Points of Contact

CALL FOR PAPERS
Points of Contact
April 11-12, 2008
Austin, Texas

The French and Italian Graduate Student Conference proudly announces the Fifth Annual FIGS Conference at the Department of French and Italian, University of Texas at Austin on April 11-12, 2008.

This conference aims to evaluate various “Points of Contact” across French and Italian literature and linguistics, as well as such contact in music, film, art and popular culture. In presentations of 15-20 minutes, participants are asked to address questions pertaining to various modes of cultural production and, most importantly, to assess the outcome of such encounters or confrontations. Conversely, participants may also interrogate the evasion or refusal of contact. In the final analysis, it is the legacy of contact that we wish to uncover.

The keynote speaker this year is Danielle Marx-Scouras, a professor of French at The Ohio State University. Her latest book, La France de Zebda 1981-2004: Faire de la musique un acte politique, examines the popular band at the intersection of arts and engagement in contemporary France. Situating Zebda's engagement in a broader context, Marx-Scouras points out how cultural decentralization has allowed the band's native Toulouse, along with Marseille, to become the points of contact of la France métissée.

Possible panels may include, but are not limited to:

Immigration Francophone by choice: Beckett, Kundera, et al.
Cross-cultural contact in urban France Intertextualizing contact
Fears or fruit of contact Contact and shifting identity
Suppressed contact Borders and boundaries as sites of contact
Translation as a point of contact Linguistic contact in French sociolects and dialects
Linguistic points of contact Contact through Second Language Acquisition and
(Mediterranean culture, cultural competence
rhizomatic contacts)

You are also invited to submit panel proposals, which must include at least three paper abstracts for each proposed panel. The same guidelines will apply.

To be considered, paper proposals, in French, English or Italian, should include:
A 200-300 word abstract
Your name
Mailing address
Email address
University affiliation

Deadline for submission is January 10th, 2007.

Please email paper proposals as a Word document or PDF attachment to:

David Siller, jedipoete@yahoo.com
Meredith Wright, meredithnell@mail.utexas.edu

Proposals by regular mail may be addressed to:
David Siller
Attn: FIGS Conference
Department of French and Italian
University of Texas--Austin
1 University Station B7600
Austin, TX 78712