20th & 21st-Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium on February 22-24, 2024 in Philadelphia, United States

Independence

Philadelphia, the first capital of the United States, is where the Declaration of Independence was famously signed in 1776. Taking its inspiration from this site, this year’s conference examines the theme of independence in 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literatures, cultures, cinema, bande dessinée, theater, music, history, theory, and translation studies from a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. 

National, communal, and personal ideals have often hinged upon the promise of some form of independence: from the Haitian Revolution to the Algerian War, from Corsica to Quebec, and from struggles for gender equality to the battles over the protection of the welfare state. Yet, while colonial legacies and debates around national sovereignty and self-determination drive sociopolitical engagements, globalization threatens the very achievability of independence. At the same time, quests for sustainable and non-normative modes of living often collide with neocapitalist logics and the traditional order of things. Conversely, the independentist impulse has also fed into separatist, sovereignist, and isolationist trends, which can manifest through populist, identitarian, and xenophobic policies and acts. As for artistic production, it is caught in a double bind in which economic viability is predicated on a willingness to either abide by market rules or tolerate state or corporate censorship also increasingly affecting the academic world. We will consider the ways in which artists and intellectuals from the French-speaking world have engaged with independence and its adjacent concepts of liberty, emancipation, autonomy, experimentation, and agency in the face of the successive economic, political, social, and cultural shifts of the past century.

The organizing committee will welcome particularly, but not exclusively, proposals addressing the following areas of critical inquiry:

Academic freedom

Addiction

Animal liberation / Animal rights

Autonomy

Censorship

(Co-)Dependence

Conflicts for independence

Corporatization of the arts

Decolonization (the nation, the canon, the curriculum) 

(Dis-)Ability/Inability

Gender and sexual self-identification

Gender and sexual rights/Identities 

Futures

Independence (un)sung (poetry and the lyrical form)

Independent publishers/publishing and film production

Institutions/Constitutions

Laïcité 

Land claims (boundaries, natural resources, birthrights, immigration, xenophobia) 

Memory

Narratives of independence (coming of age, group consciousness and contestations, fractured collectives)

National celebrations

Nationhood and nationalism

Neocolonialism 

New/Old World(s)

Performing independence (digital media, photography, theater, street art…)

Political rhetorics

Republic(s)

Resilience

Resistance 

Revolutions

Self-publishing

Slavery/Emancipation

Sovereignty

Subjection

State-sponsored artistic production

Transnational and global movements and narratives

Youth

We also welcome proposals for papers and panels on the works of our plenary speakers Sonia Kronlund and Makenzy Orcel (subject open).

Paper proposals (250 words maximum, in French or English, along with a brief bio-bibliography) and proposals for complete panels (strongly encouraged) should be submitted directly from this page before September 15, 2023.

Please note that the colloquium will be in person only and won’t accommodate remote participation.