Trespassing the Borders: Redefining Postcolonialism from Peripheral Experiences

University of Warwick – 11 March 2017

Keynote speakers:

Professor Gurminder Bhambra (Warwick/Linnaeus)

Professor Lucy Riall (EUI/Birkbeck College)

Postcolonialism, conceived of as a critique of colonial empires in their political, social, and cultural epistemologies, is reassessing its methodologies in order to confront the challenges of the contemporary global context. Intensified flows of people and capital, border crossings, multiculturalism, and new conceptions of citizenship and belonging are encouraging a redefinition of concepts and methods in the study of subjectivities, societies and cultures. Within this framework, the focus on countries that have been considered for decades ‘peripheral’ cases in terms of the colonial/decolonial experience offer an important contribution in rethinking how we approach these subjects.

Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, alongside other ‘peripheral cases’, could be regarded as peculiar case studies due to the singularity of their colonial pasts, the complexity of their processes of decolonization and their histories of migrations that are also shaping current political and social issues. These phenomena will be studied from a multi-disciplinary perspective, which encourages new understandings of contemporary citizenship and belonging, and of related representational practices. The conference will also foster comparative approaches in order to highlight interconnections, differences and the peculiarities of these cases.

Trespassing the Borders will not approach the ‘postcolonial’ solely from a theoretical perspective; rather, it will engage more politically-charged and possibly compromising terms, such as imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism, in order to analyse the complexity of the present in both its historical and ontological roots. This approach is intended to encourage the multifaceted study of crucial concepts such as colonialism and decolonization, global history, mobility, subjectivity and identities, from a transnational perspective.

Trespassing the Borders welcomes different disciplinary perspectives, multiple and intertwined methodologies, and innovative approaches/case studies. Themes and topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Rethinking Theories and Methodologies
• Postcoloniality/Decoloniality
• The Porosity of Disciplinary Borders
• Investigating ‘Peripheral’ Colonial/Decolonial Experiences
• Deconstructing Representational Practices and their Historical Roots
• Transnationalizing Histories
• The Elaboration and Negotiation of Subjectivities and Identities
• Images of Mobility, Citizenship and Belonging
• Social Exclusion and Racism

Please submit by 30th September 2016 a proposal with

• Name
• Affiliation
• Email Address
• Paper title
• 250-word abstract (for 20-minute papers).
• Short biographical notes (100 words)

To ttb2017warwick@gmail.com (object: ‘Proposal – Trespassing the Borders Conference’). Accepted speakers will be expected to pay the conference fee and fund their own travel. Find more information here.

Categories: Calls for & opportunities

Tags: border studies, colonial and postcolonial history, Crossing Borders, decolonial theory, Gurminder Bhambra, Lucy Riall, peripheral perspectives