CALL FOR PAPERS

The Hellenic Association for American Studies, and the Department of American Literature and Culture of the School of English of Aristotle University aim to bring together Greek and foreign graduate students (MA & PhD) as well as young scholars at the start of their careers from various fields and disciplines to a conference which will be hosted at the Aristotle University Campus.

The conference, which is the first of its kind to be held in Greece, invites papers that address the concepts of de-centrism and ex-centrism within a globalized context where borders between the canonical and the other are being contested. Within this context, individual cultures and individual writers and artists are now viewed as participants in an intercultural and multiple exchange of experiences and perspectives in their attempt to move beyond “boundaries.” With the peripheral having now become the center of contemporary culture, this conference is interested in examining cultural and literary diversities that have emerged from the reciprocal traffic of ideas and influences between cultures, politics, aesthetics and disciplines with an emphasis on identity as a site of crisis and fragmentation.

Papers and /or panel proposals are invited for the investigation of this newly created political and socio-cultural reality in the fields of literature, history, film, language, pedagogy, psychology, music, art, politics, economics, and law.

Ex-centricity, identity and multivocality may be examined in relation to one of the suggested topics below, the list not being exhaustive:

• Personal Boundaries in the Negotiation of Identity.
• Locality and Belonging
• Place and Identity
• Contested Landscapes/Contested Narratives
• Local v/s transnational politics
• Setting boundaries – Transcending Boundaries; Spatial and Social Organization
• Ethnic Groups – Minorities – Immigration – Alienation – Exile
• Local vs. Global: Shifting Borders and Hybrid Identities
• Doppelganger metaphor/Otherness
• Polyphony vs. Authorial voices in politics, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, journalism, law.
• Gender – Racial identity
• New Novels – Old Narratives
• Multileveledness – Politext – Hypertexts
• Intertextuality
• Peripheral/Marginal
• Postcolonial Narratives
• Cultural Preservations and Electronic Technologies
• Embodiment – Disembodiment
• World English
• Semantics
• Anglo-American Influences on Greek Literature, Culture and Politics

Plenary Speakers

Selected papers will be published in electronic and hard copy format.

Abstract Details: Abstracts of 250-300 words for a 20 minute presentation with a provisional title and a short bio should be submitted by November 30, 2006 to any of the addresses below.

E-mail to: ex-centric@enl.auth.gr or yemene@enl.auth.gr
Or mail to:
“Ex-centric Narratives”, 2007 HELAAS Graduate Conference,
School of English,
Department of American Literature and Culture,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece, 54 124

For inquiries and/or abstract submissions please contact:
Dr. Smatie Yemenedzi-Malathouni
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
School of English
Department of American Literature and Culture
Thessaloniki, 54 124
E-mail: yemene@enl.auth.gr
Tel. No : +30 2310 997474
Fax No : +30 2310 997432

Organizing Committee