On January 17 and 18, 2013 the research group The Power of Satire will host the
international conference Satire Across Borders, at Utrecht University.
Satire has the ability to contest cultural boundaries in several ways. By addressing
political topics or touching upon sensitive issues within a society (e.g. religious and
sexual taboos), satirical works intervene in on going cultural debates. This is but one
of the reasons why these works can be considered as interculturally charged. By
mixing multiple media within one work, or by creatively transposing styles and
techniques from one medium to another, satire shows that it can also contest medial
boundaries, i.e. that it can be considered as intermedially charged as well. These two
conditions, interculturality and intermediality, have framed the functioning of satire in
the past and continue to do so in the present. They turn satire into a rather
ambiguous phenomenon, for both its producers and its consumers. This assumed
ambiguity of satire forms the point of departure of the international conference Satire
Across Borders.
Satire’s ability to cross borders will be addressed from five different perspectives:
1) Time, 2) Space 3) Target 4) Media 5) Rhetoric. More details may be found at the Call For Papers announcement.
The conference language will be English.
The organizers of this conference invite all potential contributors to submit a proposal
of 200-250 words for a conference paper.
Proposals should be submitted by June 1, 2012 at the latest to
powerofsatire(at)gmail.com
By July 1, 2012 you will receive a message of confirmation or dismissal of your
proposal from the organizers of the conference.
For more information about the research programme The Power of Satire. Cultural
boundaries contested: http://www.powerofsatire.org/ As from July 2012 the
conference schedule, confirmed keynote speakers and regular updates with other
information about the conference will be announced there as well.
The Power of Satire is hosted by Utrecht University and the University of
Amsterdam, and funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research
(NWO).