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Perhaps more than
any other field, postcolonial studies has, since its inception, been the
site of anxious and often polemical debates about what have been perceived
— even by many postcolonial practitioners themselves — as its
boundaries, limits, excesses and failings. In recent years, the questioning
of the boundaries and limits of postcolonial studies has taken on a new
dimension, with an intriguing series of parallel and somewhat contradictory
debates emerging that are concerned with the shape and future of this field
of inquiry. Within its heartland in English literature departments, postcolonial
studies has increasingly been challenged by new theoretical models, particularly
globalization theory, together with transnational, transcultural and intercultural
paradigms. At the same time, within French/Francophone Studies departments,
there have been numerous attempts to draw more extensively on the postcolonial
paradigm and to define more clearly the nature of Francophone postcolonial
studies, simultaneously borrowing from and challenging the established ‘norms’
of Anglophone postcolonial criticism. Thus, on the one hand, we are presented
with the latest ‘crisis’ in a postcolonial studies careering
towards its demise, while on the other, we are offered the enabling prospect
of a postcolonial studies expanding into important new spaces. It is the
aim of this conference to draw together scholars engaged in these postcolonial
debates on both sides of the Anglophone/Francophone divide and those attempting
to bridge the gap between them, as well as those scholars who support the
development of new theoretical paradigms that move beyond the postcolonial.
Conference organizers: Dr Alec G. Hargreaves (Winthrop-King
Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies), Dr David Murphy
(University of Stirling, UK).
Administrative Coordinator: Sophie Romeuf (Florida State University)
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Program
