The European imagination of the Americas

Le département d’histoire de l’université du Texas, située à Arlington, organise en octobre prochain un colloque intitulé : “The European imagination of the Americas”. Il s’agit donc de s’inscrire dans une “histoire transatlantique”, et ce à travers le roman d’aventures, le cinéma, la télévision ou la bande dessinée. Contactés, les organisateurs se disent en effet enchantés à l’idée d’accueillir des propositions s’appuyant sur des oeuvres issues du neuvième art et force est de constater que celui-ci fournit en effet nombre “d’imaginations” de l’ Amérique. C’est le cas de Tintin, d’Asterix (La grande traversée) ou de Spirou (Spirou et Fantasio à New York), et plus largement d’une bande dessinée “franco-belge”, née dans les hebdomadaires Tintin et Spirou, qui s’est appuyée sur une Amérique rêvée et incarnée par moult cow-boys (Jerry Spring, Comanche…), aviateurs (Dan Cooper ou Buck Danny) ou pilote de course (Michel Vaillant, Steve Warson et leur sans cesse répétée tentative de conquête des circuits d’outre-Atlantique). Et il est dès lors possible, entre autres pistes, d’interroger le devenir, le renouvellement voire la disparition pure et simple des figures américaines sur lesquelles la bande dessinée européenne s’est développée. Nous reproduisons ci-après l’appel à communication dont la date limite est fixée au 1er août 2010.

The European imagination of the Americas

Call for paper

University of Texas in Arlington

Deadline : August 1, 2010

The Transatlantic History Student Organization in collaboration with Phi Alpha Theta, the Barksdale Lecture Series, The History Department, and the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Arlington are sponsoring the Eleventh Annual Graduate Student Symposium on Transatlantic History. Since 2000, this symposium has proved to be a prominent venue for discussions of the interrelations and interconnections between peoples and cultures of the Atlantic World.

From their first contacts with the native populations of the Americas in the sixteenth century, Europeans created colorful and detailed accounts about the exotic Other. European explorers, scientists, artists, and adventurers embarked for the New World and wrote about it. Their travel accounts shaped the imagination of those back home. In the course of the nineteenth century the genre of Indian novels emerged in European literatures, and in the twentieth century television and cinema provided visual images that formed Europeans’ thinking and feeling towards the Americas. We are looking for papers that deal with any aspect of the Americas from the viewpoint of the European imagination. This may include anything from the early descriptions of Columbus, reports from settlers, migrants, and travelers, and even the fictions of popular novelists and film-makers. Dr. Meredith McClain (Texas Tech University), who’s research interests include German-Texan heritage, and the fascination of Germans with the Llano Estacado region of Texas, will deliver the keynote address: “Karl May’s Imaginary Llano Estacado and its Impact.”

We invite graduate students from history, literature, and related disciplines to submit a three-hundred-word abstract and an abbreviated maximum one-page curriculum vita by August 1, 2010. We will notify authors of papers accepted for a twenty-minute presentation by September 1, 2010. We will award selected participants a small travel stipend to help offset their expenses. Please e-mail your abstract to both: Mylynka Kilgore at mylynka.kilgoremueller@mavs.uta.edu and Dr. Thomas Adam at adam@uta.edu. We invite you to check out our website, including the topics of our past annual symposia at http://www.uta.edu/studentorgs/thso/.

Note: Be sure to include your e-mail and mailing address to ensure that you can be reached during the summer of 2010. Thomas Adam
The University of Texas at Arlington
Department of History
Box 19529
Arlington, TX 76019-0529
Email: adam@uta.edu

Benoît Berthou

Université Paris 13, LABSIC Directeur de la revue Comicalités. Etudes de culture graphique Rédacteur en chef des Carnets de la bande dessinée

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