Conference theme

Translocation is becoming ever more significant as traditional understandings of locations as stable are increasingly undermined. Translocation is not only a process (the transfer of people and cultural products to different locales; the physical and textual contestation and redrawing of borders), but can also mean a new kind of location, a trans-location consisting of fractured and variously connected spaces.

In Postcolonial Studies, place and (dis)placement, nation and narration, location, movement, interconnection and migration remain major paradigms. But arguably our understanding of what constitutes a specific location has dramatically changed over the last few decades and requires reading practices which reflect the communicative, political and aesthetic concerns of translocal representation.

Moreover, the field of Postcolonial Studies itself has undergone various institutional translocations: into British Studies, Medieval Studies, German Studies, and various other disciplines.

The ASNEL conference 2009 will explore these issues in various fields – for more details, see the call for papers.