CfP: Constructions of Identity XII – Conflict

Department of English Language and Literature

Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania)

Conference dates: 16-18 October 2025 

Conference venue: Faculty of Letters, 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 

LITERATURE

LITERARY FUTURES: CONFLICTS OF TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, AND GLOBALIZATION

In We’re Doomed. Now What?, American writer and academic Roy Scranton sees conflict as the internal force shaping the “unimaginable multitude” of ideologically informed social structures, “down to the individual human soul, in conflict with itself” (48). It is the force preventing “the entire human species [from moving] together in one direction” and making “the human way reactive, improvised, ad hoc” (48-9). The mechanism that we have developed for coping with the instability of the world is, Scranton claims, our impressive ability of telling ourselves “the stories that we want to hear” (49). This, of course, raises a series of ethical questions regarding the narrative approaches to and representation of conflict. Coming from a different direction, narrative theorist Erin McGlothlin supports a similar thesis by examining the modes in which narratives can appear to resolve conflicts, “particularly in ways that fulfill the reader’s expectations and produce a satisfying sense of completeness” (111). While Scranton is critical of the (self-)deluding potential of creating narratives to manage conflicts, McGlothlin dismantles the importance of closure provided by narrative, which under scrutiny brings up its paradoxical nature. In McGlothlin’s take, narrative’s construction of its own ending produces “ideological closure,” which, while seeming to reflect the “resolution to an extant problem of conflict,” is in fact engaged in the process of producing the initial conflict (111).  Following the suggestions of a phenomenological approach to the ethics of narrative, McGlothlin points to the possibility of narratives avoiding “mastery” by illuminating their own perspectival grounding and emplotment tactics. However, as perspective is first and foremost a matter of relation, this opens an avenue into investigating conflict as an unavoidable dimension of our inherent relationality, and, to put it in Judith Butler’s terms, as a form of “nonviolent” resolution.

Since conflict – in the most generous understanding of the term – affects people’s sense of self and of the world and thus contributes to shaping the way in which collective and individual identities emerge, the twelfth edition of Constructions of Identity seeks to explore its role in the configuration of the storied self and the storied world. We understand conflict as both a thematic and structural phenomenon that cuts across various temporal, cultural, and geographical contexts, a phenomenon which could yet reveal new critical understandings of the self, society, and the non-human world. Literature should and does act as a site where conflict is performed, rehearsed and (sometimes) solved, and where its strategies become both instruments and objects for interpretation. We, therefore, welcome proposals for papers and sessions addressing any aspect of our conference theme and we encourage a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches, including insights from recent developments in critical theory, world literature studies, the digital humanities, and ecocriticism. 

Possible topics include but are not limited to:  

• ideological clashes; 
• the conflicts between tradition and modernity; 
• tensions and struggles within identity politics; 
• conflict, trauma, memory;
• tensions in and around migration, colonialism, and globalization; 
• the relationship between cores, peripheries, and semiperipheries;
• conflict, protest, war, violence;
• nonviolent conflictuality and narrative as the space for debate;
• nonviolent solutions to conflict and crisis; 
• environmental crises & climate degradation;
• human vs artificial intelligence conflicts.
• human vs non-human conflicts.

Works cited:

Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind, Verso, 2020.

Falke, Cassandra; Fareld, Victoria; Meretoja Hanna (eds.), Interpreting Violence. Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics, Routledge, 2023.

McGlothlin, Erin. “Narrative Mastery over Violence in Perpetrator-Authored Documents: Interpreting Closure in The Stroop Report” in Falke, Cassandra; Fareld, Victoria; Meretoja Hanna (eds.), Interpreting Violence. Narrative, Ethics and Hermeneutics, Routledge, 2023, 104-118.

Scranton, Roy. We’re Doomed. Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change, Soho Press, 2018.

Confirmed keynote speakers: 

• Prof. Jean-Michel Ganteau, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
• Prof. Anne Schwan, Edinburgh Napier University
• Assoc. Prof. Corina Stan, Duke University
• Assoc. Prof. Dragoș Ivana, University of Bucharest

LINGUISTICS

CREATING AND RESOLVING CONFLICT IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES

Conflict approached through a linguistic lens offers numerous possible levels of analysis, from language- and speaker-internal struggles to polarizing attitudes borne out of contextualized uses of language, and beyond humans, in interactions with other media such as technology, and now even more so, AI. Inquiry into both diachronic and synchronic linguistic displays, patterns, and behaviours within communication represents a challenge in itself, as the digital age increased the availability of research and scientific discourse, resulting in a divergence of perspectives on language phenomena. We thus welcome papers which foster the ground for a synergy between various disciplines and research methodologies coming from the fields of Internet linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Psycho- and Neurolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Digital Humanities, Multilingualism and Multiculturalism, Theoretical Linguistics and more. This multi- and inter-disciplinary dialogue between specialists from a variety of fields will account for the complexity of the linguistic phenomena emerging from various conflictual situations and discourses.

We invite proposals for papers and specialty panels addressing any aspect of our conference theme. Possible topics include:

1. Online conflicts, digital culture and communication 
2. digital culture, subcultures and conflictual situations;
3. online identity construction and communities of practice;
4. representation of conflict through multimodal communication and visual culture;
5. human versus AI generated speech;
6. hate speech in online social media and linguistic mitigation;
7. conflict and online digital activism;
8. digital and pragmatic practices in online conflictual situations;
9. digital performance of conflict;
10. conflict expressed through the use of memes, emojis, emoticons.

• Cultural and linguistic diversity
• toxic language in various online and offline environments;
• multilingualism and language ideologies: how language unites and/or divides, linguistic discrimination;
• attitudes towards linguistic change and innovation;
• forbidden language: slang, taboos and conflict;
• linguistic trends in lavender languages;
• multilingualism and multiculturalism: migration and identity;
• diverse communities: cases of conflictual situations and mitigation.

• Theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics
• conflict as the driving force for diachronic language change;
• inner language conflict as evolutionary pressure for meaning reassignment;
• phonological and syntactic differences of multilingual input for language acquisition in multilingual babies;
• cross-linguistic variation in morphological and syntactical structures; 
• interface issues: Conceptual-Intentional to Sensory-Motor;
• language pathologies and the disruption of the intent-output continuum;
• structural disconnections in linguistic impairments.

Confirmed keynote speaker: 

• Prof. Martin Hilpert, Université de Neuchâtel
• Prof. Lauren Tilton, University of Richmond

GENERAL INFORMATION

Proposals

For individual 20-minute papers, 150-word abstracts and a short bio note should be submitted here:  Constructions of Identity XII “Conflict” – Registration Form, by 15 March 2025. 

For tentative panels, please submit a title and a 100-word description of the topic, here: Constructions of Identity XII – “Conflict” Panel Proposal Submission, by 15 January 2025. For fully formed panels, 150-word abstracts for each paper, accompanied by details of the proposed topic, the chair and the speakers, should be submitted by 25 March 2025.

Extended deadline for individual papers: 15 June 2025.
Extended deadline for fully formed panels: 15 June 2025.

Registration

Acceptance notification: by 20 June 2025.

Registration link: https://plati.ubbcluj.ro/en/Event/Details/303.

Registration starts on 10.05.2025 and ends on 31.08.2025.

Conference registration fee: 100 euros; 80 euros for early bird registration (by 07.07.2025); 60 euros for postgraduate students and young researchers (under 26). Conference dinner fee: 40 euros.

Publication plans: Selected papers will be published in either a special issue of Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, seria Philologia, or a conference volume. Publication details will be available on the conference website.

Contact information: for more details, please write to paul.paraschiv@ubbcluj.ro, mihaela.buzec@ubbcluj.ro.