Royal Irish Academy Thirty-First Research Symposium National Committee for Modern Language, Literary and Cultural Studies University College Cork Friday and Saturday, 11 & 12 November, 2005 Cosmopolitanism is an ancient idea that has often been contested but which continues to be a central reference point in how we reach an understanding of and shape values in a globalized world. The conference will focus on a number of core problems. What are the grounds, the causes, of the cosmopolitan and how are they transmitted through culture? How does cosmopolitanism come to be a cultural and political cause? How does cosmopolitanism come to be linked with wisdom? Is this an enduring link? How does cosmopolitanism operate as a global factor in the creation of culture? Is cosmopolitanism simply the expression of an international cultural elite? Does cosmopolitanism sustain the search for universals? What is the scope and significance of world literature, of world cinema, today? Possible topics for the call for papers include:
· cosmopolitanism and universals
· cosmopolitanism in Europe
· globalization and the cosmopolitan
· is cosmopolitanism a grand récit?
· the global and the local
· the historicity of cosmopolitanism
· cosmopolitanism and difference
· world literature and world cinema
· case studies: fiction and documentaries
· cosmopolitanism contested
· transnational identities and communities
· the cosmopolitan metropolis
· cosmopolitanism, travel, and frontier
· cosmopolitan and multicultural citizenship
· cosmopolitanism and languages in multicultural Europe
· the contrasting experiences of the home and the world
· cosmopolitanism and the Constitution for Europe
· cosmopolitanism, migration and human rights
Papers should be twenty minutes in length to allow for ten minutes of discussion. Abstracts (of 300 words maximum) should be sent no later than 17 June 2005 to the organisers: Professor Patrick O'Donovan, Department of French, UCC podonovan@french.ucc.ie and Dott.Laura Rascaroli, Department of Italian, UCC l.rascaroli@ucc.ie