Welcome

Practical info

Registration

Conference Program

Call for Papers

Seminar program

Bergen, Norway, 10 - 12 October 2003

Much of the most important writing in English today is done by writers with a bicultural or multicultural background. Key elements in colonial and postcolonial discourse and criticism have always been questions of belonging, of identity, of expressing, explaining and analyzing contemporary and earlier attitudes to peoples and cultures including our own. Bart Moore-Gilbert for instance sees postcoloniality as "modes of cultural analysis" dealing as it does with the "interconnection of issues of race, nation, empire, migration and ethnicity with cultural production" (1997, 5-6). Postcolonial literatures and their theories can therefore be seen as processes of an ongoing de-colonization of ideas, philosophies and social norms. They furthermore shed light on processes of cultural globalization, which on a fundamental level engage and problematize issues of trans-cultural identity and the refraction of local cultural practices in the diaspora.

The conference is a follow-up to the publication of Identities and Masks: Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (2001), a collection of essays by Norwegian scholars.

We invite papers for this conference which address questions of identities and masks used to reveal or hide the above-mentioned issues in relation to the “many faces” of postcolonialism.

Please note: Prior to the conference we arrange a reserach seminar for doctoral-and masters students (8-9 Oct.).

All queries should be addressed to: tiam-adm@uib.no

(The page- illustrations are from privately owned photos.)