For a poster version of the Call For Papers in .pdf format, please see here.

Medussa pediment from the
Corfiot Temple of Artemis

The Durrell School of Corfu has opened each annual session with a symposium that examines themes of importance to the Durrells and to our world. The first symposium in 2002 took "Understanding Misunder-standing" as its central theme and it included distinguished leaders in politics, economics, the arts and environmental studies among its participants. The 2004 symposium examined "Globalisation and Nationalism."

Keynote speakers have included: Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, Avalon Foundation professor at Columbia University; Terry Eagleton, professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester; Lee Durrell from the Durrell World Wildlife Trust; David Bellamy, internationally acclaimed ecologist and botanist; Harish Trivedi, professor of English at the University of Delhi; John Brandon of the Asia Foundation; Elemer Hankiss, dean of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; and Marwan Bishara from the American Univerisity of Paris.

The Venetian Winged Lion

CORFU IS BEAUTIFUL, AFFORDABLE AND SAFE!!

CALL FOR PAPERS

SEMINAR:
"BORDERS AND BORDERLANDS"

CORFU and EPIRUS
26 September – 1 October 2005

The Durrell School of Corfu Autumn seminar on ‘Borders and Borderlands’ will take place from Monday 26 September to Saturday 1 October 2005 in two locations: the DSC Library and study center in Corfu, and the village of Lia in mainland Epirus (north-west Greece, the native village of Nicholas Gage, author of Eleni). The seminar will focus on the nature of borders both conceptually and concretely, through the topics of psychology, religion, creative arts (literature, film, painting), history and politics. The role and status of borders in the Balkans will be a special subject for discussion, in the light of ongoing tensions in and about Kosovo and Macedonia.

Borders are spatial, conceptual, spiritual and psychological and shape the dynamics of identity, community, and governance. Territorial borders are receiving renewed attention in this era of transnational mobility and globalised cultures. As a construction of history, psychology, law and politics, borders are often represented in symbolic form as transitions and rites of passage.

The creation and defence of borders, for example in defining the nation-state, involve both inclusion and exclusion, invasion and enlargement, and pose questions about political, cultural and personal identity. Knowledge, power, anomie and xenophobia are intimately associated with these processes.

Arrival at a border raises issues such as cultural negotiation, and confrontation with otherness.

The crossing of borders affects meaning, perception of landscape and sense of identity.

Translation involves the crossing of linguistic boundaries as meaning leaves the homeland of one language and enters that of another.

This seminar offers an opportunity to explore how borders, borderlands, shifting borders and border-crossing are used in narrative works, social theory and empirical research to understand the relationships between time, space and knowledge, self-development and political institutions.

The seminar will explore the subject under five major headings: concepts, psychology, religion and the supernatural, creative arts, and specific examples of border locations.

Concepts:

nation-state as a symbolic space cultural identity map-making north-south relations east-west relations diaspora the European Union as a supranational space cyberspace multinational corporations the harem divination transit camps and refugees tradition versus modernity ghettos Psychology: borders of the self: I/Not I; I/Thou; Us/Them; Self/Others; Male/female.

Corfu's Asian Art Museum Corfu's Rue de Rivoli

Religion and the supernatural:

• heaven and earth
• the after-life (the living and the dead)
• dreams and the waking life
• the conscious and unconscious
• sanctuary
• the veil
• infibulation

• romantic fiction (e.g. Anthony Hope (Prisoner of Zenda), Dornford Yates (the ‘Richard Chandos’ novels);
• modern Greek novels (e.g. Yiorgos Yatromanolakis, Sotiris Dimitriou)
• translation
• 'the writer at the frontier'
• 'travel writing' or 'foreign residence writing'
• Film: e.g. The Others, The Sixth Sense, Passport to Pimlico, Peter Ustinov’s Concordia

• the Irish border as a cultural divide
• the Berlin Wall
• the expansion of Greece's borders
• Tibet
• the 'Iron Curtain'
• the 'Forbidden City' (Beijing)