European Association for Studies of Australia (EASA) Conference: Alter/Native Spaces - call for prop
18-20th September 2019
Conference venue : Université de Toulon, France
Recent events in Australia remind us that Australia is still caught in discourses on “nation”, “belonging” and “identity” in an environment that fails to produce new alternatives in the “postcolonial”, “multicultural” country. By proposing Alter/Native Spaces the 2019 EASA conference intends to go beyond the postcolonial to examine how the prefix “alter” is thus linked both to the notion of an alternative and to the notion of multiplicity, and how Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges may interact and form new spaces to reframe the relationship between the settler nation and the Indigenous peoples by instating a presence in place of an absence. The conference also seeks to examine the ways in which the interaction of Indigenous and non-indigenous geographies may construct alter/native spaces, imaginaries or models of inhabitance that can provide new modes of rethinking difference and belonging. Among the new spaces, global spaces of Indigeneity can be scrutinized as a new vision from afar—an alter/native movement of identities.
The conference will examine identity fragmentation, intersectional identities, floating movements in the creation of identities, between coercion and resistance/ reaffirmation, as well as shifting concepts and definitions, between the imposed and the chosen. The blurriness of representation from the perceived to the represented can also be studied with an exploration of the interpretation, the use and aim of images. Virtual identities can be investigated as well. The 2019 EASA “Alter/Native Spaces” conference will thus focus on the flexibility of boundaries, on “in-betweenness”.
This conference aims to explore the following questions:
Inter/transcultural understandings
Knowledges/knowledge
Reinventing the past/ Re-visions of histories
Hybrid and/or radicant aesthetics
Cultural reconfigurations and nationalist discourses
Colonialism/Multiculturalism/decolonization/neo-colonialism
Alterpolitics
Altermodernism
Environmental sustainability and the anthropocene
Geographies of alter-globalization
Geographical aesthetics
Regionalism and localism
Colonial exploration/postcolonial exploitation
Recognition and Reconciliation
Nostalgia
Heritage and ideals
Post-conflict and reconciliation
Convivial cultures
Please send your 250-word abstracts for 20 minute papers and 100-word bio notes to Salhia Ben-Messahel and Vanessa Castejon: salhia.benmessahel@univ-tln.fr and castejon@univ-paris13.fr by April 30th, 2019. We do encourage panel proposals.
All accepted participants will be expected to become members of the EASA as a precondition to presenting their papers. Details of EASA membership are available on the association’s website at this address: http://www.easa-australianstudies.net/easa/office.
A call for full-academic-length papers derived from conference presentations will be issued after the conference for publication in the Association’s online journal JEASA (http://www.easa- australianstudies.net/ejournal/call).
The European Association for Studies of Australia, founded in 1989, seeks to promote the teaching of and research in Australian Studies at European tertiary institutions, as well as to increase an awareness of Australian culture throughout Europe. EASA promotes the study and discussion of a wide variety of aspects of Australian culture: Indigenous studies, literature, film, the media, popular culture, history, political discourses, the arts. EASA's area of interest also includes New Zealand Studies. http://www.easa-australianstudies.net/