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Call for Papers to AIAS Symposium

The international symposium ’Mobilizing Home(s): New Approaches to the Study of Home in Contemporary Literature and Culture’ to be held 14-15 September 2017 is now open for submission of papers. The call closes on 15 January 2017.

The symposium Mobilizing Home(s): New Approaches to the Study of Home in Contemporary Literature and Culture is organized by AIAS Fellow Dorothee Birke in collaboration with Professor Stella Butter from University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, and held at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University.

Topic of the symposium

Home is a key arena where changes in contemporary societies become a lived experience for the individual. Forms of homemaking can be regarded as a way of dealing with social transformations, whether by positing home as a safe space immune to change, or by adapting it to the requirements of modernization and globalization. The issue of (voluntary or forced) mobility looms large in debates on home, as, for instance, the current migration crisis or the demand for maximum flexibility and mobility of employees in the neoliberal economy shows.

The title of this 2-day-symposium, Mobilizing home(s), pertains to both the dimension of physical mobility and to the ideological work ‘home’ performs when it is mobilized in specific discourses (e.g. nationalism). We are particularly interested in what the arts bring to the table: how may aesthetic artefacts dealing with home inspire the development of theory? While the dominant focus is thus on literary and cultural studies, we also welcome contributions from other disciplines that open up a dialogue on theorizations of home.

Call for papers

We are looking for papers that develop new approaches to home in contemporary culture. We expect contributions mainly from scholars of literature, media and the arts, but also welcome papers from other disciplines that open up a dialogue on theorizations of home. Specific approaches we are interested in include, but are not limited to new economic criticism, biopolitics, disability studies, gender studies, critical race theory, ecocriticism, narrative theory and new formalism. 

READ THE FULL CALL FOR PAPERS HERE.

How to submit?

Proposers should submit an abstract of app. 250 words and a short bio blurb to dorotheebirke@aias.au.dk and butter@uni-landau.de by 15 January 2017. 

Read more about the symposium

http://aias.au.dk/events/mobilizing-homes/

Contact

Dorothee Birke, AIAS Fellow
dorotheebirke@aias.au.dk

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS)
Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B
DK-8000 Aarhus C
Denmark