CFP: Transnationalism, Activism, Art Conference]

[Luella Massey]

Call for Papers - Please distribute widely

* *


 Transnationalism, Activism, Art

March 8-11, 2007

University of Toronto

A vexed relationship exists between academic theorists of the
transnational and the politics of counter-globalization. These both, in
turn, have a mixed relationship with art. Arundhati Roy has famously
suggested that art, literature, and music should be used in order “to
lay siege” to capitalist imperialism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
in their controversial work, similarly leave space for these same fields
to play a role in “creating the social relations and institutions” of
the new society of the multitude that they envision in opposition to
Empire. Marxist, postcolonial, Indigenous, feminist, queer, and other
theorists are increasingly investigating the intersections between
transnational capitalism and art, but these investigations are difficult
to separate from the daily acts of resistance to which we bear witness
on the streets of the world.

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted at the University of Toronto
and working in collaboration with the Department of English and the
Centre for Diaspora Studies, seeks to bring together academics, artists,
cultural workers, and those engaging in activist politics for a
sustained discussion of the politics of transnationalism, activism, and
art today, seeking not only to establish provisional genealogies for
these topics, but also to determine their futures. The coordinators of
this conference are particularly interested in pursuing the following
questions:

   * What is the function of art / writing today?
   * Is art a resource?
   * Is art a commodity?
   * Is art a good?
   * Is art a right?
   * How does (or should) art respond to (inter)national conflict?
   * Does (or should) art play a conscious role in citizen formation?
   * What are the limitations of literary / creative marketplaces?
   * What are the limits of (guerilla, indie) alternatives to creative
     marketplaces?
   * Who constructs aesthetics and why?
   * Marketing multiculturalism: what are the politics of subaltern art
     / writing?
   * What is the relationship between race and transnational cultural
     production?
   * What are the roots (routes) of transnational studies?
   * What is the relationship between transnationalism and indigeneity?
   * What role does gender play in the transnational?
   * Is cosmopolitanism an aesthetic or an alternative to global
     capitalism?
   * What are the arts and politics of transnational labour?
   * What are the benefits or pitfalls of the terms diaspora,
     transnationalism, post-nationalism, hybridity, citizenship, or
     globalization?

Towards these ends, we are interested in papers that pursue

   * Literature
   * Street poetics
   * Media and cultural studies
   * Contemporary art
   * Street art
   * Music
   * Security regimes
   * Borders
   * Migration
   * Biopolitics
   * Protests
   * Human rights
   * Trade, free, fair, and otherwise

Confirmed speakers include *Timothy Brennan* (University of Minnesota),
*Karen Connelly* (poet and novelist), *Henry Giroux* (McMaster
University), *Gayatri Gopinath* (University of California, Davis),
*Declan Kiberd* (University College Dublin), *Ato Quayson* (University
of Toronto), *Guillermo Verdecchia* (playwright), *Rinaldo Walcott*
(OISE/UT), and *Robert Young* (New York University).

Deadline for 500-word paper abstracts is August 31, 2006. Proposals for
full panels are welcomed. Please send to

Transnationalism, Activism, Art

c/o Áine McGlynn and Kit Dobson

Department of English

7 King’s College Circle

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3K1

TransnationalismActivismArt at gmail.com
<mailto:TransnationalismActivismArt at gmail.com>

This conference is run with the support of the Department for English,
the Centre for Diaspora Studies, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama,
First Nations House, Graduate Collaborative Program in Women’s Studies,
Department of Equity Studies, and Sociology and Equity Studies in
Education (OISE/UT).