Thursday, August 1, 2019

CFP: Europe's Past, Present, and Future: Utopias and Dystopias

Application Period: August 26 to October 15, 2019 

Conference Details: June 22-24, 2020  |  University of Iceland  |  Reykjavik, Iceland

The ECRN invites submissions for a mini-symposium on “The Futures of Europe.”
In addition, we welcome session proposals or individual abstracts on all aspects of European culture.

Please send proposals to Randall Halle (rhalle@pitt.edu), Katrin Sieg (ks253@georgetown.edu), and Estela Schindel (Schindel@europa-uni.de).

Sessions involve a moderator and discussants, and can take three forms:
  • Paper panels consist of 4-5 papers organized around a common theme with comments provided by a discussant.
  • Book panels (also known as "Author Meets Critics") bring together 4-6 scholars to debate a recent publication in the field and are moderated by a chair.
  • Roundtables assemble 4-6 scholars to discuss a common theme, idea, or topic with moderation provided by a chair.
  • Mini-Symposia are thematic clusters of 3-5 sessions of any of the above types grouped together.
Open Call for panels, roundtables, mini-symposia
The ECRN/CES welcomes paper and session submissions on all aspects of European Culture:
e.g. Longing and Belonging to Places and Communities; Perceptions/Images/Stereotypes of Place, Nation, Group; Migration, Exile and Belonging; Empires and Imperialism; Migration, Multiculturalism, Religion, Ethnicity; Borders and Boundaries; Allegiance, Nostalgia, Mythology; New Readings of Iconic Texts; Genres and Styles: Realist, Utopian, Dystopian; Media Adaptions and Rewritings; Transnational Memories; (Post)colonial and De-colonial Critique; Eastern- and Central European Studies; Sexuality and Gender Studies; Imagology, Myth-and Folklore Criticism; Radicalism and Violence; European Avant-gardes; Cosmopolitics; Eurocentrism contestation and non-European epistemologies; Europe and the World.

ECRN Mini-Symposium
European Futures: Experiments, Agency, Cultural Practice
When is Europe? Is the European project of united in diversity a project of the future to come? Where is Europe in a history of shifting borders and changing collectivities? Is it a place or a process that imagines futures and pasts in a present? The post-war aim of a Europe without borders, central to the project of the EU, set itself against a past of chauvinistic and imperial aggressions, projecting a united Europe into the future. And yet the contemporary European project has generated its own set of mental and material divisions and exclusions. It has reactivated older histories of national and civilizational belonging and global inequalities. While fostering a mobile culture for work and leisure, it has also sharpened class and ethnic conflict. East/West and North/South divides pull European unity apart. And in spite of the ideal of a Europe without borders, the EU has also generated its own new forms of territory and boundary-making.

This CfP seeks contributions that explore the possibilities of European time and space in cultural practice, theory and analysis, both historically and contemporary.

Papers are especially welcome that attend to anxieties about European collectivity, mass migration, and collective displacement, explore assertions of national histories or inter- and trans-national alternatives, discuss experienced shifts of sovereignty and cultural belonging. We encourage critical approaches that do not take culture or identity as a given but rather ask how past and present experiences and practices shape collective perceptions, generate mythologies, produce domination, and seek to resolve conflict. How do contemporary exclusivities relate to or differ from past exclusions. How to grasp Europe in its global entanglements and what de-colonizing practices and knowledges are being mobilized and explored.

With your contributions, we hope to establish a series of panels. A concluding roundtable will explore dystopian and utopian European futures. Send proposals to rhalle@pitt.eduks253@georgetown.edu, andSchindel@europa-uni.de

EUROPEAN CULTURE is a new Research Network at the Council for European Studies.

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