(Non)Belonging: (Re)Reading Identities

Department of English Literature and Literary Linguistics, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
5-6 December 2014

In cooperation with:
Institute of German Studies
Institute Romance Languages and Literatures
Institute of Russian Studies

Zygmunt Bauman in his book Culture in a Liquid Modern World (2011) defines contemporary identity as 'a longing for a sense of belonging within a group or agglomeration, and a desire to be distinct from the masses, to acquire a sense of individuality and originality'. As a result, Bauman's need for identity does no longer spring from the traditional sense of belonging understood as the place of origin, but rather from 'the fear of being different, and the fear of losing individuality. Or of loneliness and of a lack of solitude' regardless of the place. Does this indicate that identity lost its original meaning, its connection with the national discourse? Is the term applicable to the changing mentality of societies? These and other questions well illustrate that the topic of identity remains actual.
Being aware of the constant need for redefining individual and communal identity, we would like to invite everyone (also young researchers: MA, PhD students) interested in the topic to participate in the second interdisciplinary conference CLASH (Culture, Literature, Anthropology Sociology, History Conference). CLASH brings together graduates, postgraduates and young researchers from different branches of humanities. We hope that, with its interdisciplinary approach to literature, culture and social sciences, the project will open the floor for fruitful academic discussions and thus it will promote the newest perspectives on literature and culture. The keynote speakers are:

SHEILA KOHLER, a South African writer, has so far written eleven novels, including Cracks which has been made into a movie with Eva Green. Sheila Kohler's interests revolve around female issues, conflicted identities and (hi)stories. Her newest novel entitled Dreaming for Freud will be published by Penguin in May 2014
(http://www.sheilakohler.com/)

PROF. DR. VERA NÜNNING studied English literature, history, and education in Cologne and graduated with a dissertation on Virginia Woolf's aesthetics. Her postdoctoral thesis deals with Catherine Macaulay and the political culture of English radicalism. Together with Ansgar Nünning she has edited a number of collections of essays, among them a volume on the twentieth-century English novel (1998), three volumes on cultural approaches to narratology and Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: Theoretische Grundlagen, Ansätze, Perspektiven (2003). Besides these topics, one of her recent research interests is an interdisciplinary perspective on the humanities and the study of culture
(http://www.as.uni-heidelberg.de/personen/Nuenning/index.php#aktuelles).

Professor Nunning will give a plenary lecture on "the ethics of fiction/ literature/ reading". Successive speakers will be added to the list.

We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas of study and interest connected with:

· Humanities role in the (re)shaping of national, collective and individual identity
· Unwanted identities: The ethics belonging
· Fluid and conflicted identities
· Negotiating identities in postmodern world: cosmopolitanism and nationalism
· Gender and transgender identities
· Globalization, mass migration and transculturalism and their effect on identity and belonging
· Displacement, diasporas, outcasts
· Exile and exiles
· Spaces and places: spatial (non)belonging
· Restoring and remembering one's identity
· Narratives and story-telling as performing identities
· Identity and new media, graphic novels etc.

Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to clashconference@gmail.com by 30th June 2014. Proposals should include the full name, institutional affiliation, and email address of the proposer. The abstracts will be subjects to blind peer review. We aim to inform those whose proposals have been accepted by the end of July. The publication including the selected papers from the first edition of CLASH is due soon, so also this year's participants will also have a chance of being published.