Call For Papers: McNeil Center for Early American Studies (fwd)

[Daniel Mosquera]

I have received this call for papers from a friend. Since I have not seen
any reference to this conference in the list, I thought it would be a good
idea to spread the word.

DM

>Subject: Call For Papers: McNeil Center for Early American Studies (fwd)
>Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 10:44:15 -0600
>
>Call For Papers
>McNeil Center for Early American Studies:
>New World Orders:
>Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Early Modern Americas, 1500-1825
>
>           The McNeil Center for Early American Studies (www.mceas.org)
>invites paper proposals for a conference entitled "New World Orders:
>Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Early Modern Americas, 1500-1825,"

>to be held in Philadelphia on October 19-20, 2001. This conference will
>explore the wide variety of extralegal means by which social order was
>maintained in the early Americas, with a particular emphasis on how
>extralegal sanctions were defined and used; how extralegal sanctions
>related to legal forms of maintaining order; and how these patterns of
>sanction, embedded within other forms of colonialism and culture, created
>cultural, legal, social, or imperial "spaces" in the Americas.
>           The organizers have three interrelated aims. The first is to
>rethink the assumption, still implicit in many accounts of American
>colonization, that European discourses of law and authority operated as the

>dominant cultural authority in the early Americas. By calling this
>assumption into question, this conference may help scholars begin to see
>more clearly the relationship of "law" as a cultural form to other domains
>of social and cultural life. The second aim is to interrogate the
>relationship between various forms of authority and the construction of
>"space" in the early Americas. In essence, this conference will explore the

>ways in which spaces were constructed through assertions of sovereign
>authority over those spaces, whether legally, politically, or religiously.
>In other words, this conference aims to move beyond Western notions of
>legal sovereignty and to see the ways in which attempts to create colonial
>centers of power through sanctions of various kinds were inextricably
>linked to the creation of imperial boundaries, and vice versa.  Third, the
>organizers hope to explore these questions in a way that connects
>historiographies of British, Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese
>colonization to the history of the Atlantic world as a whole.
>           Topics may include (but are not limited to) explorations of the
>construction of sacred, gendered, and racialized spaces in everyday life;
>the role played by material culture and the built environment in defining
>colonial authority; the relationships between legal and extralegal
>discourse in the constitution of colonial power; patterns of violence,
>sanction, and war in colonial borderlands; notions of colonial space and
>sovereignty in theory and practice; or the evolution and hybridization of
>European, African, or Indian modes of maintaining order in creole American
>settlements. The conference organizers encourage scholars to interpret the
>conference themes broadly in crafting their proposals.
>           The organizers invite proposals from scholars working in all
>disciplines . Proposals should include a brief c.v. and a three-to-five
>page prospectus explaining the substance of the proposed paper, the sources

>to be used, and the topic's relationship to the conference themes. Those
>invited to participate in the conference will be asked to submit papers of
>approximately 30 pages in length by August 15, 2001 for pre-circulation to
>conference attendees. A steering committee composed of Matthew Restall
>(Pennsylvania State University), Thomas Humphrey (Cleveland State
>University), and John Smolenski (University of Pennsylvania) will screen
>proposals and arrange sessions and commentators. Direct questions to
>smolensk at sas.upenn.edu or tom.humphrey at csuohio.edu. Send three copies of
>the proposal to: New World Orders Conference, MCEAS, 3619 Locust Walk,
>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6213. Proposals must be post marked by December 1,
>2000.
--
Daniel O. Mosquera
Assistant Professor of Spanish
Modern Languages & Literature
Union College
Schenectady, NY 12308

Tel: (518) 388-6415        Fax: (518) 388-6462
http://www1.union.edu/~mosquerd
--

"If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot" --
E. M. Cioran