Call for papers

C.F.P. Postcolonial Translocations
20th annual GNEL / ASNEL Conference
University of Münster, Germany
21 - 24 May 2009

The second call for papers has closed on February 6, 2009.

Cultural products emerge from ever more shifting grounds, and translocation is becoming increasingly significant: narrative fiction, poetry, drama, and film are created with a view to being marketed in several languages and markets; authors and producers move from one country to another; global audiences consume cultural products in different locales, creating demands in several marketplaces; national borders are fought over and redrawn, materially as well as textually, further undermining any sense of a stable location.

Translocation denotes more than a simple ‘change of location’ or ‘dislocation’ (which often implies a privileging of ‘origins’ over ‘new’ locations), because this concept can leave open points of departure and destination. Translocation is not only a process (the transfer of people, cultural products, borders), but can also mean a new kind of location, a trans-location consisting of fractured and variously connected spaces.

Postcolonialists read contemporary and historical texts across disparate geographic and temporal spaces. In the context of globalisation and neo-imperialisms, not only unequal development and political instability but also violence and gender inequality continue to shape complex postcolonial realities; nation and narration, place and displacement, location and migration remain major paradigms of postcolonial critique. The postcolonial lexicon clearly indicates our concern with placement, movement and interconnection. 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. The
growing body of texts which – linguistically, aesthetically, and thematically – draw on and combine distinct cultural repertoires is an indication of the increasing relevance of postcolonial translocations today.

Under the sign of translocation, this conference promotes a critical evaluation of postcolonial texts and media whilst also investigating their institutional academic contexts. Possible topics for papers and panels include

• Cosmopolitan Film Cultures (Markus Heide)

• Translocating Cosmopolitanism (Virginia Richter, Frank Schulze-Engler)
  

• Contact varieties translocated: language and identity in Diaspora communities (Susanne Mühleisen, Anne Schröder)

• 'Translocation' as Topos in Literatures and Films from/on Southern Africa (Monika Reif-Hülser)

• Translocating postcolonial studies: Interdisciplinary developments (round table) (Christine Vogt-William, Silke Stroh)
  

•  Black British Translocations
  

•  Border regimes and border-crossings

•  Imagining translocal space

• Representations of forced and voluntary relocations (incl. slavery, indentureship, transportation, migration)
  

• Postcolonial cultural transformations

• Authority and authenticity in postcolonial texts

• Transmigration

• Translation and translocation

• Translocal food and its representations

• Moving species: Biological transfers

• Online writing, online reading

• Cyber diasporas

• Diaspora literature

• Travel writing

• Academic locations and reallocations of Postcolonial Studies

• 20 years on: GNEL/ASNEL and its institutional locations

 
You can email abstracts of papers (20 minutes) or proposals for panels comprising three papers (90 minutes) to the following address: gnel2009@gmail.com
Abstract length: about 200 words
Panel descriptions: about 600 words
Please also send information about your position, academic location, contact details, and some short biographical information (max. 100 words).