[Linganth] Literacies-themed interdisciplinary conference CFP --full text version

Thu Sep 15 15:05:00 UTC 2016

Apologies for the double-posting. It seems the .pdf attachment did not go through. I have pasted in a text  version of the cfp here:

[Text Box: Middlebury College Middlebury, VT 05753  Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs  Robert A. Jones ’59 House Telephone: (802) 443-5324 Fax: (802) 443-2050]Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs
5th Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference

Call for Papers

>From Scroll to Scrolling: Shifting cultures of language and identity

March 9-11, 2017
Middlebury College, Vermont, USA

Language and identity are inseparable. Changes in writing technology, on the one hand, and in power dynamics, on the other, shape communities and individual identities. This conference examines two intertwined themes: One, the impact of the production and circulation of texts, over time and place, on practices of writing, reading, and the transmission of knowledge. Two, the way in which power imbalances affect language use, community, and identity. As writing technologies emerge, decisions are made regarding what knowledge gets preserved and (re)produced or forgotten and lost. Changes in technologies of writing and access to their control have profound effects on cultural survival and social change.

The conference will address questions such as

• How are individual and cultural identities linked to the materiality of a given language
and its writing system (e.g., the painterly quality of Chinese ideographs; Helvetica
typeface)? Are there universal elements of written technology that transcend
particulars? Is digital technology—the ability to type any language on a single
keyboard—flattening or erasing the materiality of individual languages?

• How have the physical aspects of the production and circulation of texts (e.g. carvings,
scroll, codex, manuscript, screen) shaped knowledge production over time? How have
changes in ways of writing and reading lent new meanings to ‘old’ texts, and new
reading experiences?

• How does the study of ancient technologies of writing and reading—epigraphy,
scholarship of Chinese bone script—inform contemporary understandings of cultural community? Does it suggest essential continuities? Or does it suggest a rupture with
the past in which technology has fundamentally changed the nature of communication?

• How have national literatures and cultures negotiated the distance between their oral
and written languages through time? How have uses of technologies of writing created
or reflected this distance?

• How have religious communities negotiated changes in technologies of writing and what
role have sacred languages played in the construction of shared religious identities
across linguistically diverse communities?

Presenters may want to address the following themes:

• Language and identity
• Materiality of language
• Sacred language
• Orality, literacy, and new media
• Poetics, textuality, politics
• Censorship and language policies: threatened and disappearing languages
• Technologies of writing—multiplicity, diversity and change
• Technology, hybridity, authorship

We invite papers that address these issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives as they
pertain to different historical periods and geographical locations.

Those interested in presenting at the conference should send an abstract (no more than 250
words) and their curriculum vitae by October 1, 2016, to the organizers below. The selection
process is competitive.

Funds are available to support travel and lodging of all participants.

Organizers:
Tamar Mayer, Professor of Geography and Director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs,
mayer at middlebury.edu
Steve Snyder, Professor of Japanese Studies and Dean of Language Schools,
ssnyder at middlebury.edu
Juana Gamero de Coca, Associate Professor of Spanish, jgamero at middlebury.edu
Marybeth Nevins, Associate Professor of Anthropology, mnevins at middlebury.edu

________________________________
From: Nevins, Marybeth E.
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 10:59 AM
To: linganth at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Literacies-themed interdisciplinary conference CFP --deadline Oct 1st

Hello,

Please consider submitting an abstract for this interdisciplinary humanities conference hosted by the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs to be held March 9-11th at Middlebury College in Vermont. This year's conference is addressed to changing modes of literacy, broadly conceived--so it would be great to have some linguistic anthropologists in the conversation.

Thanks for considering,

Marybeth

M. Eleanor Nevins
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Sociology and Anthropology
107 Munroe Hall
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
E-mail: mnevins at middlebury.edu
Skype:marybeth.nevins

Lessons From Fort Apache: Beyond Language Endangerment and Maintenance. Blackwell Series in Discourse and Culture. Wiley-Blackwell. 2013.
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