cfp.english.upenn.edu

Call for Papers and Panels
What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say

A conference at the University of York, UK, 3-5 July 2010, in partnership with the University of Leeds and Manchester Metropolitan University

Postcolonial Studies is firmly ensconced in the Anglophone metropolitan academy: the field has its own specialised journals, academic posts, postgraduate courses, and dedicated divisions within learned bodies. But how well have these configurations travelled to other locations, institutions and disciplines? What topics, questions and approaches remain unexplored? And what’s ‘theoretical’ about postcolonial theory anyway?

This conference will examine these and related questions through a set of interdisciplinary interventions aimed at assessing not only what postcolonial theory (still) doesn’t say, but also what we would like it to say: in other words, how we might best put the field’s cultural and institutional capital to use. Our intent, therefore, is not to repeat well-rehearsed debates about the field’s various failings, but rather to advance the discussion by identifying common goals and areas of enquiry. In order to promote a sense of coherence among the papers and interventions at the conference, applicants are encouraged to submit panel proposals, though paper proposals are also welcome.

Possible subjects include, but are not limited to:
1. Institutional chronologies: the Reagan/Thatcher years and the rise of postcolonial studies.
2. Postcolonial theory as travelling theory: adoptions, adaptations, and critiques beyond the Anglophone metropole.
3. Neglected regions: East Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
4. Postcolonial theory and religion.
5. Postcolonial prospects: assets, liabilities and futures.
6. What’s left in/of postcolonial theory: activism, Marxism and globalisation.
7. What’s wrong with belonging? Rethinking diaspora, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism.
8. Postcolonial theory and the wars of the twenty-first century (Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe).
9. Postcolonial theory and the aesthetic: form, narrative, ‘Third World aesthetics’, the novel versus newer forms of cultural text (film, comics, graphic novels etc.)
10. Postcolonial contraband: secrets, silence and censorship.

Please send 20-minute paper proposals or panel proposals consisting of three papers, together with a brief bio, to yorkpoco@googlemail.com by October 1, 2009.

Questions and queries can be sent to the organizing committee:
Ziad Elmarsafy (ze500@york.ac.uk); Department of English, University of York
Anna Bernard (ab609@york.ac.uk), Department of English, University of York
David Attwell (da506@york.ac.uk ), Department of English, University of York
Stuart Murray (S.F.Murray@leeds.ac.uk), Department of English, University of Leeds
Eleanor Byrne (E.Byrne@mmu.ac.uk), Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University