America. AmeRICA. The Americas. A mythologized New World, oceans apart from the Old, yet not a day younger. America: a projection that first obliterated and then replaced the reality of the dual continent before its existence, rhetorically undone, could be acknowledged. Re-textualized anew before they could be explored and exploited, contemporary Americas have since become a complex palimpsest: the oldest text barely visible from under the plethora others, inscribed upon the erasure of previous ones.
Americas’ “vertical” histories are constantly being added: with every passing year, the palimpsest transforms by the power of “horizontal” discourses of history rolling across the oceans to the landmasses of the world: to Americas, across Americas, and from Americas again. It is the transoceanic dynamics of history that the debate proposed focuses upon. Its aspects include, but are not limited by, the following:
— Americas Between the Oceans
The Ocean and the Making of Americas
In-Between the Oceans: American Geopolitics and Transoceanic Policies
American Selves and the Experience of the Ocean
Americas and The World: Mutual Transoceanic Projections
Cultures of Americas as Maritime Cultures
Americas, the Oceans, and Discourses of Exploration
American Seagoing Metaphors and Inland Americas
— The Atlantic/the Pacific Between Continents
Oceans as Connectors/Oceans as Separators
A Wet Inscription: Nautical/Naval Histories of America
American Literatures of the Sea and the National Canons
The Black Atlantic« D’une mare à l’autre »: Towards Interoceanic America in French
The Atlantic/the Pacific and the Struggle for Hegemony
The Atlantic/the Pacific and American Economies
Mythologizing the Atlantic/Mythologizing the Pacific
Lands Between Lands: Americas and the Atlantic/Pacific Islands
Transatlantic/Transpacific Transfer of Cultural Values: On Perishables
Transatlantic/Transpacific Peregrinations. From Pilgrimage to Business Flight
— Navigators, Surveyors, Toilers-at-Sea: the Birth, Expansion and Decline of the N/new France from Gaspésie to Guiana
Towards Tran-Atlantic and Trans-American Creoleness
“Briser l’écrou du Golfe”: The French-Canadian Sense of Nostalgia and the French Curiosity in 19th and 20th Centuries
« D’une mare à l’autre »: Towards Interoceanic America in French
In Melville’s Wake: Transoceanic and Transtextual Old Salts in the Francophone Literature
Interpretations of the conference themes ranging from the predictable to the surprising are highly encouraged. Interdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome since all these topics in themselves stretch across several disciplines: history, literary studies, psychology, linguistics, political sciences, educational sciences, ethnology, gender/queer studies, anthropology, sociology. Graduate students are most welcome to participate.
Please submit your 300-word abstracts or “packaged abstracts” for ready-made panel sessions by March 1st, 2013.
All Colleagues submitting will be notified of the acceptance of their submissions by April 1st, 2013.
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