Call for Papers
The Myth of the ‘Enemy’: The mutable faces of the Other and the construction of European identities
Bologna (Italy), June 8 – 09, 2017
Deadline: Mar 6, 2017
International Studies Conference
Department of the Arts, Aula Magna di S. Cristina (piazzetta G. Morandi, 2).
The conference is organised by: Irene Graziani, Maria Vittoria Spissu
The scientific committee is formed by: Lilla Maria Crisafulli, Keir Douglas Elam, Vera Fortunati, Irene Graziani, Renato Mazzolini, Giuseppe Olmi, Fulvio Pezzarossa, Giovanni Ricci, Alessandra Russo, Maria Vittoria Spissu.
Organised by: Dipartimento delle Arti
In collaboration with: Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne, Dipartimento di Storia Culture Civiltà – Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna.
The conference’s main focus is on ‘Otherness and the construction of identities’ (be they geographical, ethnic, political, religious, cultural, or social), while the underlying theme requested of the papers is ‘the perception and representation of the enemy’. Contact with the Other, as well as the fear of difference, are highly topical subjects of reflection: the distorting visions they express have, for too long, greatly affected peoples’ civil life and their individual and collective imaginary.
Three sessions are planned, in keeping with the conference’s multi-disciplinary approach: the first session encompasses the Histories of Art, Cinema and Photography; the second concerns History; the third Literature. The papers may be related to the Middle, Modern, or Contemporary ages.
The aim of the conference is to investigate the origin, the circulation and the consolidation of cultural discourses that generated stereotypes and ideas concerning otherness – often aberrant and discriminatory ones – and thus we invite submissions of papers related to the analysis of figures who have been subjected to exclusion and depersonalisation, perceived as belonging to ‘Other Worlds’ to be denigrated, colonised, converted, and/or obliterated: Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Christians, Dissenters, Turks, Blacks, savages, foreigners, ‘enemies’, ‘infidels’.
Papers that may shed light on the perception of Europeans in texts and images produced by non-European cultures will also be accepted.
Satire and the various forms of violence perpetrated at the expense of other and different cultures, express – as the obverse sides of the same coin – the anxiety but also the fascination and myths created regarding places and peoples that were/are unfamiliar or ‘remote’.
Particular consideration will be given to contributions focusing on mutual influences and on different forms of contamination and hybridization: appropriations of stylistic features and models of the other within the cultures of origin, as well as the diffusion (or imposition) of values, paradigms of knowledge, practices of representation from the hegemonic cultural centre outwards.
The conference also intends to investigate and deconstruct what is hidden behind the labels of ‘enemy’ or the Other, and encourages the adoption of innovative and cross-cultural research perspectives, privileging, when possible, less explored areas and connections.
THEMES
Paper topics might include:
America, Africa, Asia in the European imaginary and vice versa;
European identities, political contrasts and internal religious polemics;
Otherness as fascination;
Otherness as terror;
Otherness as joke, caricature, satire;
Otherness and propaganda;
Otherness as falsification;
Contaminations of attributes;
Explorations, voyages and contacts – real or imaginary – with unfamiliar civilisations and other Worlds;
Myth of the enemy: archetypes, poetics, pathosformeln;
Migrations of models;
Appropriation of foreign conceptions and types;
Production of hybrid objects;
Otherness and fiction;
Otherness and artistic/literary genres.
SCHEDULE
How to apply:
If you wish to submit a proposal, please send name(s), email address and affiliation, as well as title, five keywords, abstract (max. 300 words) outlining a 20-minute paper, together with a brief bio (including main research interests and publications – no more than five references), and (if so desired) a provisional bibliography concerning your paper. Please indicate, immediately before or immediately after the title of the abstract, your session of reference: history of art, history or literature (this also applies to multi-disciplinary papers).
Deadline for proposals: by 6th March 2017.
Confirmation of participation will be on 15th April 2017.
Proposals should be sent to: irene.graziani AT unibo.it and mariavittoria.spissu AT unibo.it.
Working languages: English, Italian.
Selected articles of each session/field of research will be published as a volume of conference proceedings, following a double-blind peer review process. The publication will provide (limited) space for (black-and-white) illustrations.
Deadline for paper submission (for publication in conference proceedings): 3 months after conference.
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