In partnership with the HostFilm project, the Department of American Studies at the University of Graz is pleased to announce that the HostFilm Best Paper Award 2018 will be awarded to one of the participants during the upcoming student conference Transcending Borders—Redrawing Perspectives traborp.wordpress.com Please note the following details for applying for the award:The current displacement of refugees, the highest since WWII, has put to the test the Common European Asylum System of 1951 and the efforts to fashion the EU as an area of protection. Although other rules have been agreed upon, from the revised Asylum Procedures Directive to the revised EURODAC Regulation, the fact is that the EU is struggling to respond to the massive arrival of migrants, the streaming of its borders, and the thousands of deaths at its borders. Etienne Balibar’s concept of “Fortress Europe” still looms large. At the same time, the upsurge of the anti-immigrant message has fuelled extreme right ideologies in several European countries. How can prevalent discourses on the other, the nomad or arrivant be fruitfully brought into contact with the ancient virtue of hospitality?The HostFilm Best Paper Award honors exceptional efforts to theorize borders from the perspective of prominent concepts on hospitality from Kant’s “Cosmopolitan Hospitality”; Levinas’ and Derrida’s revisions; Agamben’s “homo sacer”; Nancy’s “abandoned being”; Serres’s parasite; Kristeva’s the abject; Bauman’s “disposable beings”; and others.The HostFilm Best Paper Award of 200 EUR is sponsored by the EU-funded project “HostFilm.” In addition to the regular application as outlined above, to apply for the award, please send your full paper (8 pages double-spaced, including references) by 21 March 2018 (23:59) to the contact address stated below. Only papers submitted then and there will be considered for the award. The award winner will be notified by 25 April 2018.Contact
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. All correspondence, including your proposals for papers or posters, your CV, and your full paper for applying for the HostFilm Best Paper Award, as well as further questions, should be addressed to
Marlene Fößl (marlene.foessl(at)uni-graz.at)
University of Graz
Department of History
Heinrichstraße 26
8010 Graz
Austria