Reading After Empire:
Local, Global and Diaspora Audiences

The deadline for abstract submissions and registration has now expired..

Reading After Empire:  Second Call for Papers

An international conference to be hosted by the University of Stirling, Scotland
3-5 September 2008.

This conference focuses on the neglected but central role of reading in colonial, postcolonial and diasporic contexts. It uses reading in its broadest sense (e.g. as reception, viewing, consumption, translation, literacies) to raise questions about the politics, and the pleasures, of interpretation. We are interested in both empirical and theoretical accounts of readers and audiences across a range of genres (e.g. literary, cinematic, televisual, internet-based) and contexts (e.g. libraries, living rooms, cinemas, book groups, chat rooms).

Titles and abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent electronically, along with a 50-word biography, by May 16th 2008 to Bethan Benwell - b.m.benwell@stir.ac.uk

Suggested topics might include:
contrapuntal reading; imagined and interpretive communities; catachresis; the postcolonial exotic; literacy; reception as a situated activity; colonial libraries; postcolonial history of the book; nationalism and hermeneutics; readers within fiction and film; reading and ethics

Registration forms are available here:

Confirmed speakers: Arjun Appadurai, Jackie Kay, Greg Myers, Stephanie Newell, Vron Ware

How should we read colonial and postcolonial texts? Is reading an act of resistance, or the domestication of difference? Does postcolonial studies posit an ‘ideal reader’? What (if anything) are the differences between local, national and transnational audiences? How can we ever adequately interpret the imperial archive?

Conference Organisers: Sheree Mack (sheree.mack@newcastle.ac.uk) and Bethan Benwell (b.m.benwell@stir.ac.uk)