The Tunisian Association for English Language Studies (TAELS)
&
The Higher Institute of Languages, University of Gabes
Jointly organise an International Conference on:
“EMERGING GENRES”
April 23-24, 2015
Venue: Higher Institute of Languages Gabes
Call for Papers
The never-static nature of human creation and the multifaceted shifts that societies have witnessed in various forms of literary and artistic production have led to the emergence of new forms of cultural expressions. In cultural, linguistic, literary and other-related disciplines, these flourishing currents have developed into new genres that trespass the thematic and aesthetic dictations of established paradigms.
In ‘Art,’ the growing culture of resistance and ‘non-violent’ change, together with the widespread idea of youth rebelling against traditional norms, social problems and marginalization have fueled a strong desire for innovation in matters of creation and creativity. From music to fine arts, slam, rap and graffiti are examples of these new forms of artistic expression that have acquired scope and popularity beyond the narrow borders of an ephemeral phenomenon. Exploiting modern technologies in artistic creation has also given birth to what has come to be known as New Media Art, a growing genre that relies on new media technologies in the creation of artworks.
With regard to the fast-paced change, literary discourse has equally undergone radical reformulations, resulting in an emerging body of literature meant to channel the deep social and generational anxieties. In fact, the millennial generation seems to be doing things a bit different from their predecessors, giving birth to new literary works that deal with current themes/topics and that reflect a technology-influenced culture. Postmodern literature, for instance, has been recognised as existing outside the nomenclature of traditional genre-based approaches and, hence, cannot be evaluated by familiar methods of categorization and analysis.
Literature cannot escape the permanent challenge of development and has therefore evolved into contemporary genres that have grown in popularity throughout the past decade. Perceived as such, “hip-hop lit,” “street lit,” and “ghetto lit” translate a new type of writing that addresses the imperatives of social metamorphosis, which, though recognized and embraced by many, has remained underrepresented and has so far received little attention. Verse novel, for instance, has captured the attention of postmodern audience because of its combination of various modalities and as it bears witness to writers’ attempts to shake the foundations of the obsolete polarized understanding of genre as either ‘high’ or ‘low.’ New forms of poetry, such as experimental poetry, new visual poetry, and digital poetry, to name but a few, have been fervently adopted by young adult culture, a tendency accelerated by the proliferation of technology and social media.
In communication and linguistics, the ever-growing reliance on modern technologies in daily human communication and the spread of social networks have brought new forms of expression among users of the cyber-space. The language of instant messaging and the language used by net citizens over social networks, as an example, are based on specific lexical, structural, and semantic features that gave birth to an emerging mode of communication with direct relevance to the rise of new language teaching-learning strategies.
The steering committee welcomes proposals related, but not limited, to the following topics:
On the definition of “genre,”
Generic mixture,
Emerging art forms,
New Media Arts,
Resistance and emerging voices,
Digi-fiction, graphic novels
New visual poetry as an emerging genre.
Emerging forms of communication,
Language of the Internet as an emerging genre,
Emerging trends in language teaching and learning.
Participants are invited to send a 300-word abstract for a 20-minute presentation and a short biographical note to submission@taels.org no later than December 31st, 2014. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 10th, 2015.
TAELS editorial board will select a number of papers that will be published after peer-reviewing in a collective volume on the proceedings of the conference.
Participation fees
Presenters of accepted papers will be required to pay a participation fee of 50 TND at the start of the conference. The amount will include an annual membership in TAELS. For members, the participation fee will be only 20 TND.
For advice and more details about transportation and accommodation, please send your requests to contact@taels.org. TAELS team will be happy to assist in making your stay most comfortable.