Artistic Borders, Social Barriers
Artistic Borders, Social Barriers:
Contemporary Critical Discourses in Film, Literature, and Translation
University - LLC Graduate Student Conference – 26th April 2024 McGill
The concepts of borders and boundaries are as urgent an issue today as it has been throughout history. Maintaining, establishing, breaching, contesting, and consenting to borders and boundaries entail endless cycles of negations. This conference aims to explore how the aesthetic challenge of rethinking borders between artistic mediums leads us to an ethical challenge of rethinking borders between social subjects and structures.
Papers are invited to reflect on the concept and function of borders in a wide context within a literary, film, media, gender, and cultural studies framework. They may investigate the notion of borders, boundaries, margins and fringes through a lens of medium-specificity. Alternatively, papers might explore social, political, or gendered spaces --real or imaginary– as performative boundaries. Papers are encouraged to examine how notions of borders and boundaries may influence or misinform our research and teaching, addressing questions about the feasibility and desirability of interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinary approaches.
Artistic Borders, Social Barriers: The Parallel Destabilization in Cinema and Society
In the realm of cinema, the boundary between fiction and documentary films is a subject of continual evolution and debate. This panel aims to explore how the destabilization of the border between fictional and documentary films reflects and influences the heterogeneity of existing social boundaries.
· Blending Fact and Fiction in Film, the intersection of fiction and documentary
· Audience Perception and societal Impact
· Ethical Implications of genre blending
Presenting the Unrepresentable: Art, Fiction, and Real-World Trauma
To explore the methods and ethical considerations involved in using art and fiction alongside archival footage and interviews to represent events traditionally considered 'unrepresentable', such as war, violence, and genocide.
· Artistic Representation of Trauma
· Cinema as social commentary
· Ethical boundaries in filmmaking
Rethinking Translation between the Margins and the Center
This panel seeks to foster discussions about the role of translators and translation in shaping and reshaping knowledge, as well as facilitating the flow and communication of ideas. We welcome papers focussing on cultural and sociological approaches to translation and mediation across borders including the evolving relationship of humans with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Translation.
· Translation, mediation, and intercultural communication as social empowerment
· Translated voices of “migrants” as a site of cultural knowledge production
· Challenging the concepts of 'Purity' and 'originality' of the source-text
· Blurred boundaries between Humans and Machine Translation
Environmental conflicts in genre literature
Exploring the synergy of literature and environmental themes, this panel investigates climate change through diverse genres. The panel aims to offer concise insights into the complex interplay of literature, traditional beliefs, and economic development in the context of our changing world in the current global ecological crisis.
· Intersection of genres and climate change
· Environmental justice vs human rights
· Different cultural understandings of nature
· Nature, traditional beliefs, and economic development
Migration, identity, and national discourses
This panel aims to unravel the complexities of identity, language, and belonging, examining the distinctions between migration and diaspora and contributing to a nuanced dialogue on migration and identity within global communities.
· Indoor and outdoor landscapes in migrant literature
· Writing in a different language than the mother tongue
· National discourses in the time of the global community
· Migration vs Diaspora: when the traveler is the “other.”
Proposals submission deadline: March 12th Notification of Acceptance: March 26th
Abstracts of no more than 250 words, complete with paper title, affiliation, and a short biography of the speaker should be sent to: rania.metni [at] mail.mcgill.ca (Rania Metni)
No registration fee is required.
The conference will be held in-person.
Each speaker will have 15 minutes for their presentation.
There will be time for questions and discussion at the end of each panel.
For more information about the Conference,
Please contact: llc.grad.conference [at] mcgill.ca (LLC Graduate Student Conference)