Call for Papers
Visual Culture and Globalization
2000 NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE
APRIL7-8, 2000 / BUFFALO, N.Y.
The aim of this panel is to critically examine the theoretical
assumptions that have long associated contemporary (Western) visual
culture with cultural imperialism _as such_, and which have consequently
placed the visual at the center of our understanding of the globalization
of culture.
There are a number of questions that need to be answered concerning the
relationship of visual culture to globalization. For instance, why is it
visual culture that has been seen as perhaps the most powerful and
dangerous force for (and consequence of) cultural globalization? Why is
it thought to have such potent effects on identity, shaping and modifying
it in ways that (it is assumed) other global cultural forms (such as
literature and music) do not? Why does the impact and significance of
visual culture seem to be understood in relation to the geographic space
of the nation and specifically to _national_ identity (as evidenced by
numerous national cultural policies designed to encourage the production
of "local" visual culture over and against "global" ones)? Does visual
culture (usually associated with mass culture and the culture industry)
have to be taken as a threat to "local" individual and social identities,
or does it have a role in producing new, potentially more complicated
ones? Over the course of this century, the rise of visual culture to a
position of relative dominance in (Western) cultural production has gone
hand-in-hand with the intensification of the processes (economic,
political, social and cultural) collectively known globalization. What
still needs to be determined are the precise connections between visual
culture and globalization, between the fascinations of the image and the
breakdown of the clearly defined spaces that culture was once thought to
inhabit.
Papers that deal with (or challenge) the connections between visual
culture and globalization made above, or which examine the relationship
between visual culture and globalization in other ways, are welcome. Send
proposals (up to 500 words in length) by September 15, 1999, to:
Imre Szeman
Department of English
McMaster University
1280 Main Street W., CNH-321
Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9
Canada
Ph: (905) 525-9140 ext. 24491
Fax: (905) 777-8316
E-mail: iszeman@duke.edu
Scholars interested in submitting a proposal to this session are urged to
contact me to express their (preliminary) interest well in advance of the
deadline.
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