U.K. Conference: "The 9/11 Decade"

The "9/11" Decade: Rethinking Reality: first call for papers, deadline 15 December 2010

Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton
contact email: nc95@brighton.ac.uk

Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)
University of Brighton, UK

6th Annual International Interdisciplinary Conference
The “9/11” Decade: Rethinking Reality
Wednesday 31 August – Friday 2 September 2011

Joint conference organisers:
Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics & Ethics, University of Brighton;
Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry, University of Ghent;
Centre for Research Ethics & Ethical Deliberation, Edge Hill University;
Centre for Research in Ethics and Globalisation, University of Groningen

Invited keynote speaker: Geoffrey Robertson QC

Call for Papers

It is no exaggeration to claim that the politics of the last decade have their origin in one event: the hijacking and flying of passenger aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Since then wars, putatively justified as responses to this attack, have raged in Iraq and in Afghanistan. These wars have resulted in the growth of violent opposition to a perceived US imperial polity; have been used to justify the rewriting of long established legal frameworks protecting the people’s rights have led to neurosis about the protection of borders which the age of global capital was supposed to bring to an end; and have seen the crippling of active leftist opposition to the opportunistic furtherance of the neo-liberal revolution.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks critically to rethink this last decade and to put into question the nostrums it would have us take for granted. We call for papers that:
• challenge dominant paradigms for understanding terror, war, rights, citizenship, legitimacy, politics and the person;
• address the shifts in our cultural landscapes that the securitisation of everyday life has created;
• rethink the architecture of Empire, the literature of “9/11” and the geography of the unending “war on terror.”

Proposals are invited on any relevant topic and should be addressed to an interdisciplinary audience. Likely themes may include be the following, although the conference is by no means limited to these:
The architecture of terror: cities “at war”; designing the security society
“Just” war and asymmetrical warfare: aerial bombing; “suicide” bombing; drones
The politics of 2001-2011: the “war on terror”; rethinking empire, globalisation and sovereignty after “9/11”; the re-articulation of Capital; the “shock doctrine”
Rethinking ourselves: torture; identity; Islamophobia; immigration, asylum and refugees
Culture after “9/11”: art, literature, film and popular culture.
The politics of death after “9/11”: “remembrance” and memorialisation; counting the dead
Philosophy and its limits: the language of terror and the terror of language; sincerity and conviction
Theorising resistance: rethinking the law; rethinking the political

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be emailed to Nicola Clewer by 15 December 2010: nc95@brighton.ac.uk

Decisions will be communicated no later than 15 January 2011.

For further information please visit website here

Argentina: "Nieto Recuperado" - Democracy Now Features Interview with "Recovered Grandchild"

We speak with Manuel Gonçalves, a "nieto recuperado," or a "recovered grandchild," in Argentina. He is one of the thousands of children born to parents who were disappeared during the dictatorship. These children were born in captivity, then kidnapped by the military and given away to government supporters or military families. Some of them have found their way back to their families. Manuel Gonçalves, son of Gaston Gonçalves, who was killed during the dictatorship. He was kidnapped as a newborn baby. His father’s alleged killer is now on trial.

(From November 12, 2010)

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Conference: "The Role of Memory in the American Construct"

IAAS Postgraduate Symposium - “Re-memory” and “Disremembering”: The Role of Memory in the American Construct

Irish Association for American Studies
contact email: iaas.symposium@gmail.com

IAAS Postgraduate Symposium
Saturday 29th January 2011
Location: Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD, Dublin, Ireland.

Call for Papers

“Re-memory” and “Disremembering”: The Role of Memory in the American Construct

Memory, (both collective and individual), and memolialisation have an international legacy of shaping identity constructs, impacting upon reactionary politics and re-conceptualising history in accordance with changing social mores. In the United States, choosing what to preserve in collective and individual memory (and perhaps more significantly, what not to preserve and/or commemorate), map a national history of conflict and heroism, despair and hope, decline and renaissance. America’s cultural memory has also been partly shaped by the idea of community. This is reflected in its diverse topography; the collective memory of the small town communities and subjective memory of the frantic, multicultural cities have each, in different ways, impacted on how America has come to define and understand itself. Remembering and choosing not to remember in the United States have, then, been instrumental in surviving trauma and in celebrating achievement, though the suggestion that the past can “infect” the present fosters a tendency to bury the darker aspects of America’s remembrances.

Postgraduate students of all disciplines within the field of American Studies (including literature, film, history, geography, philosophy, visual arts, performance arts, new media, politics, sociology, cultural studies, ecology, law, economics, and international relations) are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers in the area of American studies, with possible topics including but not restricted to:

- (Re)-Constructing National Identity
- Conflict resolution
- Problems within (and without) of Cultural Diversity
- Representations of Gender
- Representations of Race
- Historical interpretation and Periodisation
- (Re)-Configuring America’s Collective (Re)Memory
- American Exceptionalism
- The Hyphenated Identity

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be emailed to the IAAS Postgraduate Caucus Co-Chairs:
Louise Walsh (Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD) and Kate Kirwan (University College Cork) at iaas.symposium@gmail.com
Please note that you must be a member of the IAAS to participate; see membership form attached.

DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: FRIDAY 31st DECEMBER 2010

Call for 9-11 Book Reviews

9-11 Book Reviews

Randy Robertson / Modern Language Studies
contact email:
robertson@susqu.edu

Modern Language Studies, the journal of the Northeast Modern Language Association, is seeking reviews of works related to 9-11. The reviews will appear in a special issue commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. Relevant works include those on terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign policy in the wake of 9-11, etc. The reviewed work can be fiction or nonfiction.

Please submit your review electronically (as a Word attachment) to Randy Robertson, Reviews Editor of MLS, at robertson@susqu.edu.