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October 24, 2007
CFP: “Language and the moulding of space,” Helsinki, July 28 – August 2, 2008
International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) presents
LANGUAGE AND THE MOULDING OF SPACE
By now the importance of language as a structuring agent within academia can be seen as a given that has lost much of its radicalism for many disciplines. Both the humanities and social sciences have given particular merit to language, thus participating in a major development during the 20th century denoted as the 'linguistic turn'. The subsequent enhancement of language responsibility also concerns the study of the moulding of space and the creation of a sense of place. The proposed workshop, therefore, intends to deal with language and its connection to place-based perceptions of social reality. This relationship can exist in various types of local, national and even trans-national identifications. The processes involved can be formal and institutional, such as the naming and renaming of places, e.g. St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt) or Derry (Londonderry). They can also be informal and involve subjective imaginings of place, e.g. 'the east', 'the west' or even 'the global village' or they can stem from intellectual and journalistic discourses, e.g. the creation of a new idea of 'Mitteleuropa' in the 1980s. While mediated through language, the interrelationship between the conceptualisation of space/ place and the use of language has so far remained relatively under- researched. The workshop, therefore, welcomes papers from various disciplines concerned with linguistic and symbolic processes and their use for the re-/ imagining of space (seen as abstract territory) and place (seen as successfully symbolized territory).
Possible questions that may guide you in your presentation include, among others:
1) To what extent do linguistic and symbolic processes participate in a successful re/ imagining of space/ place?
2) What is a successful re/ imagining of space/ place? How may one measure or define its 'success'?
3) Why are examples of historically unrealized imaginings of space, which have also remained outside the canon of political and intellectual discourse, worth researching?
4) What kinds of social contexts facilitate the communication of an imagining of space? What practices are used?
5) How do various agents, including scholars, scientists and writers, make spatial formations conceivable in linguistic and symbolic terms?
We invite you to submit proposals. They should include an abstract of the presentation (about 300 words in English) and a short CV of no more than two pages, including a list of relevant publications.
Deadline: 1 February 2008
Chairs: Fergal Lenehan and Nadine Jänicke
Contact:
Center for Advanced Studies/ Research Academy
Leipzig University of Leipzig
Emil-Fuchs-Straße 1
04105 Leipzig
Email: jaenicke@rz.uni-leipzig.de
Phone: +49 (341) 97 37 867
More information at http://issei2008.haifa.ac.il/
Posted by idareyou at October 24, 2007 03:04 PM