Forthcoming BCLA or BCLA-related events
BCLA Postgraduate One-Day Workshop: Comparative Spaces Beyond the West
Date: 13th November 2010
Venue: University College London
The postgraduate one-day workshop ‘Comparative Spaces Beyond the West’ seeks to explore possible interactions within comparative literature with various national literatures. We are interested in shifting the centre of comparison outside a Western/European paradigm and in creating potential for critical platform of literary and theoretical interactions among various national/cross-national literatures, art, and film. Noting that Western theoretical and critical frameworks tend to be applied to Western and non-Western material alike, we also hope to encourage discussion and use of alternative literary and comparative concepts.
We invite comparative proposals for twenty-minute papers on the following topics, but not limited to:
- literature, film, art in translation across European boundaries
- artists across their national and cultural boundaries
- non-Western readership and the impact of translation
- indigenous, peripheral and/or forgotten literary and critical frameworks
- re-readings and re-writings of canonical works
- influence of international prizes and events on literary and artistic developments
- evolution of genres and art forms across borders.
Guest Speaker: Mohammed Umar in conversation with Asia Zgadzaj
Mohammed Umar is a northern Nigerian Muslim writer and served as a judge for Caine Prize for African Literature 2009. His first novel Amina, published by Africa World Press in 2005, has become not only one of the latest commentaries on the situation of Muslim women in Nigeria, but also one of the few male voices in African literature presenting a strong women’s point of view. Amina has been translated into forty languages. Mohammed is the winner of the 2010 Muslim News Award for Excellence in Arts. He lives and works in London.
The British Comparative Literature Association
XII International Conference
‘Archive’
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, 5–8 July 2010
Plenary speakers
Richard Price (British Library)
Ulrich Raulff (German Literature Archive, Marbach)
Max Saunders (King’s College, London)
Michael Sheringham (University of Oxford)
Carolyn Steedman (University of Warwick)
Dubravka Ugrešiÿ (Writer)
Keywords:
archiving the future, bibliomania, censored archives, collecting, conservation, drafts, fake archives, film and sound archives, imaginary archives, libraries, literary remains, lost archives, manuscripts, marginalia, politics of the archive, oral history, secrets of the archive, technologies of the archive, testimony, the unarchived
The BCLA will offer a limited number of bursaries of up to £50 to graduate students who give papers at the conference. For further information or to apply, please contact the BCLA Secretary, Mrs Penelope Brown, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; email: penny.brown@manchester.ac.uk
Fax: +44 (0)1227-823641
Email: archive@kent.ac.uk
For more information:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/archive
Joint British Comparative Literature Association/CNRS Paris III Censier Conference
Hybrids, Monsters, Aliens and Other Creatures in 20th and 21st Century Writing
9 - 11 September 2010
Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London
This conference proposes to evaluate the significance of hybrid beings and monsters in literature since the beginning of the 20th century. To what degree do they still perpetuate the images of destruction established since Greek mythologies? Are 19th century Darwinian ideas of a survival creature as a successful monster still prevalent in contemporary literature? In what ways do they reflect our contemporary attitudes to both the non human and the inhuman. Are "promising monsters", as Donna Haraway called them in one of her earlier works, visible in contemporary texts?
Although this conference will focus primarily on literature, proposals discussing cinematographic narratives and anthropological, scientific or political discourses within a wider literary perspective will be considered. We invite papers investigating issues relating to the following themes across the spectrum of major European literatures:
- chimeras and mutants
- posthumans, cyborgs and other future creatures
- biotechnology and genetics in creative writing
- the influence of the monster imagery
- dystopia and the monstrous
- the monstrous and the grotesque
- the monstrous and gender
- inhumanity vs the non human
- defining and exploring hybridity
- human/non-human borders
- animality and humanity
- irrationality, aliens and monsters
- the legacy of vampires and other imaginary creatures
- species boundaries
- the precarity of human/non-human norms
- species and evolution
- narratives of aliens
Organiser: Lucile Desblache, Roehampton University. Participation from the CNRS Paris III Censier (Anne Simon) and the British Comparative Literature Association (Karen Seago).
Website: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/index.php?id=373
Speakers include Kate Soper and Dominique Lestel
A selection of papers will be published: the Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle for contributions in French and University of Edinburgh Press have already expressed interest for contributions in English.
