cfp.english.upenn.edu

This call for papers aims at an overall inclusion concerning the full cultural contemporary debate on the concepts of shift and interconnection among different areas of communication and nationhoods. The purpose is to gather together academics and scholars from as diverse backgrounds as possible (linguistics, literature, cultural studies, history, history of art, film studies, theatre studies etc) in order to study how ideological and cultural differences shape and reshape the sense of borders and crossings in the postcolonial field.
The key term should be “post”, that is “renewal” and “changed positions and attitudes”. Subthemes offering pathways towards and around the node of “crossing realities” include but are not limited to the following:

- breaking cultural boundaries and reshaping cultural geographies
- new modalities in writing: beyond postmodernism and postcolonialism
- cinema and theatre as means for representation of transnational realities, cultural contaminations and hybrid identities
- intercultural translation: sociolinguistic and sociocultural issues in global scenarios and migration contexts
- revisiting diasporas and homes: new forms of migration and integration, fear and anxieties, ‘liquid’ identities
- realities and art: to represent the real and not to represent the real
- new/old borders in the postcolonial world: the inheritance of the past, the incursion of the future, ecocriticism and postcoloniality
- social, political and cultural frontiers: crossings as acts of metamorphosis
- the circulation of ideas and the porosity of cultural borders
- devoicing borders, voicing crossings and access to education in postcolonial settings
- gendered matters and gendered identities in the 21st century
- translating/interpreting in the time of war and terrorism
- manifest and hidden policies in the global/glocal scenario.