[csaa-forum] Postcolonial Popular Culture Symposium

[Vijay Devadas]

Dear colleagues

The Postcolonial Studies Research Network at the University of Otago  
is organizing a symposium entitled Postcolonial Popular Culture.

The call for papers is listed below.

best wishes, vijay


Postcolonial Popular Cultures: A Symposium
Organised by the Postcolonial Studies Research Network, University of  
Otago

December 14-16, 2008, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand


Keynote Speakers

Grant Farred, Professor of Africana Studies and English, Cornell  
University.
“For Our Time? Thinking the Popularity of the Postcolonial”: exploring  
the relevance of postcoloniality, and its historically difficult  
relationship to the popular, in our moment.

Kalpana Ram, Anthropology, Macquarie University.
To be confirmed

Jo Smith, Media Studies Programme, Victoria University of Wellington.
“Postcolonial Maori TV?”

Call for Papers

The field of postcolonial studies has recently been called on to  
redress its lack of sustained attention to, and engagement with,  
popular cultural practices and forms. A survey of the anthologies and  
major collections informing the field suggest the point is a  
legitimate one. While scholars such as Arjun Appadurai, Paul Gilroy,  
and Kobena Mercer engage with popular cultural practices of diasporic  
and migrant communities, the postcolonial field has shown less  
attention to popular cultural forms as productive sites for exploring  
the kinds of questions that animate it.

Taking on this challenge, we invite submissions from across  
disciplines to engage with the theme of postcolonial popular cultures.  
Theoretical and disciplinary inquiries may include the constitution of  
postcolonial popular cultures, the function, role of the postcolonial  
in postcolonial popular culture, and the critical perspective offered  
by postcolonial studies. What can postcolonial studies contribute to  
the study and understanding of popular culture that has not been  
addressed by cultural studies? How would an examination of  
contemporary popular cultural practices influence significant areas of  
postcolonial theorizing: hybridity, resistance, the politics of  
representation? How would it affect the field’s focus on a certain  
literary and theoretical canon, and its arguably textual orientation?  
What economies of value shape the relative exclusion of popular  
culture in postcolonial studies?

Beyond this, we are concerned to ask whether an emphasis on  
postcolonial popular culture challenges specific structures of power,  
or whether popular cultural forms and practices are complicit with the  
institutions and operations postcolonial studies seek to challenge? In  
a period of rapid commodification and intense consumerism, what is at  
stake when we speak of postcolonial popular cultures? What impact is  
made on postcolonial cultural expressions by the ‘global popular’?

These questions are by no means exhaustive; they are offered as a  
point of entry for further discussion on the theme of postcolonial  
popular culture. Postcolonial popular culture is defined in a broad  
and inclusive way to incorporate lived and textual cultures, the mass  
media, ways of life, and discursive modes of representation. Central  
to the formation of postcolonial popular cultures are articulations of  
the economic, social and political spheres and the conference welcomes  
contributions that will highlight these issues.

Papers from across disciplines are invited to address aspects of  
Postcolonial Popular Culture, including:

Popular culture and resistance
Everyday popular cultural practices
Sport
Music
Dance
Body cultures
Fashion/clothing
Food
Television and other broadcast media
Online games, computer and other technologies
Street and community theatre
Shopping
To maintain the integrity of discussions, we ask that submissions  
address the question of popular culture in relation to some aspect of  
the field of postcolonial studies. We invite abstracts of 250-300  
words and a short bio of 100 words to be sent to Dr Brendan Hokowhitu (Brendan.hokowhitu at stonebow.otago.ac.nz 
) by 1 October, 2008.

  
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