Call for Papers: Travelling Concepts: Text, Subjectivity, Hybridity
(Amsterdam, January 11, 12 and 13, 2000)

Over the past year graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the
ASCA seminar group have discussed the concepts of text, subjectivity and
hybridity based on the work of Mieke Bal, Stanley Fish, Clifford Geertz,
Martin Fuchs, Mark Freeman, Michel Foucault, Evelyn Fox Keller, Gayatri
Spivak, Mikhail Bakhtin and Homi Bhabha. More specifically, the seminar
focused on ways in which text, subjectivity and hybridity have traveled
as concepts between disciplines, scholars, historical periods and
academic communities.

From this perspective the nature of concepts is understood in a variety
of ways. For example, it is assumed that concepts are normative and
programmatic rather than simply descriptive. While concepts are related
to a tradition, they are not stable and their use cannot boast simple
continuity. Concepts are complex and are never used in precisely the same
sense, hence the ramifications, traditions and histories, which are
conflated in their current usage, need to be unpacked and evaluated. The
validity and usage of concepts is then subject to debate which proceeds
by referring concepts back to the traditions and schools from which they
emerged, and forward to their relevance for cultural analysis today. And
because concepts travel, the Amsterdam School emphasizes the
methodological implications of the interdisciplinary study of culture.

ASCA is now inviting submissions on how text, subjectivity and hybridity
have traveled, as concepts, between disciplines, schools, historical
periods and academic communities, and how these considerations may be
brought to bear on case studies in cultural analysis. Those selected will
be invited to present their work at a conference organized by ASCA at the
University of Amsterdam, January 11, 12 and 13, 2000.

Proposals should be no more than 250 words in length and reach the ASCA
office at the address below, by Sept 15, 1999. Those chosen will be asked
to forward their completed texts of no more than 4000 words to ASCA, by
November 15, 1999.

Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory and Interpretation
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 210
1012 VT Amsterdam

tel. +31-(0)20-5253874
fax. +31-(0)20-5253052
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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