Crossroads II Conference: City/Non-City

The Institute of Modern Languages is pleased to invite scholars from Poland and abroad to the Crossroads II Conference: City/Non-City that will be held on 29-30 November 2018 at the University of Białystok. The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for exchanging ideas and sharing the findings of research related to the city— as a place and space —which is the scene of everyday life, the silent witness of alienation and tragedy, the goal of many physical and spiritual journeys, and the object of fantastic speculation.

We encourage broadly-contextualised contributions discussing these problems in both literature and culture against historical, social, philosophical, psychological, artistic and other backgrounds. We are interested in bringing together researchers involved in such diverse disciplines as the history of Anglophone literatures, cultural, feminist, gender, and postcolonial studies.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
- the city and questions of identity,
- the city and the problem of alienation,
- the city and the experience of nostalgia,
- the city and art,
- the city as a place and/or space,
- the city versus the wilderness,
- the city and non-city,
- problems of the Global City,
- problems of the megacities,
- the city as a living organism,
- garden cities and towns in literature,
- urban legends,
- urban fantasy fiction,
- the city and the uncanny,
- legendary and imaginary cities in Anglophone literature,
- fantastic, unreal and labirynthine cities,
- literary (fictionalized) representations of cities in Anglophone literature,
- strategies of coping with ‘overwritten’ cities such as Venice, Paris, Rome, London, New York,
- the city and travel writing,
- post-apocalyptic cities,
- science fiction and cities of the future,
- utopian and dystopian cities / cities and towns in dystopian and utopian fiction and non-fiction.

We invite proposals for 20-minute talks with additional 10 minutes for discussion.

Abstracts of proposed papers (200-300 words) must contain the title, name of the author and contact information (institutional affiliation, mailing address and email address). All abstracts accompanied by a short biographical note should be sent to conferences.crossroads@gmail.com by June 15, 2018.
The participants will receive notification of acceptance by June 30, 2018.

The conference will be held in English. Selected papers will be published in a reviewed collection of essays and/or in a peer-reviewed journal (Crossroads).

Conference fee: PLN 400 / EUR 100
Doctoral students PLN 300/ EUR 75

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
dr hab. Jerzy Kamionowski - Head of the Conference
dr hab. Grzegorz Moroz, prof. UwB
dr Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun
dr Anna Maria Karczewska
dr Weronika Łaszkiewicz
dr Jacek Partyka
dr Tomasz Sawczuk
mgr Ewelina Feldman-Kołodziejuk - Conference Secretary
mgr Anna Dziok-Łazarecka

Institute of Modern Languages
University of Białystok
15-420 Białystok, Liniarskiego 3