Conferences & Events

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.

The following documents are now ready to download:

click here to download PGC Registration Form

click here to download Travel Guide

click here to download Stirling Maps

This conference is supported by:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

CALL FOR ARTICLES ‘New Directions in Postcolonial Studies’

Please note: Deadline now extended to 21 November 2009
The Editors can only consider submissions from conference speakers. However in addition, they strongly encourage papers from those delegates (particularly from Africa), whose abstracts were accepted for the conference but who, due to financial constraints, were unable to attend.

The organisers of the Postcolonial Studies Association Inaugural Conference: ‘Re-Imagining Identity: New Directions in Postcolonial Studies’ are now pleased to invite submissions for an edited volume of articles. The Editors will consider submissions from conference speakers only. Please note that submission does not guarantee publication. Submissions of max 5000 words (inclusive of endnotes), should be emailed in Word format to ALL THREE EDITORS:

Dr Christine O’Dowd-Smyth | Dr Gerri Kimber | Asia Zgadzaj

Please use attached ‘Notes for Submissions: Style Guidelines’ and ‘Sample Format for Paper Submission’ when submitting your article for consideration. Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2009. Remember to read through the attached style guidelines carefully. Any article submitted which does not conform to these guidelines will be rejected. Please do not hesitate to contact the editors if you have any queries regarding your submission.

Thank you!