Call for Papers

Displaced Women:
Multilingual Narratives of Migration in Europe

Organised by Dr. Lucia Aiello, Dr. Joy Charnley, Dr. Mariangela Palladino

29 March 2012
Glasgow Women’s Library
5 Berkeley Street, Glasgow, G3 7BW
t: 0141 248 9969 e: info@womenslibrary.org.uk


This interdisciplinary conference will provide a forum for discussion of the issues facing women who have moved from one culture to another and have as a result adopted in their daily lives and for their creative work a language other than their ‘mother tongue’. We will look at the creative, linguistic, economic and psychological effects of this displacement. The critical examination of women’s narratives in Europe (fiction, poetry, diaries, memoirs, pamphlets), from a literary perspective will be complemented by sessions looking at these issues from a historical, political and sociological perspective. The broad nature of this conference provides an excellent opportunity for exchange between researchers in different disciplines who do not always have the chance to come together (literature, cultural studies, social sciences, history etc). In addition, the chosen venue is doubly significant with regards to both women and migration: Glasgow, city of emigration and immigration and the Glasgow Women’s Library, focus in Scotland for much important work on feminism, and women’s history and creativity.


Themes to be covered include the following:

Migrant women: narratives and experiences, multilingual narratives of containment and human resistance; articulating the ‘state of exception’ in a ‘foreign’ tongue; narratives of ‘Eco-Diaspora’ and spaces of environmental crisis;

Multilingual literature, Translation issues in multilingual works, translating cultures;
Linguistic ownership; Language and the country of sanctuary; seeking refuge in an-‘other’ language; Translating practices in legal narratives; human dispersal and the linguistic experience;

Migration; nationality and citizenship; migration policy: past, present and future; speaking from ‘humanitarian corridors’; encampment, removal, deportation, detention; human waste and landscapes of waste: a female perspective.

Abstracts in English of no more than 300 words should be sent by 29 APRIL 2011 to Lucia Aiello (L.Aiello@sheffield.ac.uk), Joy Charnley (j.charnley@phonecoop.coop) and Mariangela Palladino (p.mariangela@googlemail.com). Papers should be 20 minutes in length and accessible to a multidisciplinary audience. Proposals for thematic workshops are also welcome. The publication of a selection of papers following the conference is planned.