Blog

8th Biennial MESEA Conference
The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas 13–16 June 2012
Blanquerna School of Communication, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
Call for Papers Media and Mediated Performances of Ethnicity

“A decade into the twenty-first century, media culture has become a prime driving force in politics, culture, society, and everyday life. We can argue that the media—readily accessible to everyone—provide models for cultural perspectives and positions, and new forms of identity. In many ways the media have become today’s dominant culture, with visual, aural/oral, and digital forms of media culture increasingly replacing book culture among large sectors of the world’s urban population, requiring a fundamental revision of the notion of literacy. Media have also become prime constituents of socialization, with social-networking sites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and other similar vehicles shaping our lives in significant ways” (Davis, Fischer- Hornung and Kardux, 1).

This argument, put forth in the introduction to the MESEA volume Aesthetic Practices and Politics in Media, Music and Art (Routledge 2010), points to the current need to heighten our critical engagement with media in its multiple forms.

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CALL FOR PAPERS:  Crossing Boundaries in the Americas:Dynamics of Change in Politics, Culture, and Media
Guadalajara, Mexico, September 25 – 27, 2012
Second Bi-Annual Conference of the International Association of Inter-American Studies

Mass migration, accelerated urbanization, and the processes of transnational economic integration are profoundly challenging the social and cultural constitution of the Americas in the New Millennium. In view of these dynamics of change, it has been argued that the sovereignty of the “nation-state” is an outdated concept. The gradual decline of the geopolitical hegemony of the U.S. is also changing the ways in which influence is negotiated regionally, as new global players from the South—such as Brazil—are gaining power.

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26th Annual MELUS Conference and 6th Conference of the United States Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies
April 19-22, 2012
Santa Clara University, California
THEME: Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Bill Ashcroft, Wlad Godzic, Francisco Jimenez, David Marriott

As an ongoing and vital process through which societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communications, economics, and politics, globalization addresses the transnational circulation of ideas and languages. Its impact on literature is manifold, with both positive and negative associations, wherein cultures receiving outside influences ignore some, adopt others as they are, and then immediately start to transform others. Certain aspects of globalization – such as hybridity and multi-rootedness – are increasingly present in literary texts as we witness ways in which they shape new literary forms, interrogate existing canons, and explore the emergence of ethnic canons.

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