Keynote speaker announced:

*UPDATE*

*Encounter and Experience: Cultures in Process*

Interdisciplinary Conference
2 to 4 March 2007
University of Bielefeld, Germany

*Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Robert J.C. Young, New York University*

*Call for Papers*

Cultures are dynamic sites of negotiation, exchange, and mixing. In
fields such as literary studies, cultural studies, post-colonial
studies, cultural history, or anthropology concepts such as
transculturation (Ortiz, Pratt) and hybridity (Bhabha, Young) explore
cultures and their representations in such terms. Together with
linguistic approaches like accommodation theory (Giles) they have high
currency in contemporary debates. Notions such as ?contact zone?,
?interstices?, or ?third space? outline the context, preconditions, and
effects of cultural interchange. The processes that are at the centre of
cultural encounters, however, have largely remained lacunae in a
complex, interdisciplinary field with a multiplicity of terminological
coinings.

For the analysis of cultural encounters the fact that ?process? mostly
remains an open variable has particularly serious repercussions not
least with regard to the field?s central conundrums such as the role of
agency or the widely acknowledged but little understood notion of
accommodation. Emphasising the dimension of process, by contrast, opens
what ?happens inside? up to analysis. Moreover, because of this inside
view, new insights, for example with regard to the workings and
possibilities of agency or accommodation can be garnered. What ?process?
involves becomes particularly visible in a specific and exemplary type
of cultural process, namely cultural encounter. Here, since two or more
cultures meet and interact, the dynamics of cultures become the centre
of attention, whether they manifest themselves in cultures defined in
national or ethnical terms or in cultures in a broad sense, including
media cultures, legal cultures, gender cultures, age cultures, etc. More
precisely, the experience of cultural encounter offers itself as the
prime point of access to cultural processes, since ?culture? after all
refers to how human beings organise and negotiate their lives both
materially and discursively.

For the conference ?Encounter and Experience: Cultures in Process? to be
held 2 to 4 March 2007 at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, we
solicit papers which explore cultural processes in disciplines such as
literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology, history,
anthropology, media studies, or philosophy. The conference will be
organised in sections and we list the sections we envisage below. If
possible indicate for which panel you propose your abstract. Depending
on proposals we will expand and adjust the scope of the sections.

# Cultural Encounters in Process: Concepts, Theories, Positions
# The Processing of Cultural Encounters: Perception and Cognition
# The Body in Cultural Encounters
# Cultural Encounters and Linguistic Processes
# The Manifestations of Cultural Processes in Individual Cultures and
their Cultural Representations

Please send abstracts of 300 words for papers of 20 minutes in
electronic form to conference2007.process_at_uni-bielefeld.de by 15
December 2006.

*Website* www.culturesinprocess.com

Convenors:

Prof. Dr. Ralf Schneider and Dr. Stephan Gramley
University of Bielefeld
Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies
Postfach 10 01 31
33501 Bielefeld
Germany

Dr. Sigrun Meinig
Dresden University of Technology
British Literary Studies, Institute of British & American Studies
01062 Dresden
Germany

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Tue Nov 28 2006 - 17:57:10 EST