Call for Papers : Postcolonial Studies Association 2015 Convention

Postcolonial Studies Association 2015 Convention

7 to 9 September 2015: College Court, University of Leicester

Call for papers

Contributions from academics and postgraduates investigating any area of postcolonialism from any disciplinary, cross- or interdisciplinary perspective are warmly invited.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Professor Paul Gilroy (King’s College London)

Professor John McLeod (University of Leeds)
(Other keynotes to be confirmed)

Special topic: Diasporas

Movement —be it of culture, capital or the human movement involved in colonialism, slavery, indentured labour, or postcolonial migration to former colonial metropoli— has always been central to postcolonial studies.

Diaspora has been one of the key concepts of postcolonial studies within this context of individual and collective journeys.  Within contemporary analysis, diasporas have tended to be explored in terms of ethnicity, race, nationality, and even religion. However, diaspora has sometimes been accused of perpetuating histories of colonial inequality by failing to differentiate between precarious migration motivated by exploitation and the more economically privileged transnational movements of the global bourgeoisie. The study of human movement during colonial and postcolonial times has taken a number of shapes across the humanities and social sciences through the study of diaspora, migration, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalisation.

It is this theme of movement that the conference special topic will address. What social, historical and linguistic configurations does the study of diasporas privilege? Which ones does it ignore? How has diaspora come to include different motivations of migration beyond the more familiar ones of ethnic discrimination and economic hardship? How has the diasporic experience been represented and studied?

Submissions

Format: Individual 20-min. academic papers, panels, performances or poster presentations.

Please send abstracts of individual presentations (250 words) or panels of 3 (500 words) with a brief biographical note of participants (2-3 sentences) to psa2015convention@gmail.com.

Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2015. Decisions communicated by the end of March 2015.