This conference is an interdisciplinary research project intended for scholars from various fields. The aim is to discuss a historically, anthropologically and politically central country: the United States. Is it possible to see the United States as a country to be examined from multiple points of view – both from near and from afar – with particular interest in the current “anthropological” culture, while also paying attention to history and making predictions about the future? Specialists and enthusiasts from various backgrounds are invited to respond from specific perspectives, in order to compare and contrast different interpretations of the “American galaxy”. To this end, both studies of a theoretical nature and case studies are encouraged.

International Conference, University of Palermo, June 15 – 16, 2017

Argument

This conference is an interdisciplinary research project intended for scholars from various fields. The aim is to discuss a historically, anthropologically and politically central country: the United States. Is it possible to see the United States as a country to be examined from multiple points of view – both from near and from afar – with particular interest in the current “anthropological” culture, while also paying attention to history and making predictions about the future? Specialists and enthusiasts from various backgrounds are invited to respond from specific perspectives, in order to compare and contrast different interpretations of the “American galaxy”. To this end, both studies of a theoretical nature and case studies are encouraged. The view from near and from afar, obviously a reference to Lévi-Strauss, alludes to a modus operandi anthropologically based on comparing and contrasting different perspectives. Anthropologists are directly concerned here, because it was in the United States that the much-discussed anthropological Postmodernism recently emerged, and because it was also in the United States that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, based on studies of Native Americans, was conceived. The reference to “anthropologies” should therefore be viewed literally (anthropologists specializing in the United States in largely ethnographic terms) and with a culturally wider meaning (linguists, comparatists, geographers, semiologists, historians, etc., who observe American culture from their respective epistemological perspectives). The reference to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, aside from being a theoretical inclination shared by the organizers, is a happy necessity for those who study a multicultural country like the United States, with its difficult past of coexistence between colonizers and natives, as well as between the different cultures of which it is composed today.

Main topics

We offer the following suggestions as possible topics of discussion, from a comparative perspective or otherwise:

• Native and non-native cultures
• Ancient/recent migratory phenomena
• Conformism/individualism
• Multiculturalism and identity
• Religious radicalization and New Age movements
• Processes of globalization and local agency
• American anthropology/other anthropologies
• American literature/other literatures
• The linguistic relativity hypothesis today
• Everyday cultures
• Tradition and modernity
• Processes of homogenization and diversification of knowledge
• Spaces of imagination
• Places and non-places
• Ecologies of landscape
• Wilderness
• Languages of power and knowledge
• Current political situation
• Politics of inclusion/exclusion
• Oral histories
• Etc.

Keynote speaker

Vincent Crapanzano, City University of New York  

Scientific board

Stefano Montes and Matteo Meschiari 

Administrative organization

Dipartimento Culture e Società

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Viale delle Scienze, 90128, Palermo, Italia

 For information and to submit proposals

• Stefano Montes (montes.stefano@tiscalinet.it)
• Matteo Meschiari (matmeschiari@gmail.com) 

Practical information

Deadline for submitting proposals: 30 May 2017

Proposal summary and title: 250-300 words

Duration of presentations: 20 minutes

Conference languages: Italian, French and English

Conference participation is free of charge

Travel costs, accommodation expenses and meals are covered by participants or their institutions 

Proceedings of the conference will be published