Transculturation: Encounters in the Modern Period, 1830 - Present

Centre for Modern Studies postgraduate forum annual symposium

“Transculturation is a complex term that embraces time, space, place, culture, nation, and globalisation...transcultural products, more than simple mixes of national cultures, are complex works of unresolved and unfinished possible meanings…”

Julie F. Codell introduces the concept of ‘transculturation’ to British art studies, differentiating it from its conceptual cousins transnationalism, hybridity and acculturation. Coined originally by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, at its centre is the idea of works and people responding to production, reproduction and reception at different times and in different places, exploring how ‘ideas’ can transmutate and travel.

In the age of so-called globalisation when access and opportunities to ‘connect’ have never been more abundant, how do we now scrutinise borders, nations, places and spaces? Historically, scholars have established and reinforced conceptual borders between disciplines and through periodization. Increasingly, however, research of the modern period attempts to transcend those borders and explore worlds of diverse experience.

This year’s Centre for Modern Studies postgraduate conference takes transculturation as its key theme but applies it as broadly as Codell intended - incorporating all of the humanities disciplines and the atemporal nature of contemporary research.

Programme:

Transculturation conference programme (PDF , 570kb)

Registration:

Registration £5.  Register to attend the conference