ASFS 2018
Environment and Identity
The University of Western Australia, Perth
5-7 December 2018
Postgraduate session on 4 December 2018
Keynote speaker: Rodney Saint-Eloi (Haitian-Canadian poet)
Landscape and the environment have long been central concerns of writers, artists and filmmakers. This conference seeks to reflect on the ways in which identity is created in relation to place. How do we make sense of our relations to environment and place and our interactions with our surroundings. For centuries, changes to urban and rural landscapes along with shifting patterns of migration have cause individuals and peoples to reshape their sense of self and their identities. Creative works dealing with questions of place and environment also commonly raise related social, political and economic issues And if in recent decades climatic issues have risen to the forefront of debate, how do these issues play out in mainland France and in the wider Francophone sphere?
This conference seeks to reflect on these and related questions within French and Francophone Studies. Our aim is to address these problems in a range of different contexts and time periods, and from a variety of methodological approaches.
We invite proposals for individual papers (20 minutes) and for panels (three papers of 20 minutes each) related to the theme of environment and identity. We will also consider proposals that do not relate directly to this theme. Possible topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
Oceans and islands; environment and the emotions; ecocriticism and ecopoetics; questions of place in translation; environmental catastrophe and trauma; landscape and memory; the rural and the urban; gender, place and identity; identity and place in (socio)linguistics and language teaching; migration and environment; home and belonging in the global context; the anthropocene and the post-human; animals and place.
Please send your proposal of 250 words for papers in English or French, or suggestion of panels, to asfs_2018@uwa.edu.au by 1 July 2018.
Presenters will be encouraged to submit their papers for potential publication in Essays in French Literature and Culture no. 57 (2020).
Important dates:
- Deadline for papers/panels submission: 1 July 2018
- Notification of acceptance: August 2018
- Earlybird registration: ends 5 September 2018
- Full registration: 6 September 2018 onwards
Organising committee: Paul Gibbard, Hélène Jaccomard, Sabine Kuuse, Bonnie Thomas (University of Western Australia), Céline Doucet (Edith Cowan University), Sophie Patrick (University of New England).