Postcolonial Studies Association Convention
School of Advanced Study, Senate House, University of London
18-20 September 2017
We are pleased to announce that the 2017 PSA Convention will be held at the School of Advanced Study, Senate House, University of London, from 18th to 20th September 2017. Paper and panel proposals are invited from academics, scholars and postgraduates with research interests in any area of postcolonial studies from any disciplinary, cross- or interdisciplinary perspective.
Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr. Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin). Other keynotes to be confirmed shortly
The Special Topic of the 2017 Convention is Globalisation. Proposals for panels and papers on this theme are particularly encouraged (click here for CfP).
While the transregional history of globalisation can be traced back to antiquity, its discursive entanglement with the temporal realm of the ‘postcolonial’ has been the subject of much discussion and analysis in recent times. The 2017 convention seeks to investigate the crucial role of postcolonial studies in furthering newer understandings of economic, political and cultural globalisation in the light of the current international climate: the complex socio-political ramifications of the Brexit verdict, Trump’s electoral victory, or the European refugee crisis, which have come to be regarded as the reactionary ‘whitelash’ against globalisation.
Harnessing the philosophical scope of the postcolonial field, our special topic aims to examine the nexus between a ‘neoliberal’ grand-narrative and ‘neocolonial racism’ as a mainstream ideological position in both the North and South. How are these ongoing developments in the global North perceived by peoples and communities in the global South? How is the North/South binary interrogated by the liminal story spaces of illegal immigrants, temporary workers, refugees and asylum seekers? How might we postulate an alternative global economy? In what ways could informal citizenship practices collaborate with radical discourses of ecofeminism, or the transnational agency of a globalised digital resistance, to pose a concerted challenge to the reductive hierarchies of neocolonial racism? In what ways might postcolonial analyses of cultural production account for globalisation within the current economic and political conjuncture?
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for 20-minute individual papers and 500 words for panels of three, along with a brief biographical note of participants (2-3 sentences max), to psaconference@postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk
The deadline for the receipt of abstracts is Tuesday, 28th February 2017.