia@asu.edu) by September 15, 2013.  The proposal, of up to five pages, should describe the research and explain how it serves the goal of the symposia.  Eight to ten papers will be chosen for the symposia and resulting volume.  For more information see either, http://borders.asu.edu or http://smu.edu/swcenter.

International Conference / October 24 – 25, 2013

Université de Saint-Boniface / Winnipeg

Transculturality is a term with varied meanings and is associated with a range of related concepts, including métissage. The term enjoys wide application in the analysis of contemporary societies, particularly those—like Canada—that are characterised by a high degree of ethnic and cultural diversity. Despite its presence as a defining feature of Canada’s historical development, transculturality/métissage has not always been utilised, or even accepted, as a concept of value for describing and understanding the history of Canada or for theorising the likely trajectory of the country’s future. More recently, however, the value of the concept in terms of historical description and contemporary cultural analysis is being re-evaluated. The international conference “Le Canada: une culture de métissage / Transcultural Canada” is intended to contribute towards a more nuanced understanding of the place of the Métis and of Métis culture within Canada and the pertinence of métissage as a concept of value in the socio-historical and socio-cultural analysis of Canada

In the context of the present conference, the concept of transculturality / métissage will be used according to two primary usages in Canada: specifically, in reference to the ethnic community – the Métis – which emerged from contact between First Nations Peoples and Euro-Canadians and, more generally, in reference to the general cultural condition of hybridity or of transculturalism which lead to the creation of new cultural formations.

In the effort to further explore the historical and contemporary presence of the Métis and of transculturality in Canada, the organisers of this conference are soliciting papers representative of a multitude of scholarly disciplines and approaches. Among the various topics open to discussion are:

• a re-evaluation of the historical influence of the Métis and/or of transculturality in the social, cultural and political development of Canada;
• the contribution of the Métis and/or transculturality in the formation of contemporary Canadian identity;
• an analysis of examples of cultural expression that articulate a transcultural or Métis perspective;
• theoretical discussion of the importance and limits of transculturality as an expression of alterity;
• popular culture and transculturality / métissage;
• linguistic manifestations of transculturality / métissage;
• the Métis and the culture of métissage as initiators of social, cultural and political change in Canada. 

Potential participants are requested to submit an abstract of 250 words (for presentations of 20 minutes in French or English) at the following address pdmorris@ustboniface.ca before May 6, 2013. In your abstract, please include your full name, contact information and affiliation.

Non-CCUSB Call for Papers: Borders, Walls and Security
International conference organized by the Raoul Dandurand Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal in association with the Association for Borderlands Studies

To be held in October 2013
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question still remains “Do good fences still make good neighbours”? Since the Great Wall of China, construction of which began under the Qin dynasty, the Antonine Wall, built in Scotland to support Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman “Limes” or the Danevirk fence, the “wall” has been a constant in the protection of defined entities claiming sovereignty, East and West. But is the wall more than an historical relict for the management of borders? In recent years the wall has been given renewed vigour all around the world, whether in North America, in Europe (with the Greek border fence), in Asia (for instance in India) or in Middle East. But the success of these new walls in the development of friendly and orderly relations between nations (or indeed, within nations) remains unclear. What role does the wall play in the development of security and insecurity? Do walls contribute to a sense of insecurity as much as they assuage fears and create a sense of security for those ‘behind the line’? Exactly what kind of security is associated with border walls?

Organizers

• Élisabeth Vallet, Adjunct Professor, Department of Geography and Research director of Geopolitics at the Raoul-Dandurand Chair UQAM
• Charles-Philippe David, Raoul-Dandurand Chair and Full Professor of Political Science, UQAM
• Heather Nicol, Professor of Geography, Trent University, President (2011-2012), Association for Borderlands Studies
  

Fields: Political Science, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Law, Economics, Art, Design, Biology, Environmental studies, Area Studies, Gender studies.

Students are welcome to submit a proposal.

Conference Theme:
This conference deploys the metaphor of the wall as is seeks to understand the development of a global trend involving the expanding category of ‘problematic’ peoples, constructed in context of an intersection between biopolitics and geopolitics, as well as an expanding list of ‘insecure ‘places. The latter, that is to say the category of insecure places’ holds a double-meaning, however. Such a list of places can be geopolitical, embedded within a global consensus concerning international relations and power arrangements, or it can be internal, referring to the new and vulnerable margins of state, where security violations are possible and where greater vigilance is demanded. What kind of walls are we seeing in response to this intersection of geopolitics and biopolitics and the new spatialization of insecurity it represents? What effect will this have on those whose citizenship status is either newly completed, ongoing, or perceived as marginal?

Theoretical Context

In the post-9/11 world, fences and towers reinforce and enclose national territories, while security discourses link terrorism with immigration, and immigration with illegality, criminal violence and radical Islam. The European Union (EU) claims to tear down walls, while building external walls ever higher. At the same time, the US considers how best to deploy towers and walls along its border zones while implementing an integrated border management regime. This development is not limited to these two world regions, however. Elsewhere in the global world walls dissecting borderlands are becoming higher. In Asia, India is finishing up its fence around Bangladesh. On all four continents, changes in border policy go along with a heightened discourse on internal control and a shift from borderlines to an ubiquity of control. Such walls are ‘walling in’ as well as ‘walling out’. By this we mean that the traditional geopolitics of bordering are supplemented, rather than fully replaced, by a national biopolitics,  involving new definitions of who belongs and who does not belong, who is potentially represented as a threat and a risk internally, and who should be removed from the body of the state.

The experience of migrations, asylum-seekers, targeted ethnicities, and non-citizen residents has also been profoundly touched by securitization assessments rooted in geopolitics emanating from assessments of conditions outside of the state. Law-enforcement agencies at national and even international level, problematize ethnicity and identity in context of terrorism and criminality, or associated geopolitical orientations based upon nationalist and ethnicity. Systems and facilities for monitoring and gathering data on migrants and asylum seekers, are a product of the opportunity offered by border control, and are now an important component of a counter-terrorist agenda. They too, demand walls in which to embed their technologies.

Using these two lenses, geopolitics and biopolitics, as paradigmatic types, and using the metaphor of the wall to mobilize our discussions, this conference explores the way in which physical and virtual walls are now essential to internal and external definitions of risks, ‘Others’ and “risky people”. Within this framework, constructions of ‘terrorist threat’ as a basis for geopolitical relations is but one example, and the profiling of young Muslim males by Western nations part of a bigger process of securitization based upon the intersection of geopolitics and biopolitics, now made iconoclastic.

This leads us to a second and equally important and inter-related theme. Border walls, as Balibar reminds us, are experienced differently by different peoples.  Crossing the line demarks the beginning, rather than the end of any transnational process. All of this means that even as walls are increasingly assembled, they are also increasingly portable—diffuse and outwardly-oriented, for example through security and border agreements, and inward and inflexible through legislation and public opinion. So while the direction which such projection of border takes is generally determined by well-understood political and geopolitical goals and power arrangements, as in the cadastral of EU and U.S. boundary management protocols, whereby neighbouring states are subject to security hegemonies, there is another dimension to this apparently seamless, diffuse and open-ended process which has been confused with “borderlessness”. This is the way in which such diffusion also enables the inward intrusion of borders, whereby, “borders are folded inwards”. Crossing a physical territorial border, or slipping through the outer wall, is only one in a series of events faced by the migrant, and increasingly, the citizen. New walls are encountered everywhere.

Conference main theme:

Participants are encouraged to critically examine the role of wall in security discourses, particularly with respect to immigration and citizenship, and to consider some of the following questions:

Theme 1. Border fences, walls and identities
Construction of national and local identities
Theoretical limology, walls and epistemology
Anthropological approaches to border walls and fences
Sociology of the walls/fences and their borderlands

Theme 2. Impacts of border walls
Social and environmental impacts
Economical impacts
Bypass strategies
Security industry and border fences & walls
Art, Borders and Walls

Theme 3. Legal aspects of border walls
Separation and legitimation
Border walls: failure or success?
International, national and local
Legal aspects: Human rights and the wall, norms and the wall

Theme 4. Biopolitics of border walls
Security discourses, geopolitical and biopolitical assessments, and walls
9/11 security discourse, marginality and border fences
Spatialization of insecurity and border fences

Deadline for abstract submission: April 20th, 2013
(for both panel sessions and poster sessions)

Proposal: please include the following information (300 words)
·        Name of authors/contributors
·         Institutional affiliations, titles
·        Contact: telephone, fax, email, mailing address
·        Title of the paper
·        Abstract: Subject, empirical frame, analytical approach, theme

Languages: Proposals can be submitted in French, English and Spanish. However the conference will be held in English and French.

Send your proposals via email in Word format to Élisabeth Vallet at UQAM: BordersandWalls@gmail.com

Conference Dates and Deadlines:

• April 20th 2013 : deadline for submitting abstracts and proposals
• June 2013 : proposals selection and notification sent to presenters
• August, 24th 2013 : submission of papers to discussants
• October 2013 : Conference to be held in Montreal.