“The Post-National Nation: Ideology and Institution in the Global Era”

March 25-26, 2005, Rice University, Houston, Texas

Call for Papers

In academic and public contexts, the nation-state has long served as a point-of-origin for discussing and articulating identity, ideologies, economies, histories and literary or cultural productions. As our title suggests, the ascendancy of global paradigms have brought new urgency to long running analyses and interrogations of the nation-state model.We anticipate work exploring the discursive formation of the nation and its ostensible role as a site for ideological, economic and cultural capital, especially as that role is said to be eroded by a new world order. Do cultural productions, institutions and ideologies belong to the nation-state proper, or can they be more accurately understood globally? How has the global been defined rhetorically and distinguished from the national? What is the stake for political identity, cooperation or agency within a global framework? Finally, what is the status of the academic curricula within a global imaginary: how are disciplinary boundaries being re-mapped while the globe is?

Both individual and panel submissions are welcome. Please send abstracts of 250 words or less by January 31, 2005 to cledoux@rice.edu and/or jjacks@rice.edu. All presentations should be no longer than 15 minutes.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

— Any topics on internationalism, cosmopolitanism, globalization and geo-political order

— All topics on the nation, the nation-state, nationalism and the political or cultural creation of national identity

— All papers on refugees, diasporas, exiles and displaced populations

— The circulation of capital, labor, literatures, populations and information

— Global and/or national frames for understanding literary productions of all periods

These questions, of course, could not be sufficiently addressed from within a singular disciplinary framework. As such, we are actively soliciting submissions from across academic departments and programs, such as English,history, economics, cultural geography, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, environmental sciences, philosophy, political science, public policy. This theme demands a representation that is, itself, global in its ambitions.

The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Michael Bérubé, professor of Cultural Studies and English Literature at Penn State University.