The departments of New English Literature and American Studies at the University of Stuttgart will host an International Conference, 21-24 July, 2011 on “Disciplining the Margins or Relocating Postcolonial Studies”.
Date: 21-24 July, 2011
Location: Freudenstadt/Germany, Waldhotel Zollernblick, Am Zollernblick 2
Most methodologies in the humanities tend to become imperialist and to colonise and dominate as many disciplines as possible, examples abound: Marxism, post structuralism, hermeneutics, cultural studies, new historicism or systems theory like literary forms. They usually have three main phases, definition, expansion and the spawning of offshoot theories. Postcolonial studies appear now to have entered the third phase and to be contested by many sub-disciplines which in their turn are defining the turf and establishing borderlines.
The conference aims at a description of these developments, in particular of the emerging distinctions between the field of postcolonial studies in general and such ‘offshoots’ as Diaspora, hemispheric, global, transnational, neo-colonial, cultural, area or Black Atlantic studies in their turn.
The conference is part of a biannual series supported by the German Research Foundation and the IZKT, University of Stuttgart, since 2003. International speakers include Bill Ashcroft, Deepika Bahri, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Nadia El Kholy, Sue Kossew, A. Robert Lee, Mpalive Msiska, Caroline Rooney, Harish Trivedi, Patrick Williams, Adi Wimmer. Elleke Boehmer’s (Oxford) guest lecture on “ Postcolonial Studies in the Twenty-first Century: The Response to Regions” is in cooperation with the IZKT series “Culture Theories”, 20 July, 2011, 8 p.m. Location: Literaturhaus Stuttgart.
Further information: Prof. Walter Göbel, Department Americanistics, University Stuttgart, phone +49 (0)711 685-83105, e-mail walter_goebel@gmx.net, homepage: www.uni-stuttgart.de/nel/forschung/projekte/Disciplining_the_Margins/