2015 Conference
Border Crossings
March 5-6, 2015
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At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the relationship among identity, language, and location has become more complex due to the increased mobility of individuals and groups, as well as the rise of virtual communities in the cyber-sphere. The migration of people—whether chosen or coerced, national or international, legal or illegal, imagined or experienced—may result in the displacement, dispersal, and creation of ethno-linguistic groups. The globalization of ideas and cultural trends challenges national borders and ideas about cultural essentialism, and interpolates consumers with shared tastes and values.
Border crossings also complicate the ways we categorize people, their languages, and their cultural productions. We invite papers that explore consequences and representations of border crossings, broadly understood to include literal and figurative movements and transgressions. Topics that speak to this year’s theme might include, among others: bilingualism and dialects; language policies and education; the brain’s processing of language; translation, adaptation, and appropriation; mass and social media; marginality, exclusion, and social justice; hybridity and postmodernism; postcolonialism and posthumanism; fantasy and escape; crime and imprisonment.