Employing Cultural Studies as a framework, the conference seeks to analyze and theorize the cultural implications of globalism. It aims to understand cultural change in the context of global (and local) social transformation. To this end it explores the evolving forms of culture and the interventions that accompany them as these respond to both the pressures and the opportunities made possible by the globalization of culture in all its forms. Seen from this perspective, global interrelations can serve as a framework for exploring a world characterized by networks of connections as they form and re-form, but spanning multi-continental distances. Taking place across nations, economies, people and established cultures, the scope and flow of these emergent interrelations have been a hallmark of modernity and increasingly shape our contemporary world.
It is becoming increasingly evident that Culture is both a participant in and an effect of globalization. The flow of goods, technologies, labour, information, artefacts, and ideas across increasingly permeable and often shifting borders is marked by the instability, hybridity, and sometimes conflicts that accompany cross-cultural encounters. Instead of distinct, seemingly unchanging cultures that signal coherent national identities we now have cultural interventions, negotiations and exchanges that inform and shape the entire human experience.
The multi-/trans-disciplinary conference explores this unstable terrain and addresses a range of issues including
- Culture and modernity
- Global culture in a postmodern age
- Language, Nation and Identity
- Erasures and constructions of identity,community, and agency
- Diasporic representations: migration, exile, and multiculturalism
- Genders in culture—constructions and self-definitions
- Cannons: formation and rupture
- National and transnational Cultural Studies
- Popular culture, vernacular culture, and other “low” discourses
- Pedagogy: Cultural Studies in the classroom
- The place of “high” art in the construction of culture
- Cultural practices and social change
Paper proposals on any of the above or related topics are welcome. Papers relating Cultural Studies and globalism to the U.S. are especially welcome.
Proposals for either (1) individual papers or (2) pre-constituted panels should include: (a) Title of the paper (b) Abstract (not more than 250 words for papers and 350 words for panels) and (c) 50-word bio-note on the presenter, including academic affiliation and email address.
Email the proposals to oucip09@gmail.com with the subject line “Cultural Studies Conference” before 30 January 2009.