[Bilimsel Haber] UPDATE: Transnationalism, Activism, Art (9/31/06; 3/8/07-3/11/07)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Update: Call for Papers

Please note we have extened the deadline for abstracts to September 31,
2006.

There is also an extended list of confirmed conference speakers.
_________________________________

Transnationalism, Activism, Art
March 8-11, 2007
University of Toronto


A vexed relationship exists between academic theorists of the
transnational and the politics of counter-globalization.  These both, in
turn, have a mixed relationship with art. Arundhati Roy has famously
suggested that art, literature, and music should be used in order “to
lay siege” to capitalist imperialism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
in their controversial work, similarly leave space for these same fields
to play a role in “creating the social relations and institutions” of
the new society of the multitude that they envision in opposition to
Empire. Marxist, postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and other
theorists are increasingly investigating the intersections between
transnational capitalism and art, but these investigations are difficult
to separate from the daily acts of resistance to which we bear witness
on the streets of the world.

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted at the University of Toronto
and working in collaboration with the Department of English and the
Centre for Diaspora Studies, seeks to bring together academics, artists,
cultural workers, and those engaging in activist politics for a
sustained discussion of the politics of transnationalism, activism, and
art today, seeking not only to establish provisional genealogies for
these topics, but also to determine their futures. The coordinators of
this conference are particularly interested in pursuing the following
questions:

       •	What is the function of art / writing today?
       •	Is art a resource?
       •	Is art a commodity?
       •	Is art a good?
       •	Is art a right?
       •	How does (or should) art respond to (inter)national conflict?
       •	Does (or should) art play a conscious role in citizen formation?
       •	What are the limitations of literary / creative marketplaces?
       •	What are the limits of (guerilla, indie) alternatives to
	creative marketplaces?
       •	Who constructs aesthetics and why?
       • Marketing multiculturalism: what are the politics of subaltern		
	art / writing?
       • What is the relationship between race and transnational cultural
         production?
       • What are the roots (routes) of transnational studies?
       •	What is the relationship between transnationalism and
	indigeneity?
       •	What role does gender play in the transnational?
       •	Is cosmopolitanism an aesthetic or an alternative to global
	capitalism?
       •	What are the arts and politics of transnational labour?
       •	What are the benefits or pitfalls of the terms diaspora,

         transnationalism, post-nationalism, hybridity, citizenship, or
         globalization?


Towards these ends, we are interested in papers that pursue

       •	Literature
       •	Street poetics
       •	Media and cultural studies
       •	Contemporary art
       •	Street art
       •	Music
       •	Security regimes
       •	Borders
       •	Migration
       •	Biopolitics
       •	Protests
       • Human rights
       •	Trade, free, fair, and otherwise

Confirmed speakers include Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota,
author of At Home in the World), Karen Connelly (Poet and Novelist,
author of The Lizard Cage), Cathy Crowe (Toronto Street Nurse), Henry
Giroux (McMaster University, author of Border Crossings, America on the
Edge), Gayatri Gopinath (University of California, Davis, author of
Impossible Subjects: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures),
Declan Kiberd (University College Dublin author of Inventing Ireland),
Ato Quayson (University of Toronto, author of Postcolonialism, Theory,
Practice or Process?), Guillermo Verdecchia (University of Guelph
writers in residence, 2005-6 playwright, Fronteras Americanas), Rinaldo
Walcott (OISE/UT, author of Black Like Who?), Robert Young (New York
University, author of Colonial Desire).

Deadline for 500-word paper abstracts is September 31, 2006.  Proposals
for full panels are welcomed.  Please send to

Transnationalism, Activism, Art
c/o Áine McGlynn and Kit Dobson
Department of English
7 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K1

TransnationalismActivismArt at gmail.com

This conference is run with the support of the Department for English,
the Centre for Diaspora Studies, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama,
First Nations House, Graduate Collaborative Program in Women’s Studies,
Department of Equity Studies, and Sociology and Equity Studies in
Education (OISE/UT).

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