CALL FOR PAPERS: OSU Sawyer Seminar Conference, October 2014

[Roland Clark]

The interdisciplinary conference "Imagining Alternative
Modernities: Interventions from the Balkans and South
Asia" will take place at The Ohio State University,
Columbus, October 9-11, 2014. The conference completes
and complements a series of interdisciplinary activities in
2013-2014, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
through the John E. Sawyer Seminars on the Comparative
Study of Cultures grant program. For more information on
the seminar, please visit: sawyer.osu.edu.

On the surface, the Balkans and South Asia might seem to
have little in common. However, despite many specific
differences, they share similar dilemmas of linguistic,
religious, cultural, and ethno-national complexity, similar
turbulent political developments associated with imperial,
post-colonial, and Cold War legacies, and a similar diversity
of responses to these historical and contemporary challenges.
Both areas have seen a mixing of people through migratory
settlement, conquest, contact, and trade. But both have also
experienced periods of reaction to cultural hybridity: a
radical unmixing of people through partition and population
exchange. The impact of these upheavals is seen in the
direct violence of war and devastation, but also through
crises on the levels of language, religion, and other modes
of culture and human creative activity. The unique yet similar
issues within each region compel us towards a comparative
approach that will offer a transnational perspective on the
intersection of language, religion, culture, and nationalism.

Proposals invited for paper presentations from any
disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective within the
humanities and social sciences addressing one or more
of the following themes in the Balkans or in South Asia,
or comparatively between the two regions:

1. Violence, Gender, and Human Rights

2. Nation, Religion, Language, and Secularism

3. Minorities, State, Language, and Citizenship

4. Postcolonial and Postsocialist Perspectives on Neoliberalism

Additionally, selected papers will be included in a collection
of essays resulting from the conference.

Graduate students are encouraged to participate. Limited
funding is available for student lodging.

Please send a 350-word abstract in PDF format and brief
(one paragraph maximum) bio to sawyer...@osu.edu
by March 1, 2014. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by
May 1, 2014 and the program will be announced by June 1,
2014.