Australian Society for French Studies Conference 2022 

MOVEMENT(S)/MOUVEMENT(S)

13-14 December 2022 (12 December: Postgraduate Day)

Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

After two years of restricted movement, we have the pleasure to announce that the annual conference of the Australian Society for French Studies will take place, for the first time, in New Zealand, in a hybrid format (online and in-person). Such a singular, exciting, and unprecedented excursion has prompted the organisers to propose movement as this year’s theme.

Our choice reflects a series of fundamental and pressing contemporary questions tied to migration, transitions, translations and upheavals which shape (and have been shaped by) French-language cultures.

It seems necessary to re-evaluate the multiple meanings of “movement” in the context of a world struck by the pandemic. On the individual level, the experience of travel was radically altered, while the closure of national borders has underscored the tensions between the local and the global.

We are also led to rethink the forces in motion in current societies. Stagnation and change clash at a time in which citizens are driving new, collective movements which embody political and socio-cultural concerns (Gilets Jaunes, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc, Anti-Feminicide Collages, Youth Climate Strikes, Extinction Rebellion). For better or worse, the notion of movement encapsulates our era.

In that context, the long-canonical category of “movement” in the realms of literature and art is likewise worth revisiting. Which movements might we identify in the present day? Which movements from the past should be questioned or revived?

An approach to movement invites consideration of:

• • Exchanges and contact between genres, languages, populations;
  • Exile, asylum, and the conditions of refugees;
  • Theory and practice of translation;
  • Physical and bodily dimensions of movement (performance, dance, spoken word, gestures, writing, reading, sight);
  • Evolution and changes in language, cultures and cultural objects;
  • New collective, social, political and artistic trends;
  • The capacity for culture and language to “stir” and move individuals and societies;
  • The role of physical and abstract means of circulation, as applied to people, culture and ideas (vehicles, media, social networks, languages, traditions)

The conference will include three keynotes, details of which will follow this announcement.

We invite proposals – in French or in English – for:

• • Individual research papers: presentations of 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.
  • Panels: three x 20-minute papers, followed by discussion.

Submit your proposals (by 20 July 2022) by clicking here.

Please visit the ASFS website for more details or contact ASFS2022@vuw.ac.nz with any questions.