Category: Calls

Power of Words Workshop

The Power of Words International Workshop will take place in Iasi, on April 27 and 28, 2018, as part of our ongoing project on the Role of Intercultural Encounters in Re-learning to Be Human for Global Times.

Following last year’s workshop on the intercultural role of artefacts, this year’s meeting will approach words and how they function in encounters between and among cultures.

This event is organized by RVP Iasi Center of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi and Gheorghe Zane Institute of the Romanian Academy.

Afis Workshop 2018 v2-page-001

The Power of Words: call to workshop

The Power of Words in Intercultural Encounters

International Workshop, Iași, April 27-28

Last year’s workshop approached the role of intercultural encounters in the contemporary world and in rediscovering what it means to be human by discussing the complex role played by artefacts in producing or facilitating such encounters. The workshop this year aims to explore the role of words in the dynamics of intercultural encounters.

Intercultural encounters are complex events involving what it means to be human in its entirety, including our perceptions, interpretations and representations, as shaped by and expressed in our languages. It is within and through language that we formulate the encounter with the cultural other, and on such occasions language can function as a bridge or a barrier. Words, as projections of a culture within its own horizon, are powerful instruments with multiple facets and the extent to which the meaning(s) of certain words can reach beyond that horizon determines the dimensions of intercultural encounters. Words can commnicate more or less, increase or eliminate distance, enhance or reduce difference. Cultures usually seek to translate themselves for the other to understand and tend to identify with certain words that remain untranslatable. Hence the power of words in intercultural encounters derives from their their potential to express and create shared meaning.

This workshop proposes an investigation from different, intercultural and interdisciplinary, perspectives of scenarios where words reveal their power in facilitating or hindering intercultural encounters. It aims to evaluate how encounters in and through words can contribute to our re-learning to be human for global times and possibly for a global language.

The workshop will consist of a series of discussions and case studies, to be announced. Please send in your expression of interest by April 20.

Call for contributions to project volume

A fundamental part of the RVP Iasi project is to investigate the dynamics and significance of intercultural encounters and their role in our re-learning to be human. 

Considering the global scope of the project members, we are planning a special volume to emphasize and  provide a perspective on the diversity of opinions and experiences.

The investigation will start from a series of questions on the preparation, development and results of intercultural encounters, which the project members are invited to answer.

The questions and answers will make up a volume intended to provide a dialogic overview of our intercultural experiences, to be published in 2018.

First series of questions:

1.         What does it mean to be prepared for an intercultural encounter?

2.         How would you define a cultural border? What intercultural barriers have you encountered?

3.         Which are the space and time coordinates of intercultural encounters? How does the place (one’s own, neutral or virtual) and the time (moment, length) influence the development of such encounters?

4.         What can an intercultural encounter produce? What are its effects, from your experience?

5.         How do intercultural encounters change the understanding of one’s own culture? Did they affect your view of what it means to be human?

6.         What do you expect from intercultural encounters? What did you learn?

CRVP International Conference in Iasi

Join CRVP’s International Conference organised in Iasi, Romania by the RVP Center at  Alexandru Ioan Cuza University on October 27-28, 2017 under the title:

Re-Learning to Be Human for Global Times:

How Intercultural Encounters (Re)Shape the Contemporary World

As intercultural encounters both home and abroad have become a common event, they bring together individuals and communities, leading to a confrontation of cultural differences and humane similarities. Beyond their challenges, such interactions may generate a new awareness of the other and of the self and an enhanced understanding of what it means to be human.

This conference proposes to investigate the different forms and effects of intercultural encounters, both real and virtual, and to discuss how they shape the contemporary world and their possible impact on re-learning to be human. It aims to find out whether intercultural encounters could produce new forms of communication and revise cultural definitions.

Abstracts can still be submitted by mid-October. More details about the conference are available here on CRVP’s website.

Workshop preview

Here is one example for our Workshop on Artifacts in Intercultural Encounters:

The National Pastime of America: Baseball. Why is a slow, plodding game,  derived from Cricket, the favorite sport of a nation of frenetic activity and constant change?

baseball

by John Farina

Feel free to bring any artifact you consider relevant or its image/sound recording, accompanied by a one-page commentary.

Call for contributions to workshop

Artifacts in Intercultural Encounters

Project Workshop, Iași, June 30-July 1

As part of our investigation into how intercultural encounters have been shaping the global world and may contribute to re-learning to be human for present and future times,  this workshop will focus on artifacts and their role in the meetings between cultures. Artifacts are understood here as any objects, handmade or mass produced, that reflect a society or culture.

Culture, as an assembly of customs and habits regulating the behaviour and relations of a group of invididuals, materializes in objects; such objects may be works produced and displayed to illustrate a set of civic, artistic or spiritual values, or they may be goods manufactured with the local resources and skills. Be they traditional or modern, functional or decorative, religious or mundane, these objects re-present the culture to itself and to others.

Over time, cultures have communicated through the exchange and trade of such characteristic artifacts. In fact, the farther such objects came from, the more value they carried. That is because, beyond  their material worth, the foreign items we buy and sell, from the spices of ancient times to the gadgets of present day, also carry a historical, social and cultural value.

On this background, the workshop aims to explore the role of artifacts as vehicles of culture and mediators or intercultural encounters.  We are equally interested in approaching  traditional and modern artifacts, from any cultural area, with a focus on their value in contemporary times.

To this aim, we invite all project members to submit contributions in the form of:

1) papers, 5-7 pages, to be presented in person during paper sessions

or

2) posters, size A4 or larger, to be presented in person or displayed during poster sessions

or

3) image and voice recordings, 10-20 minutes, to be presented in person or shown during video sessions

Participants coming to Iasi are also invited to bring, where possible, an artifact they consider relevant for a workshop exhibition.

Please send an email specifying the type and title of your contribution by June 1 to roleofinterculturalencounters@gmail.com and dan811@yahoo.com. Contributions should be submitted by June 15 at roleofinterculturalencounters@gmail.com  and dan811@yahoo.com.