Call for Papers
IMAGES – Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters
A 4-days international and interdisciplinary conference
Kadir Has University Cibali Campus, Istanbul
1-4 June, 2011
The conference “IMAGES – Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters” will be co-organized as a public 4-days international and interdisciplinary conference by the University of Innsbruck research platform CEnT – Cultural Encounters and Transfer and Kadir Has University (Istanbul) in cooperation with CINEJ, the refereed online journal for film and photography. The conference will be supported by the Austrian Culture Forum Istanbul.
The conference “IMAGES – Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters” will bring together senior scholars with PhD students, and postdoctoral academics, without following the classical keynote speaker pattern but rather inviting all speakers either to present their research findings in 20-30 minute (paper) presentations plus 10 minutes for discussion or in 120-150 minute panels (4-5 panellists).
There will be no parallel sessions. All sessions will be plenary sessions.
There will also be room provided for presentations of creative works (artistic student works) focussing on the conference topic.
The conference language is English.
Conference coordinators are: Assoc. Prof. (Privatdozentin) Dr. Veronika Bernard (University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Serhan Oksay (Kadir Has University, Istanbul/ Turkey), Dr. Vedat Akman (Kadir Has University, Istanbul/ Turkey)
The official conference blog address is: http://images-1.over-blog.org (under construction)
The official conference e-mail address is: images-1@gmx.at
Deadline for paper and panel proposals is: 1 March, 2011
Deadline for artistic student works proposals is: 1 March, 2011
Paper and panel proposals have to include a 150 words abstract and a 150 words Bio.
Artistic student works proposals have to include a 150 words abstract and a 50 words Bio.
Please, send your proposals to the official conference e-mail address: images-1@gmx.at
Proposers will be informed about acceptance of their proposal within 1 week after receipt.
The conference “IMAGES – Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters” is implemented in the project “IMAGES”. “IMAGES” is designed to be an interdisciplinary project on cultural encounters, poverty and migration.
Within this thematic frame „IMAGES“ deals with the discourse of cultural encounters in the context of social co-existence. The project defines “discourse of cultural encounters” as the discourse within the context of cultural encounters and as the discourse on cultural encounters. With the discourse in situations of cultural encounters the project focuses on everyday-life discourse; with the discourse on cultural encounters the focus is on both academic and everyday-life discourse. The project deals with verbal and non-verbal communication.
„IMAGES” adapts a cultural studies definition of the term “culture”. Cultural studies define culture by embracing the idea of the group. Very simply said, culture is the sum of all the features and ways of behaviour people show and adapt deliberately in order to become distinct from others and to form their specific identities. Consequently, a person can be part of several cultures. You may be born into a culture – or you may deliberately join a culture; you may actively design a culture – or you can rather passively be part of a culture; you can decide to leave a culture – or you can take efforts to change a culture (from the inside or from the outside). Following this idea, e. g. teenagers can design cultures actively and can be passively part of other cultures at the same time – as old people, migrants, the rich and the poor can be. Social classes may form cultures, just as religions and/ or ideologies may do.
“IMAGES” also includes perspectives on cultural phenomena taken by communication studies, and defines migration as a process of people moving across and within state borders for various reasons. The project starts from the idea that the images you form (of you and of others) essentially shape relations and communication between both individuals and communities, and at the same time are their results. Images are taken as reality by humans. Plato has explained his theory of a relative reality, i. e. of the ways images are formed, in his text „Allegory of the Cave “. Contemporary communication studies introduce images (as the images an individual holds of his or her own self and the images others form of you) to a communicative system formed of values, evaluation and selective perception. No matter which my values are, as a whole they build that very system by which I evaluate and judge the ways others act, look and speak in order to find out whether they fit in with my values. In case they do there is the realistic chance of a positive and fruitful communicational process; in case they do not, communication will go wrong and end soon – in a comparatively unspectacular way by cutting communicational ties or in a rather dramatic way by leading into conflict.
The project „IMAGES“ defines cultural encounters as cultural contacts, which include all possible outcomes. The project does not share positions which identify cultural encounters with cultural contacts which exclusively motivate genuinely positive and fruitful intercultural processes following the intercultural definition of the term. „IMAGES“ identifies cultural contacts also with actions and reactions which may escalate and end in conflict: just think of the cultural provocation; the cultural misunderstanding you are not aware of; the claim made by one culture to culturally “educate” other cultures; the cultural prejudice. In doing so the project considers the fact that the images we create of others are subject to selective perception: We see what we prefer to see. This is true of the positive as well as of the negative.
Adapting this context to the conference topic, paper and panel proposals may include all topics analyzing films as spaces of cultural encounters from a cultural studies perspective in general, and from an inter-cultural, multi-cultural, trans-cultural, semiotic, communication centred, linguistic, sociological, historical, comparative studies, educational, and political perspective in particular, and from all related perspectives.
Sessions may focus on the following issues but are also open to further thematic fields deriving from paper proposals received:
One evening session will be open for artistic student works focussing on the conference topic.
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