cfp.english.upenn.edu

Interdisciplinary conference
“Migrations. Sexualities and genders on the move”
Bergamo, November 5-6, 2012

The concepts of migration, transit, and journey - not only as movements of subjects seeking new material, cultural, and existential orders, but also as movements of theories and ideas/concepts across different disciplines, cultural contexts, languages and media - are at the core of the conference organized by the Center for Studies on the Languages of Identities of the University of Bergamo (Italy) on November 5-6, 2012.

The conference aims at highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the contemporary debate on transits and migrations, and therefore welcomes contributions concerning literary texts, television, legal texts, visual studies, sociology, anthropology, etc. Subjects might include but are not limited to:

- Writers, artists and filmmakers who are first-generation immigrants. How questions of gender and sexuality are represented in relation to the experience of migration? What is the legacy of the culture of origin? What the impact with the culture of the new country? What the possible hybridizations?

- Theories on gender and sexuality in Europe and across the world, several decades after the formulation of the notion of gender in the United States of the Fifties.

- Translation studies: what are the effects of translations into different languages on the representations of sexual and gender identities? When can we speak of wrong translations, impossible translations or non-innocent mis-translations?

- Legal issues about migrations: how gender and sexuality can affect migration procedures? What is the position of transgender subjects?

- Transpositions (for cinema, television, theater, etc.) and remakes and their effects on the representations and constructions of sexual and gender identities.

- Bodily "migrations" in relation to hermaphroditism, intersexuality, transgender, etc.

- Migrations between the real and the virtual, in relation to the notion of participatory culture and to the dynamics of genders and sexualities in social networks and other virtual communities.

Please submit a 300 word abstract (.doc or .rtf) and a brief CV to stefano.asperti@unibg.it by August 15, 2012.

The authors of the selected abstracts will be notified by August 30, 2012.