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Conference "Intercultural Exchange in the Age of Globalization", 2nd edition (University of Sibiu)

Publié le par Université de Lausanne (Source : ulbsibiu.ro)

Intercultural Exchange in the Age of Globalization (2nd edition, 2018)

 

May 18-19

organised by the Department of Romance Studies from the Faculty of Letters and Arts

University of Sibiu

 

CONTEXT

In the context of today’s social, political and economic changes, power is one of the governing principles of culture. Power comes in many shapes and sizes and it manifests itself under various forms: it can be tyrannical or a combination of forces (Foucault); it can be charismatic, traditional and rational (Weber) or the opposite – manipulative; it can also appear as a system of diluted forces that spring from the “social field” (Bourdieu); it can remain in the unconscious or it can manifest itself in the speech act. However it may appear, it has become clear that power shapes the course of the creation, interpretation and analysis of literary texts and other cultural products.

 

PRESENTATION 

More than once, the 19th and 20th centuries have witnessed power exerting itself in the evolution of culture. At the same time, there were several moments of resistance against the enforcement of various ideas and the causing of suffering by the authority/rationality dichotomy. In addition to this, there is a dynamic of the power of the writing act that also works based on a dichotomic principle, such as victim vs. executioner, poor vs. rich, feminine vs. masculine, rural vs. urban, slave vs. master, profane vs. sacred, sense vs. sensibility and so forth.

In the recent years, there has been a discussion about the position of power that an author can hold through the texts that he or she writes, about the radius of such a strong nucleus. Our aim is to observe in what way the analysis of the concept of power and of the type of discourse it generates can result in comments upon the nature of cultural networks, linguistic relations or the interpretation of literary texts if we take into consideration both the position of power that the reader possesses and the authority of the author.

Taking these hypotheses as a starting point, we believe that we can have a better understanding of the place that the Romanian culture occupies in the context of European culture by borrowing tools from the field of postcolonial studies (methods that focus on observing the relationship between the colonized and the colonizers), from the methodology of world-systems analysis (that focuses on the power of the centre over the peripheries and also on the resistance of these peripheries against the dominance of the centre) and also from the fields of cognitive studies or cyber-mythology. Is it possible to have a new perspective on culture?

Can culture be redefined through the analysis of the discourse of power? Our conference aims to explore both these aspects and other points of view that emerge from this plethora of theoretical instruments. We encourage the attendance of both professors and researchers or PhD candidates.

 

SUBJECTS 

The conference aims to answer the following questions:

  • Can power be a starting point in the creation of a literary test or does it manifest itself later as a purpose and consequence of that text?
  • What are the effects of power in shaping culture, in establishing a literary/cultural canon?
  • In what ways does power manifest itself in promoting a certain literary group?
  • How do we evaluate the consequences that power has upon culture and interculturality?
  • In what way is the interpretation of a literary text a form of power and how does it manifest?
  • What is the role of language in establishing a network of powers inside a literary text?

Fields of study:

  • Literature
  • Linguistics
  • Cultural studies
  • Pop culture
  • Anthropology and Folklore
  • Spirituality
  • History and Philosophy of Culture
  • Gender Studies
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Social Sciences (Sociology, Political Science, Economy, Juridical Science, Education)
  • Natural and Applied Sciences and their cultural implication

 

PROPOSALS 

Please submit the Abstract of your paper (approximately 1000-15000 characters with spaces) until April 25, 2018, at the email address: interculturalexchangesulbs@gmail.com

Conference languages: Romanian, French, German and English. The extensive papers sent for publication in the proceedings of the conference will be in English, French, German or Romanian.

Conference fees:

30 EUR/ 125 RON – in-person attendance;

40 EUR/ 180 RON – attendance through videoconference (via Skype)

Publication: The papers will be published in “Lucian Blaga Yearbook”, publication indexed in CEEOL, Index Copernicus and Cosmos.

Deadlines: Abstracts: April 25, 2018

Selection of abstracts: April 29, 2018

Conference: May 18-19, 2018

Final version of the paper: June 1, 2018