Monday 25 July 2011

Shorelines and Shadows: Literary Representations of Queer and Postcolonial Mythical Beings

A one-day postgraduate conference hosted by the Joint Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science Research Theme, Minorities Identities: Rights and Representations (University of Reading, UK)

Saturday 26 November 2011

Shorelines and Shadows: Literary Representations of Queer and Postcolonial Mythical Beings

Given the increasing diversity of peoples within nations and the plurality of postmodern histories, this conference seeks to interrogate the issues at stake in defining gendered, national, and sexual identities suggested by mythological beings, such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, mermaids, spirits, jablesses, gods, and obscured historical figures. We suggest that the liminality and taxonomical uncertainties posed by such figures may help to mobilise suppressed historical narratives and undo the silences that surround minority subjectivities. This conference addresses the ways in which their psychological, social, political, cultural, and aesthetic functions have been re/interpreted and employed.

Keynote Speaker: Jamaican writer and academic Kei Miller

Topics may include (without being limited to):
  • Listening to other/ed desires
  • Representing collective trauma
  • Transgressing and challenging borders and categorizations
  • Contesting ‘received’ histories and epistemologies
  • Personifying nature and natural disasters
  • Utopian and dystopian imaginaries
  • Colonial legacies, Neo-colonialism, and Cultural Imperialism

Abstracts of no more than 250 words for papers of 20 minutes should be submitted to: Rebecca Ashworth and Lotti Mealing pocomyth@yahoo.co.uk

Please include a brief biog-sketch (not more than 50 words) including institutional affiliation and area of research.

Deadline for receipt of abstracts: Monday 15 August 2011

Successful contributors will be notified by 1 September 2011.

Conference fee: £30 (Postgraduate students: £20)

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