Crisis, Risks and New Regionalisms in Europe
English studies specialists from the University of Milan and the TU Chemnitz invite to an international conference in June 2016
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Eventcenter "Altes Heizhaus". Photo: Mario Steinebach
Between the 1-5 of June 2016, the Chair of English Literatures (Institute of English/American Studies, Technische Unviersität Chemnitz) will host in cooperation with the Department of Studies in Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication of the University of Milan an international conference on the topic of “Crisis, Risks and New Regionalisms in Europe II: Emergency Diasporas and Borderlands.” The Chair of English Literatures thereby continues the good cooperation with the University of Milan that started two years ago at a conference in Italy, in which many staff members and students from the TU Chemnitz participated. Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten looks forward to welcoming her Italian colleagues in Chemnitz: “Chemnitz and Milan are united by its history as industrial cities. To analyze this history and to embed it in a larger European context, is the great challenge for our conference.”
The lectures and discussions will pick up where the conference in 2014 left off. The focus will be on recent political issues, such as the refugee crisis, the growth of right-wing groups and parties, and the rise of islamophobia in Europe. To address these questions, Prof. Dr. Sandten and her Italian colleagues have gathered a team of renowned national and international scholars: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Friese (TU Chemnitz), Prof. Dr. María do Mar Castro Varela (Alice-Salomon-Hochschule Berlin) and Frank B. Wilderson III (University of California, Irvine; Research Ambassador of the University of Bremen). The central idea of the follow-up conference is to explore in several workshops the efficacy, limitations and future of Cultural Studies as a theoretical and methodological approach in the analysis of new regional formations and recent crisis phenomena in Europe (with a special focus on Germany and Italy). Prof. Dr. Claudia Gualtieri from the University of Milan is looking forward both to this thematically broad program, and the city of Chemnitz: “We are very interested to continue and to expand the cooperation with our friends and colleagues from the Technische Universität Chemnitz. It is therefore a great pleasure to visit Chemnitz in order to continue the dialogue.”
Added to the scholarly discussion is a diverse cultural program, which includes readings by the Jamaican author Alecia McKenzie and the Indian novelist R. Raj Rao, as well as a guided tour through Chemnitz, film screenings and a concert with live music at the "Altes Heizhaus".
The conference was generously funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) with funds from the Auswärtiges Amt (AA), supplemented by support from the „Gesellschaft der Freunde der TU Chemnitz e.V.“, the Faculty of Humanities and the TU Chemnitz.
The program and further information: https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/sections/englit/crisis/crisis_index.php
(Author: Eike Kronshage)
Mario Steinebach
15.05.2016
