CFP: “First Symposium on Representations of Home in English-Speaking Literatures and Cultures”

Date: 13-14 November 2014
Organization: University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Venue: Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon

CFP: Abstracts (200-300 words) and a short bio-note should be sent by 31 July 2014 to: representationsofhome@gmail.com

The first Symposium on Representations of Home in English-Speaking Literatures and Cultures asks questions about how personal and communal identities have been represented and negotiated in countries that were once part of the British Empire. In recent decades, the political architecture of ‘home’ has been reconfigured in many of these countries, from Canada’s 1988 Multiculturalism Act, to postapartheid
South Africa’s constitution, post-1998 Peace Agreement Ireland, and the official apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples (2008). Indeed, the same can be said for the United States in the wake of the civil rights movement, and for postimperial and post-devolution Britain.

If empire-building, decolonisation and subsequent social and political upheavals involved voluntary and involuntary migrant flows, how have they (re)shaped notions of home and belonging? In a globalised world of unequal migration policies, growing interdependence, and instant interconnectivity, is home here and/or elsewhere? Does it reside in the past, in a backward movement in time and space, in an ‘imaginary homeland’ of sorts, or is home a movement toward the future? Is it a static unified concept, or a place in the making? How have literature and the visual arts articulated and contributed to changing social and cultural experience? Concurrently, how do literary and culture studies map such shifts and changes? How are ‘home’ and ‘elsewhere’ played out in how we engage with our object of study?

With a view to promoting exchanges and reflection on how these issues are addressed in different parts of the English-speaking world, we invite contributions on these and the following topics:

• Home and language
• Home and place
• Home and conflict
• Home and the body
• Imaginary homelands
• Home and spirituality
• Home/lessness and (be)longing
• Home and identity

Abstracts (200-300 words) and a short bio-note should be sent by 31 July 2014 to:
representationsofhome@gmail.com
Provisional programme: 15 September 2014
Final programme: 15 October 2014

Organising Committee: Teresa Casal, Jean Page, Luísa Falcão, Margarida Martins, Marijke Boucherie, Paula Horta, Sara Henriques, Zuzanna Sanches.
The Representations of Home (RHOME) project is based at ULICES research group 4 – Other English-Speaking Literatures and Cultures, which gathers researchers dedicated to Irish Studies and the New Literatures in English, namely those from Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa. RHOME studies literary and visual representations of home, identity and belonging in societies marked by a history of colonisation and migration and pursues four main strands of inquiry: home and language; home and place; home and conflict; and home and the body.
Launched in 2014, from 2015 to 2020 the RHOME project will be carried out within ULICES Thematic Line 1 – Reading Diaspora, Postcoloniality, and the English-speaking World. The first RHOME symposium thus aims to open up the discussion to researchers working further afield, from English and American Studies to Linguistics and Translation Studies, so that a more comprehensive and dynamic perspective of intra- and intercultural exchanges may emerge and future collaboration may begin to be explored.