CfP Postgraduate Conference WELCOMING STRANGERS

From: Daniela Berghahn <[email protected]>

Call for papers: WELCOMING STRANGERS
An international, interdisciplinary postgraduate conference, 27 April  
2012

Humanities and Arts Research Centre, Royal Holloway, University of  
London

Keynote speakers:

Professor Robin Cohen (Emeritus Professor and Principal Investigator  
of the Leverhulme-funded Oxford Diasporas Programme, University of  
Oxford

Professor John Hill, Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway,  
University of London.

With accelerated inter- and intra-national mobility, the concepts of  
place and displacement, and their impact on individual and collective  
identities, have received unprecedented scholarly attention in  
disciplines as diverse as Geography, Politics, Music, Film and Media  
Studies, English, Postcolonial Studies and Migration and Diaspora  
Studies. The growing importance of multi-locality, transnational (and  
'post-national') communities, cosmopolitanism and various forms of  
flexible citizenship call binarisms which posit ‘the stranger’ as ‘the  
Other’ of the indigenous community, as the ‘guest’ who is welcomed by  
the hegemonic host society, into question. Contests around notions of  
ethnic essentialism and cultural purity have given way to a widespread  
acceptance of diversity and the celebration of hybridity. In music,  
literature, and film, the contributions of artists with  
transnationally mobile and/or ethnic minority backgrounds to the  
aesthetic traditions of western hegemonic cultural productions have  
resulted in innovative creative synergies of the local and the global  
and have enjoyed considerable cross-over appeal. On the other hand,  
many ‘strangers’ have not been welcomed, their voices have been  
silenced, and their artistic expressions have been marginalized. The  
exponential growth in informational technologies and the mobility of  
global capital, which once promised to fulfil McLuhan’s vision of a  
global village, has been accompanied by many unforeseen challenges.  
Restricted mobility of labour, asylum legislation, and new security  
challenges pose a threat to the ideal of global identities and a  
cosmopolitan society.

The conference committee invites proposals for papers from  
postgraduate students working in or (in)between the fields of  
Geography, Politics, Music, Film and Media Studies, English,  
Postcolonial Studies and Migration and Diaspora Studies. In  
particular, we are interested in papers addressing the following issues:

·      The impact of displacement and transnationalism and artistic  
practice in literature, film and music

·      Hybridity, creolisation and artistic innovation

·      Representations of migration and diaspora in literature, film  
and television

·      Stereotyping strangers

·      Cosmopolitanism and identities at the margins

·      Transnational mobilities, citizenship and bordering practices

·      Migrants of calamity: financial crisis, terrorism, and  
environmental change

·      Migration, politics, law, territoriality

·      (Inter)disciplinary approaches to hospitality

·      Producing and performing locality

·      Transnational flows, transnational connections

·      Emotional and social constructions of ‘home’

·      ‘Stranger again’ – returning to the country of origin



Please send your 200-word abstract, together with a brief biographical  
note, 4 key words, and 4 bibliographical references to the conference  
committee no later than 31 January 2012.

Email: [email protected]


The Conference Committee:
John Abrahm (Politics)

Richard Bater (Geography)

Prof. Daniela Berghahn (Media Arts)

Lia Deromedi (English)

Stephanie Vos (Music)

Deniz Yardimci (Media Arts)





Daniela Berghahn
Professor of Film Studies
Department of Media Arts
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham
TW20 0EX
T. +44 (0)1784 443838

www.farflungfamilies.net
www.migrantcinema.net