[URBANTH-L]CFP: Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities (migration, heritage, memory) (South Australia)

[Angela Jancius]

Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities: a conference about migration, 
connection, heritage and cultural memory

-- supported by the Innovative Universities European Union Centre and the 
European Commission's Delegation to Australia -- 

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Flinders University
Adelaide, South Australia
3 - 5 December 2007

This conference will examine issues of migration, transnational connection, 
displacement heritage, global space and cultural memory created by the 
movements of peoples between cultures in the modern world.

In the mass migrations of the last 200 years, millions of people have left 
their homelands and home cultures to settle in new places. Their motives 
have been many: the emigrant's search for new opportunities, the 
gastarbeiter's self-imposed exile, the refugee's forced flight and the 
settler's quest for trade, military advantage or fresh fields and pastures 
new have all shaped the great migrations of the modern period.

Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities will explore the cultural connections 
between homelands and new lands, and the complexities of reshaping cultural 
identities and shifting allegiances between cultures of departure and 
cultures of arrival.

The conference will have three main streams:

The public policy stream will cover issues of economics, population, forced 
migration, security, 'core values', education and the managing of cultural 
impacts of migration.

The history of migration stream will include sessions on pre- and post-World 
War Two migration, recent arrivals and diasporic communities.

The cultural migration stream will include sessions on memory, writing, 
language, cultural maintenance and sustainability, and the plurality of 
migrant identities.

Conference themes

Papers are invited on the following:
The demographics of people flow: who moves where? and why?
Forced migration in the Asia Pacific
Cultural, political and economic factors shaping migration. How are 
connections made?
Bordering the nation: migration and national security
Transnationalism, citizenship and sovereignty
Gender and generational issues in the migration experience
Linguistics, diaspora and migration
Settling down, settlement patterns and return migration
Can multi-cultures and multi-ethnicities produce one nation?
Multiculturalism
Language maintenance in the new culture
Foodways
Migration, place and situated identities
Connections with the new place and (re)negotiating with the old
Home and Away: What is transferred from the home culture to the new culture? 
What cannot fit in the baggage?
Imaginary homelands: life-writing, creative writing and film responses to 
the migration experience
Unsettlement: the idea of the settler colony
Cultural memory: heritage and exchange
Transplanted cultures as tourist attractions
Fusion, 'cultural hybridity', cosmopolitanism .

Guest speakers - The conference will feature plenary session addresses by 
leading international scholars in the field, as well as parallel 
presentations by researchers and policy-makers.

Proposals for panel sessions will be considered as well as abstracts for 
individual papers. Panel proposals should include a theme for the session, 
the names of all speakers, the titles of their papers, and a session summary 
of 250-300 words.

Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted for each paper, whether they 
are included in a panel session proposal or not. Where abstracts are 
intended for a proposed panel session, this should be indicated on the 
abstract.

Abstracts and session proposals should be sent to Nena Bierbaum, School of 
Humanities, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australian 
5001, or by email to nena.bierbaum at flinders.edu.au by 31 March 2007. All 
abstracts will be refereed.

Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities is a conference organised by the 
Flinders Humanities Research Centre for Cultural Heritage and Cultural 
Exchange, the Centre for Research into New Literatures in English (CRNLE) 
and Flinders International Asia Pacific (FIAP). The conference organisers 
gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Commission's Delegation 
to Australia, and the Innovative Universities European Union Centre.

CONFERENCE CONTACT
Nena Bierbaum
Tel: (+61 8) 8201 2578 or (+61 8) 8201 5137
Fax: (+61 8) 8201 3635