[ecrea] CFP for 'The View from Above'

The View from Above: Cosmopolitan Culture and its Critics
An interdisciplinary conference for post-graduate students and early 
career researchers

Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 September 2014

University of Melbourne

Keynote speakers:
Professor John M. Ganim, University of California, Riverside, on 
medieval cosmopolitanism
Dr. Brigid Rooney, University of Sydney, on cosmopolitan suburbia



‘Cosmopolitanism’ connotes a dynamic, eclectic and sophisticated 
cultural sphere, one that transcends borders and national differences.  
Although the term is an ancient one, deriving from the Greek word 
kosmopolitês, its meaning has never been stable.  The notion of the 
cosmopolitan is glamorous and in some respects elitist, suggesting a 
‘luxuriously free-floating view from above’ (Bruce Robbins, 
Cosmopolitics, 1998).  At the same time, it has utopian connotations of 
pluralism and universality.

In the last decade or so, discourses of cosmopolitanism have experienced 
a resurgence.  The term is increasingly associated with 
multiculturalism, diasporic culture and the impact of globalisation.  
Critics have advocated new forms of ‘rooted’, ‘vernacular’, postcolonial 
and even ‘refugee’ cosmopolitanism, in an attempt to break away from 
Eurocentric canons and outmoded nation-based identity politics.  But do 
these new accounts of cosmopolitanism resolve the tension between its 
egalitarian and elitist impulses?  Are aspirations to cosmopolitanism 
still, as Simon Gikandi suggests, ‘an essential mark of bourgeois 
identity and privilege’?

This conference invites participants to explore cosmopolitanism, both as 
a utopian project and as an object of critique.  While the focus of the 
conference is on literature and literary criticism, we welcome papers 
addressing theatre, the visual arts, popular culture, translation and 
other forms of cultural expression in either contemporary or historical 
settings.  We also strongly encourage contributions from creative 
writers.  Presenters may choose to focus on Australian cosmopolitanisms 
or address broader categories such as the postcolonial or the 
transnational.



Topics for discussion might include:



·         old and new cosmopolitanisms (including the influence of 
classical, medieval and early modern texts on more recent understandings 
of the cosmopolitan)

·         cosmopolitan sensibilities in colonial, postcolonial and 
diasporic literatures

·         cosmopolitanism and class

·         cosmopolitanism and the metropolitan/regional

·         feminist engagements with cosmopolitanism

·         cosmopolitanism and sexuality

·         cosmopolitanism, advertising, popular culture and everyday life

·         transnationalism and globalisation, parochialism and provinciality

·         cosmopolitan readerships and polities; the role of translation

·         creative practice and the cosmopolitan

·         the text as a cosmopolitan space

·         utopianism and cosmopolitan futures

The convenors welcome abstracts from postgraduate and early career 
researchers working in any field of the humanities, particularly 
literary studies, creative writing, theatre studies, history (including 
art history), cultural studies and translation studies.  Please forward 
an abstract of no more than 250 words to 
(viewfromaboveconference /at/ gmail.com) by Sunday 20 July 2014.

Co-convenors:



Dr Katie Hansord
Dr Catherine Noske
Lucinda O’Brien
Dr Jay Daniel Thompson

Supported by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the 
University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts and School of Culture and 
Communication, and Deakin University.






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