Call for Papers/Presentations
Digital Diasporas: Distances, Cultures, Languages
a seminar to be held at
ACLA 2010, April 1-4, New Orleans, La.
Despite the continued existence of the book, the newspaper, and the
scholarly journal, digital humanists are confronted with the sneaking
suspicion that the internet is somehow different, a vast new space
that mixes up our identities, our politics, and our languages.
Networked texts give comparative literature the opportunity to ask:
what exactly are we comparing? What kind of a diaspora is it when we
can simultaneously be here, there, everywhere, and nowhere? Who is
spreading out, where are they spreading to and from, and what might
organize their itineraries? Finally, how do these texts, spaces,
subjects, movements, and cultures coexist with and modify earlier
media regimes?
This seminar will address aspects of internet culture that cross,
crush, redefine, and/or reinforce borders; that eradicate and/or
extend notions of distance; that legitimate, destabilize, and/or
invent linguistic practices. Potential topics include (but are
certainly not limited to) blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube, Facebook, SMS
and mobile telephony, listservs, MMORPGs, lurkers, activists, hacking,
art, affinity groups, citizenship, affect, nationality, gender, race,
class, geographies, histories, literacies. Work representing all
theoretical inclinations is welcome.
Please contact Scott Kushner ((scott.kushner /at/ gmail.com)) with questions.
To receive full consideration, proposals must be submitted by Friday,
November 13, at the website of the American Comparative Literature
Association (http://acla.org/acla2010), where you can learn more about
the conference format.
