The 13th Annual Graduate Symposium in Romance Studies held on March 7, 2009 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities calls for papers relating to the theme "Performing Violence: Re-creating the ‚ÄúOther‚Ä? across Space and Ages". Abstracts Due: Nov 31, 2008.
13th Annual Graduate Symposium in Romance Studies
March 7, 2009 - University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Performing Violence: Re-creating the ‚ÄúOther‚Ä? across Space and Ages
Violence is often thought of in terms of destruction, trauma, and displacement. We will reframe the question by looking at what violence itself does or shows‚Äîits performance or execution. This symposium is centered first of all on how violence transforms the nexus of social relations, identity, and differences that constitute a particular community. The events and aftershocks of conquest and post-coloniality inform and reshape notions of cultural, ethical, and aesthetic standards by forcing the acknowledgment and incorporation of otherness into the domain of social discourses. Secondly, we consider how discourses‚Äîoral, textual, imagistic, linguistic, cinematic, performative, or other‚Äîoften enact violence as agents of socio-political, cultural, and/or ideological change. Rather than merely depicting the image of violence in a static, detached fashion, discursive violence may also serve as a rhetorical embodiment of the ‚Äúother‚Äôs‚Ä? confrontational position that exists simultaneously within and beyond the limits of normative representation.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
rhetoric of ‚Äúotherness‚Ä?
counter-hegemonic discourses
identity, space, and nation in ‚Äúpost-modernity‚Ä?
theatricality and violence of representation
the politics of sacrifice and public spectacle
relationships of dominant/minority languages
baroque and neo-baroque manifestations of cultural difference and/or dissent
violence and metamorphosis
evolutions and revolutions
the bifurcated self, alienation, the self as ‚Äúother‚Ä?
vision and hearing: the limits of representation
Please send proposals for submissions, including your name, affiliation, contact information, paper title, and 150-word abstract to agsrs@umn.edu by November 31, 2008.
