Conferences

X Congreso Internacional de Ciencias Sociales Interdisciplinares

Date(s): 11-13 Junio 2015
Location: Universidad de Split, Split, Croácia

Description:
Este Congreso sobre Ciencias Sociales Interdisciplinares es una gran oportunidad para que cientos de académicos e investigadores vinculados a los diversos ámbitos de las ciencias sociales, junto a educadores, responsables políticos, administradores públicos y otros profesionales de la educación, nos reunamos para debatir y dialogar a través de diversos campos y perspectivas, con el foco situado en los fundamentos de las ciencias sociales.

La inscripción al Congreso permite a los ponentes, además de asistir al evento, realizar una presentación o participar en una mesa redonda, taller o coloquio, publicar un artículo en la Revista asociada (tras superar el proceso de revisión por pares) y obtener acceso a todos los números de la Revista en español/portugués y a su homóloga en inglés (presentes y pasados) por un período de un año. Si no puede asistir al congreso en persona, puede inscribirse de manera virtual, opción que le permite unirse al diálogo de esta comunidad a través de la Revista (tras revisión y evaluación por pares).

Para más información sobre envío de propuestas, plazos y precios de inscripción , por favor consulte el siguiente enlace: http://lascienciassociales.com/congreso

Proposal deadline:
11 Mayo 2015

Contact information:
Pongase en contacto con nosotros en: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Para más información sobre la comunidad de Ciencias Sociales Interdisciplinares, visite la página web: http://lascienciassociales.com

Additional information:
La propuestas podrán ser enviadas en español y portugués.

Birmingham-Southern College’s 23rd Annual Undergraduate Latin American Studies Symposium: “Extreme Events in Latin America."

Date(s): April 24th-25th, 2015
Location: Birmingham-Southern College, 900 Arkadelphia Road, Birmingham, Alabama 35254

Description:
Established at BSC in 1992 to foster undergraduate research, the symposium increases public awareness of Latin America and provides a forum for students and faculty to share their interests and to establish contacts with colleagues in other disciplines.

The theme for 2015 is “Extreme Events in Latin America.” The term “extreme event” tends to be associated with severe weather phenomena such as tornadoes, tropical storms, hurricanes, and floods. It is also increasingly being used to describe climate change impacts and the effects earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides can have on urban areas. However, there is no precise metric for determining the extremeness of an event, and while some large-scale human events might generate positive effects or outcomes—sporting events, celebrations, commemorations, and elections, for example—extreme events are usually associated with death, destruction, misery, and mayhem. Airline disasters and bus crashes and some mass public demonstrations, strikes, and uprisings; and sudden political events such as coups, assassinations, and mass killings are also types of extreme events.

Although the 2015 theme is “Extreme Events in Latin America,” undergraduate papers on any topic relevant to Latin American Studies may be accepted: politics and culture, the global economy, literature, the environment, public health, gender, and art, for example.

Proposal deadline:
March 13th, 2015

Contact information:
Dr. Vincent T. Gawronski
Latin American Studies Symposium, Director
Birmingham-Southern College
900 Arkadelphia Road, Birmingham, AL 35254
Phone: (205) 226-4836
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Conference Website: http://www.bsc.edu/academics/las/symposium.cfm

Additional information:
Papers may be presented in Spanish, English, or Portuguese. Please submit an abstract proposal of no more than 250 words to Dr. Gawronski.

4th Conference on Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean

Date(s): October 15-17, 2015
Location: Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA

Description:
This conference is organizes by ERIP, the LASA section on Ethnicity, Race and Indigenous Peoples in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University and theLatin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies journal (LACES). ERIP is committed to the promotion of research, teaching, and the exchange of ideas about the distinctive cultures, racial identities and relations, as well as concerns of subaltern ethnic groups in the region, particularly indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants. The conference provides an opportunity for convening an international and broad interdisciplinary forum for scholars to explore related social, economic, political, historical, and cultural issues.

"Communities, Circulations, Intersections" evokes the scope of the 2015 ERIP conference. Panel and paper proposals related to this motif, as well as to all topics related to the section’s mission and areas of interest in Latin American and Caribbean studies, are welcome and encouraged.

Proposal deadline:
June 15, 2015

Contact information:
G. Antonio Espinoza, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Latin American History
Department of History
Virginia Commonwealth University
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 804-828-9387

Edward Abse, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
School of World Studies
Virginia Commonwealth University
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 804-827-1143

Additional information:
Conference website: erip.vcu.edu

Bound labor in the Americas before the abolition of slavery:legal codifications, transfers and the harmonization of the practices

One-day conference

Poitiers University, France, October 16th, 2015

From the 17th century onwards, the demographic and economic growth of the North American and Caribbean colonies was intricately linked to the introduction and subsequent exploitation of bound labor. The implementation of indentured servitude addressed the need to compensate for the scarcity of labor, after the relative failure of the enslavement of Native Americans, while also assuring the peopling of the colonies. By the same token, the deportation of vagrant children, of vagabonds and convicts also provided a means for the Old Continent to rid itself of its undesirable population. The rise in European immigration that resulted from the decrease of sea transportation costs made free labor more economically attractive and gradually transformed the indentured servitude system into the Redemptioner System. During the course of the 18th century, the increasing reliance on black bonded labor led to the disappearance of white indentured servitude. Economic incentives - be they in terms of productivity or in the cost of controlling the laborers - motivated the adoption of new forms of bound labor. However, the substitution of one form of unfree labor for another did not occur in a sudden and orderly fashion: the change was characterized by a period of transition during which several types of bound labor coexisted.

This one-day conference aims at historicizing the implementation and development of different forms of bound labor in North America and in the Caribbean before the abolition of slavery. By specifically focusing on the process of legal codification, it intends to underline the continuities, the transfers and the differences that existed between the legislations which applied to various forms of unfree labor, but also between practices. Bound labor took many forms (indentured servitude, apprenticeship, convict labor, slavery, etc.) and encompassed diverse personal and collective experiences, depending on the geographic location and the historical period. Besides examining the construction of a legal arsenal aimed at controlling and disciplining unfree laborers, this one-day conference will also endeavor to assess, through case studies, the disparities between rhetoric and reality, in order to highlight the indomitable propensity for individuals or social groups to emancipate themselves from normative injunctions.

We welcome presentations based on a variety of topics such as:

- a comparative approach between different legislations, different time periods and different geographic locations

- the extent to which social and geographical origins, or religious confession, influenced unfree laborers’ social integration and treatment

- the social and political difficulties posed by the coexistence of various forms of bound labor

- the specialization and assignment to professional tasks according to the type of bound labor force

- the gap between law and practice

- the historiographic progress which the development of new technologies allows, namely in the treatment of data and the reconstruction of personal or collective trajectories

The languages of the one-day conference will be French and English.

For consideration, please submit a paper proposal of 300 words and a 1 page CV by April 15, 2015 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

A selection of papers presented at the conference will be published.

Conference organizers:

Lawrence Aje (Université Paul -Valéry, Montpellier 3 - EMMA)

Anne-Claire Fauquez (Université Panthéon - Assas - EA 1569: Transferts critiques et dynamiques des savoirs, Université Paris VIII)

Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Université de Poitiers - MIMMOC)

TSA 14th Annual Conference Call for Papers

On 6 - 8 July 2015 the Transatlantic Studies Association will host its 14th Annual Conference at the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, the Netherlands.

Established in 2002, the TSA is a broad network of scholars who use the ‘transatlantic’ as a frame of reference for their work in political, economic, cultural, historical, environmental, literary, and IR/security studies. All transatlantic-themed paper and panel proposals from these disciplines are welcome. The Middelburg conference also encourages proposals / panels that:

  1. investigate the relevance and significance of the ‘transatlantic’ for a certain discipline or field;
  2. that explore it through frames of reference such as ideology, empire, race, religion, migration, political mobilisation, or social movements;
  3. that incorporate perspectives that involve north-south and south-south transatlantic connections, as well as north-north;
  4. that link the ‘transatlantic’ to other key perspectives such as the transnational or the cosmopolitan.

Both panel proposals and individual papers are welcome. Panel proposals are encouraged to include a discussant. New members and junior scholars are especially welcome.

Please send individual paper proposals (a 300 word abstract + brief CV) and complete panel proposals (300 word overview + 300 word abstracts for the papers + brief CVs) to the conference email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Deadline for panel and paper proposals: 1 January 2015

Keynote Lectures:

Jessica Gienow-Hecht (Free University, Berlin)

Inderjeet Parmar (City University, London)

Plenary Roundtable:

The Transatlantic Paradigm Reconsidered 

Accommodation

Due to limited accommodation options in the town of Middelburg, it is highly recommended that participants organize their accommodation as early as possible. Every effort will therefore be made to accept proposals as soon as possible after the 1 January deadline.

The Roosevelt Study Center can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for information on accommodation options.

TSA Chair and local conference organiserGiles Scott-Smith: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Conference committeeVictor Gavin, Mark Meirowitz, Alexandre Moreli, Sirpa Salenius, Roberta ter Haar, Pia Wiegmink, David Woolner

For further information on the Association please visit www.transatlanticstudies.com

Call for papers: International graduate conference Freie Universität Berlin

The 8th Graduate School of North American Studies international conference will be held at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität Berlin on May 7-9, 2015.

Currently we are looking for a broad and intriguing spectrum of papers on "Alliances: Un/Common Causes and the Politics of Participation" and invite graduate students to join us in Berlin in May 2015.

The conference will explore the histories, presences, and futures of alliance making. Transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it foregrounds the complex interplay between the imaginary and the material. We invite speakers to think with, through, and beyond the following issues:

  1. hegemonic alliances vs. grassroots organizing
  2. mobs, crowds, and gatherings: performativity and agency in numbers
  3. fragmented, operation-based initiatives and intersectional justice movements
  4. cultural resonances and literary representations of alliances
  5. the aesthetics of co-option and cooperation
  6. delinking strategies and dissolving coalitions
  7. peer-to-peer finance (e.g. crowdfunding) and other collaborative investments
  8. networked materialities, virtual and posthuman alliances
  9. alliances and social participation in historical perspective

You can find the full CfP on the website of the GSNAS (http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/graduateschool/events/conference/2015/index.html).

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short CV to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The proposal deadline is February 16, 2015.
Selected presenters will be notified by March 17, 2015.

Terra Foundation - Yale University Press American Art in translation Book Prize

The Terra Foundation for American Art, in partnership with Yale University Press, is offering a new prize for an unpublished manuscript or previously published manuscript in a language other than English written by a non-U.S. author. The manuscript should make a significant contribution to scholarship on the historical visual arts of what is now the geographic United States.

In helping to overcome the language barrier that often divides scholars and deters international research and collaboration, the prize aims to advance and internationalize scholarship on American art and seeks to recognize original and thorough research, sound methodology, and significance in the field. The award is especially intended to encourage authors who take the field of American art history into new historical and interpretive terrain, or who establish connections among the work of scholars within and outside the United States, providing a model of international exchange important to sustaining relevance and academic rigor for the future of the field.

The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize; the Terra Foundation will fund production of the book, which will be published (in print and electronic form) in English by Yale University Press. In addition, Yale University Press will invite the winner to present a lecture on the book, upon publication, at Yale University. Scholars who have received PhDs within the past five years are strongly encouraged to apply.

Applicants must submit a letter of inquiry by August 3, 2015. The deadline for the receipt of completed applications is October 15, 2015.

For more information about application guidelines and the application process, schedule, and checklist, please visit the Yale University Press website:www.yalebooks.com/terratranslationprize.

The 10th Biennial Symbiosis 2015 Conference

Call for Papers:


The 10th Biennial Symbiosis 2015 Conference:
Transatlantic Literary & Cultural Relations
A Symbiosis and Essex University event

Venue: Essex University, Colchester, UK
Dates: Thursday 9th to Sunday 12th July, 2015
Keynote Speakers:
Richard Gray (Essex University); Peter Hulme (Essex); Jahan Ramazani (Virginia)
Guest speaker: t.b.a.


The headline conference theme is trauma, conflict, and reconciliations, although proposals on any topic relevant to any area of Transatlantic Studies are welcome. The event organizers invite submission of:

200 – 300 word abstracts for proposed 20-minute conference presentations
Panel presentations comprising 3 presenters (please submit three 200 word abstracts & brief overall rationale)
Please send by email to both: 
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Sunday 22nd March 2015
The editors of Symbiosis, the Conference Directors, and Essex University’s Department of English invite proposals for panels and individual papers of twenty minute length, which engage a wide variety of transatlantic and/or transnational topics in the literatures and cultural histories of the Atlantic world. The conference is certainly not limited to any local concerns, although papers that treat issues related to the headline theme of conflict, trauma, and reconciliations in its transatlantic dimensions or a matter of cultural exchange and interrelationships are especially welcome, as are those examining the first fifteen years of transatlantic literary and cultural responses to the twenty-first century. Additionally as ever submissions are actively encouraged from all scholars and students of literary and cultural history and representation from every period from the earliest settlement right through to the present.



Poet Donald Davie was the first Professor of English at the new University of Essex, moving to Stanford and Vanderbilt Universities; Robert Lowell taught there for two years in the 1970s. The campus is conveniently located on the outskirts of Colchester, a thriving town, once the roman capital of Britain, now forty miles from London, 46 minutes journey on the fast train to and from London Liverpool Street station. Colchester itself offers numerous attractive bars, restaurants and two large shopping centres; the campus is close to the riparian attractions of Wivenhoe, also full of pubs and eating places.


Accommodation can be booked on campus, in well-appointed rooms, minutes away from the conference centre and the Symbiosis event. The conference fee (tba) will include a two-year subscription to the Symbiosis journal, confeence lunches, teas and coffees; single accommodation (with continental breakfast) can be booked if specified, and double rooms at a higher fee. The conference dinner is additional, and delegates are responsible for their own evening and other supplementary meals. Activities will include a literary event at the VENUE TBA, which will incorporate a SOMETHING reading and a tour of a significant cultural site. A list of local hotels and guest houses, if preferred, can be provided.


Submit 200 – 300 word abstract with details of your academic affiliation and contact details in Microsoft Word attachments by Sunday 22nd March, 2015 to the Conference Directors, Prof. Philip Tew (Brunel) and Dr. Matthew Scott (Reading): 
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Add ‘Symbiosis 2015 Proposal’ to the subject line of your message, an essential detail since they will be sorted automatically using this search term.


Earlier inquiries are welcome; early acceptance may be possible if required for institutional or similar funding to facilitate attendance. Symbiosis cannot offer bursaries or fee waivers. Further details will be posted on the Essex University webpage, on the Symbiosis website and its Facebook page. See variously:


http://www.symbiosistransatlantic.com/

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Glasgow-United-Kingdom/Symbiosis-a-Journal-of-Anglo-American-Literary-Relations/313163095816).

Call for Papers: Let's Talk about $$$tuff: Consumerism in the Americas

Call for Papers for the 22nd Amerikanistendag at the University of Groningen

27 March 2015

“What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” (Andy Warhol)

Ever since the industrial revolution initiated the era of mass production during the 19th century, the world has started to consume at an unprecedented rate, and since the 1950s, people everywhere on the globe have bought and used more goods than the combined total of the world population throughout history. In many ways, the U.S. has been at the pinnacle of this development. Enjoying a time of national prosperity after WWII, the country saw the average American‟s spending power rise, and the sales of TVs, household appliances, and automobiles skyrocketed. Despite periods of economic downturn during the second half of the20th century, the general trend towards excess consumption has continued unabated until this moment. Currently, as a Mt. Holyoke College project on the “History of American Consumerism” found out, “[t]he average US-American uses 300 shopping bags worth of raw materials every week, an amount of food that weighs as much as a large car; [w]e would need the resources of 3 planets for everyone to live an „American‟ lifestyle; 99% of the stuff people in North America buy is trashed within 6 months after purchase; [and] Americans drive about as many miles as the rest of the world combined.” This American consumer lifestyle has also had a tremendous impact on other countries worldwide, and the U.S.‟s export of consumer and lifestyle products has contributed substantially to promoting a version of the “American Dream” that has encouraged thousands of migrants to seek a better life in the U.S.

Yet at the same time, industrial production and mass consumption are the biggest contributors to global forms of environmental destruction such as deforestation, ozone depletion, water and grain shortages, and soil erosion. Moreover, the tendency of multinational corporations to produce where labor is cheapest has driven American companies to outsource their production to other parts of the world, including Latin America and Asia, while driving local companies into bankruptcy. Even though recent financial crises have created a renewed understanding of the importance of the concept of “Made in America,” the question remains how this development can influence the working conditions of blue collar workers in the United States and elsewhere when production has to be cheap and fast. While the top 1 percent of the population is acquiring more and more wealth and goods, millions of Americans depend on a minimum wage that may remain stagnant, despite President Obama‟s assertions to thecontrary during his Labor Day speech of 2014. And when the minimum wage is below the living wage, are the poorest American consumers still able to buy some of the same things as the richest, as Andy Warhol claimed?

For these reasons, patterns of over-spending and over-consumption as well as current developments in international capitalism, corporate globalization, and economic neoliberalism have met with widespread criticism. At least since the protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999, a wide range of activists, including trade unionists, environmentalists, land rights and indigenous rights specialists, as well as sustainable development and anti-sweatshop campaigners have started to gather annually during the World Social Forum to highlight how the policies of corporate globalization have exacerbated poverty in the global South and increased inequality both within the US and in other (Latin American) nations.

In addition, multinational companies as well as governments now also work in data-rich environments. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted in 2010, mankind now creates as much information every two days as it had from the dawn of civilization to 2003. The ways in which these (often sensitive) data are currently being used to gather information about citizens and/or possible consumers increasingly also leads to regulatory and ethical concerns.

The organizers of the 2015 Amerikanistendag invite proposals that focus on any aspect of consumerism in the Americas (the USA, Canada, and/or Latin American nations). Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:

- historical developments of / changes to consumption habits in the Americas

- consumerism and (social) media

- consumerism and identity; the role of status symbols

- consumerism and diversity; the targeting of specific (immigrant) markets

- the capitalism-inequality-poverty nexus, or, the American Dream in the era of globalization

- the consumption and distribution of data and intelligence information in the context of international security concerns

- critiques of consumerism (from Thorstein Veblen‟s Theory of the Leisure Class [1899] to the “Battle of Seattle,” the concept of rebellious consumption [David McRaney] and recent trends in downshifting and simplifying one‟s life)

- critiques of capitalism and neoliberalism (Occupy Wall Street; the Mexican Zapatista movement; the concept of “Socialism for the 21st century” as advocated by Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales; campaigns targeting multinational corporations such as Nike and Monsanto)

The organizers invite speakers to submit proposals for brief presentations (15-20 minutes) in English on any subject related to the conference theme to Dr. Marietta Messmer ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). Deadline for the submission of proposals: March 16, 2015. For more information, please contact Dr. Messmer.

Call for Papers for the Spring 2015 NASA Conference

On June 18-20, NASA and the University of Oldenburg will co-organize a three-day international conference (in Groningen and Oldenburg) on the topic of

“Political Participation in the Post-Democratic Era: Promises, Challenges, Illusions”

If the recent mid-term elections have told us anything, it is that participatory democracy in the United States is definitely on the wane. With a record estimate of $4 billion in campaign spending, big money was undeniably the ultimate winner in the latest Congressional race. And with roughly $1 billion of the total spending coming from “dark money” super PACs, the Daily Show sarcastically dubbed its coverage of the midterms, “Democalypse 2014: America remembers it forgot to vote.” Unsurprisingly, since money undeniably loves money, the DOW and S&P 500 closed at record highs the day after the midterms. The techno-demographic appeal of Obama’s first presidential campaign appears to have been a one-off, and the Occupy Wall Street movement seems only a faint memory now. Clearly, rumors of neo-liberalism’s demise have been grossly exaggerated.

So what does this teach us about the potential of social change in the post-democratic era and the future of peaceful global revolution? With democracy a fleeting illusion in Africa, the Middle East, much of Asia and Russia, and a European Union increasingly out of touch with its apathetic citizens, will the United States once more assume its former role as leader of the free world and ambassador of citizens’ rights? In the face of a growing income gap, a drop in social mobility and the increasing unaffordability of higher education, do we see signs of voters seeking ways to participate more actively in public debates? Is the much-touted democratization effect of social media technology really bearing fruit? If so, are these techno-networked voter-activists joining advocacy groups for specific interests? In an age of globalization, supranational unions, and the concomitant phenomena of immaterial labor and other forms of social alienation, what is the state of democracy in these times of increasing skepticism toward institutionalized political participation (cf. voter apathy)?

In order to discuss these (and related) issues, we invite participants in this conference to address alternative ways in which citizens have been claiming/reclaiming their place in political decision-making—in the United States, as well as in the wider American hemisphere, or, comparatively, between the United States and other parts of the world. Historical reflections and comparisons are also welcomed. Collectively, we want to explore these developments in political participation as harbingers of the emergence of a post-post-democracy.

A selection of revised and expanded papers will be published in the Interamericana Series (Peter Lang Publishing).

We invite proposals for individual 20-minute-presentations or complete panels. Proposals for individual papers should consist of an abstract (max. 250 words) and a short CV. Proposals for panels should provide a brief explanation of the goals of the panel and its link to the conference theme (500 words), accompanied by 250-word abstracts and brief CVs of all speakers. Proposals for alternative presentation formats (e.g. roundtables, impulse-sessions, interviews, performances, or other innovative formats) are also welcome. Please submit all proposals to Wil Verhoeven (U of Groningen, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Martin Butler (U of Oldenburg, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). 

Deadline: March 25, 2015.

Call for Papers: Open Access Tage 2015 à Zurich

Call for Papers: Open Access Tage 2015 à Zurich

 Les 7-8 septembre 2015 ont lieu les 9èmes journées Open Access à Zurich- La conférence est organisée par la bibliothèque principale de l'Université de Zurich en coopération avec l'Informationsplattform open-access.net

Un Call for Papers est ouvert jusqu'au 15 mars.

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