[Commlist] The Global and the Local in Postmillennial Europe': 9th International SELICUP Conference - Call for Papers

THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL IN POSTMILLENNIAL EUROPE

9th International SELICUP Conference

(Spanish Society for the Study of Popular Culture)

organized by

The Department of British and American Studies, Pavol Jozef Šafárik 
University in Košice, Slovakia

&

SKASE (Slovak Association for the Study of English)

in collaboration with

The University of the Balearic Islands’ Research Group in British and 
Comparative Cultural Studies (BRICCS)

and

The ‘21st-Century Anglophone Literatures: Narrative and Performative 
Spaces’ Research Network

AN ONLINE EVENT

21-23 OCTOBER 2021

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Dr. Roberta Piazza, University of Sussex, UK

Prof. Dr. Raoul Eshelman, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany

*Deadlines:*
Abstract submission deadline: 20 May 2021
Notification of acceptance: 30 June 2021
Early bird registration: 1 July – 31 August 2021
Standard registration: 1 – 30 September 2021

Call for Papers (updated 25 Mar 2021) 
<http://kaa.ff.upjs.sk/file/7f2ed46834321b8c68646dad9660f081cdb43ebd>
ABSTRACT TEMPLATE 
<http://kaa.ff.upjs.sk/file/81a83823486b706fd6884a51777b612c70a8f92f>

*CALL FOR PAPERS*
Scholarly debates increasingly revolve around the influence of global 
economic processes on cultural production. As Jeffrey Nealon (2012) 
argues, contemporary concerns with the ‘structuring mutations in the 
relations among cultural production and economic production’ have gained 
prominence as a reaction to intensified neoliberalism and globalization. 
Nealon has noted how capitalism has lately increased its control over 
social and cultural mechanisms—an increase he relates to the 
‘intensification of the existing biopolitical sources’. The 
relationships between globalization, cultural production and identity 
construction are further complicated by the myriad processes that have 
fundamentally reconfigured the economic, political, social and cultural 
spheres. Representing both the ‘tendency towards homogeneity, 
synchronization, integration, unity and universalism’ and the 
‘propensity for localization, heterogeneity, differentiation, diversity 
and particularism’ (Bornman, 2003), globalization seems to give rise to 
structural tension in postmillennial societies.

This tension is particularly apparent in the interactions between 
globalization and identity discourses. Since the former has affected all 
traditional processes of identity construction, there are many in 
postmillennial societies that are experiencing identity struggles, in a 
complex process that may include self-construction (Bauman, 2001; 
Bornman, 2003), the creolization of identities (Bourriaud, 2009), the 
rise of hyperindividualism (Lipovetsky, 2005) and pseudoautism (Kirby, 
2009), the collapse of the sense of community (Bauman, 2001) and the 
rise of surrogate communities—interest groups, professional groups, 
virtual groups (Bornman, 2003); the appearance of new identities—not 
only a cosmopolitan identity marked by a sense of disembeddedness but 
also a global identity that implies ‘global self-reflection’ and 
‘identification with the total of humankind’ (Bornman, 2003).
On the other hand, the pressure of globalization has also revitalized 
ethnic, regional, and communal identities and encouraged the emergence 
of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1995), which includes the ‘innovative 
hybrid practices that local cultures have invented to assert their 
identity’ (Tartaglia and Rossi, 2015). This has also provoked an 
increase in regionalism rooted in local identity; i.e. an identity which 
‘harbours emotional and symbolic meanings that people ascribe to a sense 
of self and the attachment to place’ (Tartaglia and Rossi, 2015). The 
complex tension emanating from opposing forces like globalization and 
glocalization, global and local identities, the creolization of culture 
and the preservation of ethnic and regional cultural specifics lies at 
the centre of current phenomena affecting languages and cultures around 
the world—becoming especially visible in the sphere of literature and 
the media.

Since mass production, consumption and communication have all produced a 
world in which it is increasingly difficult to identify a cultural 
centre, the previously dominant postmodernist and postcolonial theories 
no longer have the capacity to effectively address the changing 
character of the globalized world, as several scholars have noted 
(O’Brien and Szeman, 2001; Lipovetsky, 2005; Bourriaud, 2009; Kirby, 
2009; Vermeulen and van den Akker, 2010; Nealon, 2012). An effective 
examination of the influence of globalization on literary, cultural and 
media production and its effects on contemporary identity struggles 
calls for the employment of novel research strategies.
In light of the above, this conference will foster the analysis of 
contemporary cultural productions. It will do so by providing an 
interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of the intersections between 
theoretical approaches to globalization, identity and those recent 
formulations attempting to define a new cultural paradigm.

*The conference will prioritize (but will not be necessarily limited to) 
the following thematic strands:*

  * The influence of globalization and the evidence of identity
    struggles across languages and cultures
  * Local vs global spaces in contemporary literature and media
  * The role of the so-called ‘transnational novel of globalization’ in
    contemporary literature
  * A new cultural paradigm? Theoretical approaches and case studies
  * Gender challenges in postmillennial societies
  * Sustainability and ecocriticism: new perspectives from the
    humanities and social sciences
  * The emergence of new fields of sociocultural inquiry: city and urban
    studies, cultural mapping, food studies, neuro-literary studies…

The Organizing and Scientific Committee will also be happy to consider 
individual paper or whole panel proposals addressing the 
conference’s main topic from perspectives other than those specified in 
the above-mentioned thematic strands.


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