Conference 2009


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Imagined Horizons: Spatial Configurations of the Present

5-7 March 2009

Program »

The contemporary world is characterised among other things by a greater spatial integration and the consequences flowing from this phenomenon. In fact one could argue that much of our contemporary preoccupations are with problems and conflicts related to space - the manner in which it is produced, organised, controlled, inhabited, eroded, displaced. Spatial issues, as for instance mass migration, megacities, environmental degradation, border conflicts and geopolitics, influence significantly our lived experience as well as our mental conceptions. Outer space and cyberspace are additional spatial dimensions that fuel our perceptions of the present. Spatial transformations also mark the processes connecting the past to the present, the rural habitat to the urban milieu, the landscape to the cityscape, the periphery to the centre, the erstwhile colony to the 'third world' country / tourist attraction / war zone. Can then the study of spatial configurations, real or imagined, help us to understand the dynamics of the present?

Space is understood here not merely as place but as place inhabited and animated by a network of social relations and practices. In this sense the focus is not on space as a physical entity with quantitative properties but on topological space that draws attention to its qualitative properties, its constitutive elements, connections and convergences, continuities and discontinuities, which therefore also incorporates the dimension of time, of change and of history. Central to such a notion of space has also to be the critical engagement with the spatial notions that inform colonial and imperialist discourses of the past and the present.  

How is space in this sense, more specifically social space in the contemporary world, envisioned? How is it constructed in the so-called spatial disciplines, such as geography, and how in those with more temporal concerns, such as history? What forms does it take in the imagined spaces in literary texts, in works of art, in theatre and cinema? What are the poetics and politics of such spatial configurations?

The conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on space as lived experience and imagined projections in literature, the arts, and film as well as in the social sciences. It wishes to explore whether and in what way such perspectives contribute to our understanding of the contemporary world.


PROGRAM

Thursday, 5 March 2009, Room 22, Arts Faculty, University of Delhi

10.30 am

Opening Remarks

Vibha Maurya, Sharmistha Lahiri

10.45 am

Romita Ray

Suspense in Space: Imperial Boardgames and Narratives of Mapping

11.30 am

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

11.45 am

Flaminia Nicora

Landscaping and belonging in contemporary postcolonial novels in English

12.30 pm

Alberto Vanolo

Between a flat and a fluid world: Representing the local-global dialectic between competition and cohesion. An empirical research on Turin

 

Chair: Vibha Maurya

1.15 pm

LUNCH BREAK

2.15 pm

Anand Wadwekar

The recurring analogies of patchwork: Urban know-how of Tokyo

3.00 pm

Vijaya Venkataraman

Barcelona between the World Fairs: Changing Image of Urban Space in Mendoza’s La ciudad de los prodigios (The City of Marvels)

3.45 pm

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

4.00 pm

Thomas Schwarz

The Tropics as a Zone of Denormalization

 

Chair: Alexander Honold

Friday, 6 March 2009, Room 22, Arts Faculty, University of Delhi

10.45 am

Rosy Singh

The Concept of Space in Kafka’s The Burrow

11.30 am

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

11.45 am

Harald Schmiderer

Epochal and poetic deterritorialization in Christoph Ransmayr’s “Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis”

12.30 pm

Jagoda Szulia

Go in to Africa or go out to Africa? Spatial representations and their function in Per Wästber’s writings

 

Chair: Kusum Aggarwal

1.15 pm

LUNCH BREAK

2.15 pm

Margit Köves

Space and Time in Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence and János Háy’s Dszigerdilen and Xanadu

3.00 pm

Monica Zutshi

Mapping Spaces, Locating Identities: A Cartographic Reading of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man

3.45 pm

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

4.00 pm

Deepti Bhardwaj

“Rural Space” in Godaan and Raag Darbari

 

Chair: Flaminia Nicora

Saturday, 7 March 2009, Room 22, Arts Faculty, University of Delhi

10.45 am

Arnapurna Rath / Milind Malshe

Chronotopes of Places and Non-Places: Ecopoetics of The Hungry Tide

11.30 am

TEA/COFFEE BREAK

11.45 am

Geetha B.

Use of Cinematic Space in Girish Kasaravalli's Dweepa (The Island)

12.30 pm

Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt

tracks 'n' treks. topophilia and topophobia in popular music

 

Chair: Shaswati Mazumdar

1.15 pm

LUNCH


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