Upcoming Symposium: Everyday Nationhood
Date: 8th September 2014 (Monday)
Location: Birbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
ASEN and the School of Political, Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia, and the Department of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, are pleased to be organising Everyday Nationhood, a one-day symposium to examine the contribution of Michael Billig’s study of Banal Nationalism.
You can find the provisional programme here!
Published in 1995, Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism is the fourth most cited text on nationalism and arguably the most influential book on the topic in the last two decades. Focusing on contemporary and everyday expressions of nationhood, the study marked a profound shift away from previous attempts to map the transformation to an era of nations and the association of nationalism with political violence, civil conflict and extremist movements.
Billig’s arguments have been picked up by scholars working in an impressive range of disciplines as part of the recent turn to the ‘everyday’, and the term ‘banal’ has come to form a short hand for the study of the ways in which particular representations, forms of social organisation and cultural practice become normalised and taken-for-granted.
This one-day symposium will look to assess the contribution of the Banal Nationalism thesis, examine its application across disciplines and settings, and ask where studies of nation, social identities and everyday life might be headed over the next two decades. The event will feature a keynote address by Professor Craig Calhoun (Director of the LSE) one of the leading theorists of nationalism, cosmopolitanism and social identity in the contemporary era.
Please click here to visit the website!
Call for Proposals: Rethinking Nation and Nationalism Workshop
Date: February 6, 2015
Location: University of Southern California
Application Deadline: October 15, 2014
The University of Southern California and the Project on Middle East Political Science invite proposals to participate in the Rethinking Nation and Nationalism Workshop that will be hosted on February 6, 2015 at the University of Southern California.
The Arab uprisings of 2011 have shown that questions of physical boundaries and national identities long seen as resolved may in fact be open to reconfiguring. Insurgencies spanning Syria and Iraq and the (re)assertion of regionalism in Libya are only the most violent of the processes currently underway, challenging long-established physical national frontiers.
Embattled regimes have produced new national narratives to legitimate their rule while sectarian and Islamist movements have taken on new manifestations. Refugee movements triggered by these conflicts and longer-standing processes of migration within, into, and out of the region have led to large communities of nationals being established outside the countries of their citizenship.
This workshop brings together scholars working on questions related to these challenges – territorial, ideological, economic, political – to existing configurations of nation and nationalism in the region. Participants will write 1,500 word memos that present current projects, reflect upon the current literature, or lay out new theoretical or empirical research agendas.
These memos will serve as the basis for discussion at the workshop, and then will be collected and published as an edition of the POMEPS Studies series. POMEPS will offer a $250 honorarium for memos, and cover all travel costs to the University of Southern California.
To be considered for participation in this workshop, please send a brief one-paragraph description of your proposed memo and a one page CV to me_casey@gwmail.gwu.edu by October 15, 2014.
Participants must have a PhD or be currently enrolled in a PhD program in political science or a relevant discipline.
Click here for more information.
Call for Papers: Dissent from Within: Contesting Basque and Catalan Nationalist Narratives
Session at NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) Annual Convention in Toronto, Canada
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date: April 30 – May 3, 2015
Abstract deadline: September 30, 2014
In Spain, the polarizing political rhetoric of the debates on nationalisms often paints a simplistic opposition between center and periphery, eclipsing the voices within the Basque Country and Catalonia that contest their communities’ dominant nationalist narratives.
With particular interest in the inclusion of cultural, linguistic, racial, economic, sexual, or religious others, this panel will explore contemporary Basque and/or Catalan cultural production that challenges or represents alternatives to nation-making projects.
To participate, submit a 300-word abstract by September 30th at https://nemla.org/convention/2015/cfp.html