Philosophy Conferences and Calls for Papers

Guest Speakers:
Prof. Charles Forsdick
Prof. Adrian Armstrong

Call for Papers:

This will be the first ever conference to incorporate all the departments in the Faculty of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at The University of Manchester. This exciting inaugural event aims to be all inclusive and embrace all modern foreign languages; it will treat the notion of ‘Identity Formation’ in literature, art, film and media studies under three main themes:

The role of philosophy in the formation of identity:
- this addresses how the individual acts/forms his identity as a result of his philosophical ideas.
- it could include the philosophical ideas and values of, for example, the Enlightenment; the Counter-Enlightenment; Irrationalism; Existentialism; Post-Structuralism; Post-Colonialism etc.

Diasporic and transcultural identities:

- this could include the notion of “becoming” identitites; of identities being interchangeable; the concept of hybridity; and the effects of migration on identities.

Narrative identity:

- this addresses the idea of identity as a meaningful narrative construction with a sense of time, a plot and a location and containing an assemblage of parts.

Guest Speakers:

The guest speakers will be the distinguished scholars PROFESSOR CHARLES FORSDICK, The University of Liverpool, and PROFESSOR ADRIAN ARMSTRONG, The University of Manchester.
Professor Forsdick, who occupies the James Barrow Chair of French at the University of Liverpool, went to Liverpool in 2001. He previously studied at New College, Oxford and Lancaster University where he obtained his doctorate. Before being appointed to the University of Liverpool, he taught for five years at the University of Glasgow.

His research and teaching interests include exoticism, travel literature, postcolonial literature in French, the francophone dimensions of postcolonial theory, and the contemporary French novel. He has recently published Travel in Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures (OUP, 2005), and is currently working on the links between travel and cultural diversity. His forthcoming publications include Francophone Postcolonial Studies (co-editor, Arnold) and editions of Victor Segalen’s Essai sur l’exotisme and Equipée (Champion), and he is currently working on representations of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture.
At this conference, Professor Forsdick will, amongst other subjects, discuss postcolonial representation and the effects of displacement, migration and travel.

Professor Armstrong completed his undergraduate degree and D.Phil. at Oxford, and spent a year as a Research Fellow in Cambridge before joining Manchester in 1995. Since then he has also taught as a visiting lecturer at Cambridge and Lyon-III.

His research centres around grand rhétoriqueur poetry; late medieval and early Renaissance literature; manuscript studies and bibliography; and the influence of book form upon literature. His principal interests are literary, and he has published work on various writers, including Villon, Molinet, Lemaire, Bouchet, and Jean Marot. However, his concerns with the book as object are also linked to literary questions by an interest in text editing, a discipline of fundamental importance for literary scholarship which is currently eliciting much methodological reflection. Besides a forthcoming edition of Jean Bouchet’s Jugement poetic de l’honneur femenin, a pro-feminist text printed in 1538, he has co-edited a collection of occasional writing by the major rhétoriqueur Jean Lemaire de Belges from the period 1511-1513, with Jennifer Britnell (Société des Textes Français Modernes).

At this conference, Professor Armstrong will discuss how to successfully pursue a career in academia as a postgraduate student and will address issues of learning and teaching within higher education.

Please join us for an exploration of this compelling subject of identity formation.
Postgraduate students are cordially invited to submit abstracts relating to one of the three aforementioned panel subjects.

Guidelines for Abstracts and Papers

Please follow these instructions carefully:

- Abstracts [and papers] should be in English and no longer than 150 words.

- All citations in both the abstract and the paper should be given in English.

- Abstracts should indicate clearly which of the three panels they correspond to; please put the title of the panel you are applying to as the e-mail’s subject.

- Abstracts must be simply pasted/written into the e-mail and not attached as a Word [or other] document. Please also indicate the proposed title for the paper at the start of the abstract.

- Please state whether you will require PowerPoint/an overhead projector for your paper.

- The papers are to be 20 minutes in length and no longer, with approximately 10 minutes for questions.

- Abstracts should be sent to langsconference@yahoo.com

- The submission deadline is 15 January 2007.

Conference Registration:

- Registration is via e-mail. Please send your name, faculty, institution and contact telephone number to Michela Baldo at langsconference@yahoo.com
Please enter the title ‘Registration’ in the subject field of the e-mail.
Registration closes on 25 February 2007.

- Please send a cheque for ten pounds by 25 February 2007 payable to the following address:

Ms. Michela Baldo [S3.8]
School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester
Oxford Rd.
Manchester
M13 9PL

Registration fees include refreshments, lunch and a reception in the evening.

- Enquiries should be addressed to Louise Crowther at: langsconference@yahoo.com
Please enter the title ‘Enquiry’ in the subject field of the e-mail.

We look forward to seeing you at this exciting and inaugural event.