The Low Countries: Picturing Reality

Call for Papers
12th Biennial Conference of the Association for Low Countries Studies,
28 June – 30 June 2018
University of Sheffield
Centre for Dutch and Flemish Studies

Literature, language, visual arts provide a source of knowledge about the world, even if the connection between the real, the imaginary or the not-real will remain a source of controversy. This appears particularly the case today when binaries and boundaries are replaced with areas of interchange or zones of contact.

For the 12th ALCS Biennial Conference at the University of Sheffield we would like to ‘Picture reality’ in a Low Countries context. With this broad theme we want to map and analyse those areas of interchange. Our focus is on ‘traditional’ or binary pairings such as fiction and truth, art and life, imagination and history butaim to aproach them through a lens of complementarity and not only in terms of contamination and opposition. We regard adaptation and translation as exemplary contact zones.

We also take ‘picturing reality’ to indicate an interlinking of traditionally separate genres, disciplines or practices. We include in our theme certain moments of history, particular authors, painters, language situations and individual works that contain a high level of binary interlinking or those expressions in which several forms of artistic expression merge or clash.

Topics may include:

• How is reality pictured and whose reality is pictured in your particular area/discipline?
• What is the relationship between fiction and the present or ‘real’ world?
• What does fiction have to say about the past, present, and future of the Low Countries?
• How do the various media, audience and traditions affect the picture and perception of reality?
• Who owns and controls reality in an individual or collective work of your choice?
• How do the humanities make us aware of the real, the lived-experience?
• How does the contact zone affect (studies of) lexis, semantics, pragmatics and syntax?
• How does linguistic and cultural reality affect translation? Adaptation?

We invite both individual contributions (20-minute presentations, followed by 10 minutes of discussion) and proposals for fully constituted panels. Panel conveners are invited to suggest a 90-minutes themed panel of three speakers. We specifically invite postgraduate students and a number of full bursaries are available. The primary criterion for selection will be the quality of the proposal, not its strict connection to the conference theme.

The keynote speakers will be announced in January 2018.

Please submit your proposal in the form of a no more than 250-word abstract by 1 February 2018 to our Conference System. 

Selected papers will be published in the ALCS Journal: Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies

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The Centre for Dutch and Flemish Studies will host the 12th ALCS conference  as part of the festive events celebrating 70 years of Dutch Studies at the University of Sheffield.