Submissions are invited for the International Conference "Diasporas and 'Race'" to be held October 25-27, 2012 at Wake Forest University. This conference is an extension of the 2011 conference "Diasporas and Cultures of Migration" and will expand the reflection on the concept of diaspora, its uses, its limits, or even its outright rejection as a useful concept. Submission deadline: February 1, 2012.
In the wake of the 2011 conference on "Diasporas and Cultures of Migration" that was held at Montpellier, University Paul Valéry, the convenors of this conference wish to extend and expand the reflection on the concept of diaspora, its uses, its limits, or even its outright rejection as a useful concept, by focusing on the links between diasporas and "race."
Diasporas have always had to negotiate new articulations of ethnic/racial identities while individuals had to make do with contexts already defined by certain types of racial relations and the evolutions of racial transnational references. The emergence of new
racisms and of new racialized identities reconfigures class hierarchies, which often results in violence against migrants.
Does the prism of diaspora allow for a clearer conceptualization of the concept of "race" as a socio-historical construction and a surface of projection that depends on context? Does diasporic belonging constitute a response to racism and imposed ethno-racial identities? How have populations appropriated it to foster local and global socialities and practices?
The terms creolization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, which certain scholars prefer to diaspora, entertain certain specific relations to "race": do these new concepts help or create blind spots when it comes to racial identity, racialization, multiracialism or the erasure of "race"?
What happens when we also address these issues in terms of gender and class? What role does the mediation of art and literature play in these evolutions? Are there specific artistic creations that emerge from/at this juncture? Is there an aesthetics that simultaneously addresses issues of race and diaspora? Can one point to the
appropriation, the creation and the circulation of images that translate diasporic sensitivity? Is race a component of this aesthetics or is it left out as irrelevant?
If diaspora moves "beyond race", how does diaspora intersect with gender relations, religious identities and concepts of geography and space? Can we address the link between the environment and the migrations linked to diasporic movement? Can we speak of a postcolonial ecology? Can these issues ultimately be thought within the wider frame of the human and the natural?
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS (maximum 250 words): February 1, 2012
Please submit a short bio-bibliographical notice as well (maximum 200 words) and copy the five co-convenors of the conference in your email.
"Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, 'Race'" Conference series
This will be the second meeting in the series organized by the research center EMMA (University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France) over 2011-13 which gathers leading scholars in the field to identify and assess the joint evolutions of "Diaspora Studies" and "Race studies" to better understand: 1) how these approaches can be cross-fertilising; 2) how socio-economic and political changes have affected race relations and diasporic communities; 3) how literature and the arts, the social sciences and cultural studies have seized that question. This project entails a redefinition of terms and concepts and the confrontation of different, but not necessarily divergent, perspectives.
A preparatory symposium, "Diasporas and Cultures of Migration" was held at University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3 in June 2011, in partnership with CAAR (Collegium for African-American Research), the Centre de Recherches Littéraires et Historiques de l'Océan Indien (CRLHOI, University of La Réunion), the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS, University of Edinburgh, UK), the Department for Continuing Education (University of Oxford), the Institut de Recherche Intersite Etudes Culturelles (IRIEC, University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3), the International Institute of Migration (IMI, University of Oxford), the MSH-Montpellier (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme-Montpellier), Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA), Wesleyan University (USA).
Leading scholars assessed the state of the debate in preparation for this second event. The third conference, "African-Americans, 'Race' and Diaspora", scheduled for June 13-15, 2013 at University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, will be specifically dedicated to the interlocking issues of "race" and the Black Diaspora. The concluding symposium, scheduled for October 25-26, 2013, at the University of Oxford, UK, will allow for final reflections.
Partners for the conference at Wake Forest University:
CAAR (Collegium for African American Research) (to be confirmed)
Department for Continuing Education (University of Oxford, UK)
IRIEC (Institut de Recherche Intersite Etudes Culturelles, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France)
EMMA (Etudes Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France)
MIGRINTER (CNRS, Université de Poitiers, France)
Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA)
Co-convenors
Dr Sally Barbour (Wake Forest University, USA) barbour@wfu.edu
Dr David Howard (University of Oxford, UK) david.howard@conted.ox.ac.uk
Dr Thomas Lacroix (IMI, Univ. of Oxford, UK; MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers, France) thomas.lacroix@univ-poitiers.fr
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3, France) judith.misrahi-barak@univ-montp3.fr
Pr Claudine Raynaud (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3, France) claudine.raynaud@univ-montp3.fr
