cfp.english.upenn.edu

5th REELC-ENCLS Congress:
Islands and Continents: (Re)constructions of Identity / Iles et Continents: (Re)Constructions Identitaires

26-28 September 2013, Universidade da Madeira - Funchal, Portugal

The island (from Homer to Camões, from Shakespeare to Daniel Defoe, H. G. Wells, or, more recently, José Saramago or Michel Houellebecq, among many others) multiplies into a myriad contrasting configurations: paradise or place of uncertain mysteries, of dreams and nightmares; paradoxical location for both utopias and dystopias; destination of choice or of necessity, for exiles, refugees and deportees (see the penal colonies of Tarrafal, in Cape Verde, or in Australia); disputed territory and object of political claims, in colonial and post-colonial contexts. And the continents? Are they, for islanders, simply spaces of displacement, or of opening up to the unbearable sense of insularity, even when the “island” is only present at the level of a metaphor? Does insularity itself dissolve further, for example into the “hypo-insularity” of which Thierry Nicolas writes regarding the French Antilles? How do these spaces interact? In the islands and in the continents, between the islands and the continents - in peninsulas, isthmuses, or islands connected artificially to continents - is it possible to delineate specific identities, either of individual or collective character? Are there distinctive traits, individual, local, national?

Abstracts for papers based on comparative perspectives are invited on, but not restricted to, the following themes:

• The way in which cultural memory or migratory fluxes among islands and continents influence or participate in the (re)construction of identity;


• Cultural stereotypes;


• The sea as an element of union and/or separation;


• Insularity/hypo-insularity and its consequences for literary and artistic creativity;


• Topography and temporality of insular and continental spaces;


• Questions of imagology;


• The duality Island-Continent and the post-colonial discourse;


• Metaphorical discourses: Sea, Islands, Continents;


• Proposals for thematic panels on relevant topics will also be accepted.

Proposals (in English, French or Portuguese) of 300 words maximum, for 20-minute papers should be sent by the deadline of 15 November 2012 to:
Maria Teresa Nascimento at: ilesetcontinents@uma.pt
according to guidelines to be found at: http://encls.net/?q=event/islands-and-continents.