Call for Papers for Issue 5 (Feb. 2018)
Submission Deadline: Nov. 30, 2017
Refugees and Exiles in European Languages and Literatures
European attitudes towards refugees and exiles from antiquity down to our days have always been marked by a very strange contradiction. On the one hand, the discourse of solidarity and humanitarianism has been all-pervasive in European communities (whether it expresses itself through the supplication rituals in ancient Greece, the sanctuary laws in medieval times, or the Convention on the Status of Refugees in modern times). On the other hand, refugees and exiles have often been seen as potentially subversive, probably fraudulent, conceivably criminal, covertly parasitical elements (cf. the contemporary discussions of refugees as “Trojan Horse” for terrorists, their portrayal as sexual predators, or even the expression “asylum shopping”).
Apart from the attitude of the host communities, there is also the issue of the refugees and exiles own feelings, people caught between danger at home and isolation, alienation, loss of identity, and impoverishment in a strange land. And yet, despite all these terrors hanging over them, refugees and exiles (whether learned Greek slaves in the Roman Empire, or itinerant medieval scholars, or Jewish scientists fleeing the Nazis, or...) have been leavening their environments and making great contributions to the advancement of the host societies.
interface is inviting original unpublished papers written in English, French, German, Spanish Russian or Italian for interface Issue 5, to be published in February 2018, that address the matters raised by these various dimensions of the refugees/exiles issue in relation to the literatures and languages (including language education and language policy) of any period in European history.
Papers should be submitted online at http://interface.ntu.edu.tw/ or http://interface.org.tw/ no later than November 30, 2017.
All potential authors should consult our website for Author Guidelines
(http://interface.org.tw/index.php/if/about/submissions#authorGuidelines)