This two-day interdisciplinary conference, presented by the School of Modern Languages in association with the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, will explore new configurations of community, home and belonging, exile, and the possibilities offered by sites of encounter in this contact zone with particular reference to:
- the physical transformation of urban space – cultural, artistic, architectural;
- figurative representations of the city in literature, art and music;
- linguistic innovations of distinct communities in their interactions with one another.
As centres of migration, urban spaces have long been perceived as sites of movement, of cultural traffic and transactions, and places where cultural interface and exchange is a daily reality for many. Debates centred on globalisation, multiculturalism, integration and transculturalism have served to challenge monolithic conceptions of the nation state or ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1981). In their place, models of fluidity, as epitomised by Arjun Appadurai’s theorisation of ‘scapes’, supersede binary conceptions of local and global. With the increased circulation of people, goods, information and ideologies, both physically and virtually, a tension between the impulse to open up to the other and to police the boundaries of the self has the potential to create a third space of mutual transformation and thus transculturation.
The conference seeks to explore these ideas from a wide range of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives.
VENUE: School of Modern Languages, 6 University Square, Queen’s University, Belfast
Further details on the 'Mobilities' Interdisciplinary Research group can be found here.