The Dialogue between Eastern Europe and the US via the Internet

Panel proposal on behalf of the Romanian Studies Association of America
as part of the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association,
San Francisco, Dec. 27-30, 2008.

This panel aims to explore the changes that occur in the fashioning of
diasporic identities in today’s global world, with reference to the
concrete case of Romanian and, more generally, Eastern European websites,
blogs and other forms of Internet culture that facilitate various forms
of cultural dialogue with the United States. As the world is shrinking
under the impact of recent developments in transport and communication,
diasporic cultures are no longer cut off from the countries of origin,
but in conversation with them, as identities become nomadic,
characterized, as Rosi Braidotti puts it, by a new emphasis on the
process of becoming rather than the state: “The point is not to know who
we are but rather what, at last, we want to become” (Rosi Braidotti:
Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge:
Polity, 2002, p. 2). As shown by seminal theories on Internet culture
such as the ones proposed by George Landow and Manuel Castells, the
virtual space of the Internet offers possibilities of reflecting on this
perpetual process of becoming which Braidotti describes as characteristic
of the new global age.

Please submit electronic 200-word abstracts and short (100-word) bios by
Mar. 10, 2008 to:
 
Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures
University of Bucharest
Str Pitar Mos 7-13,
Bucharest 1, 010451
Romania

Email: msdalexuk_at_yahoo.co.uk

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Received on Thu Feb 14 2008 - 15:58:47 EST