cfp.english.upenn.edu

At a time when the current global financial crisis is prompting profound reassessments of economic models, practices and transnational relationships, how can postcolonial studies inform our understanding of relations between local cultures and global capital? This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the relationships between postcolonialism and economic structures, historicising crisis as well as engaging with contemporary concerns. How might we situate present economic relations within longer (post)colonial histories of capitalism, deprivation, debt and dependency? How do moments of crisis interrelate with ongoing economic struggles outside the west? To what extent are economic relations a central feature of postcolonial cultural representation? What are the relationships between economic crisis and the content, marketing and consumption of postcolonial artistic and cultural productions?

Keynote Speakers:
Elleke Boehmer, Sarah Brouillette,
Suman Gupta

We welcome proposals from academics working in disciplines including Cultural Studies, Economics, Film, Geography, History, Literature, International Development, Politics and related fields. Interdisciplinary papers are welcome.

Topics for papers or panels may include, but are not limited to:

• Responses to the current global economic crisis from postcolonial writers, critics and theorists
• Alternative financial and economic models (e.g. shariah-compliant banking)
• Recessions, depressions and crashes: economic crisis points in (post)colonial histories, texts and cultures
• Situating economics: postcolonial marketplaces and exchanges
• The textual representation of postcolonial economic relations
• Contesting regimes of value and worth across postcolonial cultures
• Postcolonialism and economic migrancy
• Development economics in the postcolony: poverty, debt, aid and relief
• Neoliberalism and global finance (the World Bank, IMF, etc)
• The economics of environmental crisis
• ‘Economy’ as metaphor for social, interpersonal and psychoanalytic process
• The postcolonial studies industry: marketing and commoditising the postcolonial intellectual
• Economies and the academy: funding postcolonial research in the current HE climate

Individual papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send a 300-word abstract and a biographical sketch of no more than 150 words to Clare Barker and Dave Gunning at psaconference2011@gmail.com by 30 November 2010.
Proposals for panels (3 speakers) and roundtable discussions are also welcome: please include a 200 word rationale for the panel/roundtable and a brief summary of each paper/contributor.

postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk