Conferences & Events

Postcolonialism, Economies, Crises: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
2nd Biennial Conference of the Postcolonial Studies Association

University of Birmingham
7 & 8 July 2011

At a time when the current global financial crisis is prompting profound reassessments of economic models, practices and transnational relationships, how can postcolonial studies inform our understanding of relations between local cultures and global capital? This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the relationships between postcolonialism and economic structures, historicising crisis as well as engaging with contemporary concerns. How might we situate present economic relations within longer (post)colonial histories of capitalism, deprivation, debt and dependency? How do moments of crisis interrelate with ongoing economic struggles outside the west? To what extent are economic relations a central feature of postcolonial cultural representation? What are the relationships between economic crisis and the content, marketing and consumption of postcolonial artistic and cultural productions?

Keynote Speakers:

Elleke Boehmer, Sarah Brouillette, Suman Gupta

We welcome proposals from academics working in disciplines including Cultural Studies, Economics, Film, Geography, History, Literature, International Development, Politics and related fields. Interdisciplinary papers are welcome.

Topics for papers or panels may include, but are not limited to:

Responses to the current global economic crisis from postcolonial writers, critics and theorists Alternative financial and economic models (e.g. shariah-compliant banking)
Recessions, depressions and crashes: economic crisis points in (post)colonial histories, texts and cultures
Situating economics: postcolonial marketplaces and exchanges
The textual representation of postcolonial economic relations
Contesting regimes of value and worth across postcolonial cultures
Postcolonialism and economic migrancy
Development economics in the postcolony: poverty, debt, aid and relief Neoliberalism and global finance (the World Bank, IMF, etc)
The economics of environmental crisis
‘Economy’ as metaphor for social, interpersonal and psychoanalytic process
The postcolonial studies industry: marketing and commoditising the postcolonial intellectual Economies and the academy: funding postcolonial research in the current HE climate

Individual papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send a 300-word abstract and a biographical sketch of no more than 150 words to Clare Barker and Dave Gunning at psaconference2011@gmail.com by 30 November 2010.

Proposals for panels (3 speakers) and roundtable discussions are also welcome: please include a 200 word rationale for the panel/roundtable and a brief summary of each paper/contributor.

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PSA Postgraduate conference

Networking the Globe
Information Technologies and the Postcolonial

Date: 21–22 May 2010
Venue: University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
Keynote speakers:

Dr. Rajinder Dudrah (University of Manchester)
Dr. David Herbert (Open University)

Contemporary events with catastrophic global ramifications, such as the current economic crisis or ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, are not only mediated by super-fast digital communication and information networks but also conditioned by these rapidly advancing technologies. From the social networking site Facebook to the Middle Eastern satellite news channel Al Jazeera, digital forms of culture have multiplied in recent years, proliferating conduits and connections across the globe which shape our lives in multifarious ways. In the light of this, a postcolonial perspective on information and communication technologies is pressing. How far is cyberspace mediated by metropolitan centres of knowledge production, and how might new media entrench existing structures of inequality, by serving corporate capitalist interests or by saturating consumers with hegemonic representations of global events? Conversely, to what extent can technologies operate as tools of empowerment or resistance for marginalised peoples, by bypassing forms of censorship and facilitating access to global arenas of debate and alternative communities? How have new technologies impacted on issues of identity, place and nation, and shifted the parameters of postcolonial thought?

This inaugural postgraduate conference of the Postcolonial Studies Association will consider the cultural, political, and practical effects of information and communication technologies on postcolonial peoples and spaces. The PSA invites papers from postgraduates working in the disciplines of literature, history, cultural studies, film, human geography, linguistics, politics, psychology, religious studies, art, music, media & communication, and informatics, among others. Our aim is to bring together a wide variety of scholarly interests and methodological approaches.

Papers may focus on, but are not limited to, the following conceptual intersections:

Technologies and neo-imperialism: cultural imperialism and homogenization, digital media and hegemony, technological warfare and its virtual representations (computer games);
Technologies and capitalism: commodification of information, web marketing and advertising, uneven access to technology, uneven development of technologies (industrial and agricultural);
Technologies and resistance: alternative virtual communities, ‘indigenous’ media and self-determination, sustainable technologies, open-source soft ware communities, hackers and cybercrime;
Technologies and communication: new forms of language, literacy, transnational social networking sites, censorship and its circumvention, ‘freedom of speech’, media as social and political commentary;
Technologies and place: spatial dislocation, the erosion of national boundaries, cosmopolitanisms (tele-technologies such as mobile phones, email, internet telephony, webcams);
Technologies and youth identities: music as sub-cultural expression (downloads and MP3 players), virtual subjectivities and transnational communities (computer games, YouTube, chat rooms);
Technologies and text: new filmic and literary genres, the production of alternative modernities, textual representations of technologies;
Technologies and knowledge: education and e-learning, data and surveillance, globalisation and the idea of ‘democratised’ or ‘universal’ knowledge (web-based search engines);
Technologies and the ‘new’: new uses of old technologies, modernity and cultural innovation.

Panels will normally comprise three 20-minute papers. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Brian Rock by 15 March 2010: brian.rock@stir.ac.uk

Aside from keynote papers and parallel panels of postgraduate presentations, the conference will host training workshops relating to professional and research skills led by both established and early career scholars. These will include a presentation by Prof. Stephanie Newell (University of Sussex) on her career path in the field of postcolonial studies.

The JPW/PSA Essay Prize 2010 will be awarded at the conference. Details about the prize will be available shortly on the PSA website.