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(Providence, Rhode Island, November 4-6, 2004)

 

 

Overview:

This conference and the companion volume of essays based on selected plenary talks aim to advance an understanding of the colonial Americas that transcends the national, linguistic, cultural and epistemological boundaries that prevail in and indeed constrain scholarship and teaching of the history and literature of the Americas today.

 

Background:

The conference will build on the dialogue initiated by the Summit of Early Ibero- and Anglo-Americanists (Tucson, Arizona) in May 2002, which sought to address the mutual ignorance of colonialists working in English, Spanish and Portuguese through a review of key texts and problems in each of these languages. The Tucson summit brought together some one hundred scholars from various fields of literary studies, and in history and anthropology. In nineteen workshops on broad historical or pedagogical topics (“Conquest and Invasion,” “Slavery and Economy,” “Using Visual Media in Teaching the Early Americas,” etc.), participants briefly addressed the critical reception of key texts in their respective fields before opening the floor to questions and discussion. The program and the proceedings are respectively available at:

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/summit/Program.html and

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/summit/Proceedings/index.html

 

You can register for the conference by clicking on this link.

Detailed Description:

“Beyond Colonial Studies” intends to (1) broaden the preliminary discussion of the Tucson Summit by including scholars of the French and Dutch colonies, and (2) go beyond the side-by-side presentation of examples drawn from and conceptualized in terms of particular linguistic or national traditions by favoring plenary papers that perform comparative cultural analyses. These plenary papers will not only make available an international, multilinguistic and interdisciplinary body of texts for collective analysis, but also reflect on and theorize the models and terminology that now dominate colonial studies. It is time, we believe, to consider how these historical and critical tropes (exploration, conquest, settlement, etc.) are conceptualized, performed and recorded. Hence the title “Beyond Colonial Studies,” for instead of recounting yet again the course of particular events, actors and institutions, we will examine their consequence, especially the ways in which they are remembered, imagined and used by those who follow, both in the past and today. To this end, we have divided “Beyond Colonial Studies” between two formats, with a final round table on the future of colonial American studies. There will be seven to eight plenary sessions, each composed of three 20-minute talks, a formal response and open discussion. We will also have a number of 90-minute workshops on specialized topics, in which leaders will present 5-minute position papers and spend the remaining time in discussion with interested registrants. The objective of these activities is to foster dialogue, so that we may together discover what is common, different and distinctly American in colonial American studies.

In order to submit proposals for papers and workshop, please see the Call for Submissions

 

Keynote Addresses:

Rolena Adorno (Yale), "The Spanish New World in the Narrative Imagination of North America."
David Shields (U South Carolina), “The Sons of the Dragon; or the English hero revived.”

 

Conference directors:

Ralph Bauer, University of Maryland (rb227@umail.umd.edu)

David A. Boruchoff, McGill University (david.boruchoff@mcgill.ca)

 

Program Committee:

  • Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, CUNY
  • Christopher Conway, University of Texas, Arlington
  • Leonard Tennenhouse, Brown University
  • Jim Egan, Brown University
  • Phil Gould, Brown University

     

    Local Arrangements Committee: