This conference proposes to examine the notion and role of vestige in the Near East and Mediterranean world in English, French and francophone literature. Vestiges are the traces of past history and civilisations, what the passing of time and the eroding effects of the climate have left to the local inhabitants, and to the travellers who discover them and appropriate them through a visual process and in their writings. They are both ruins and fragments, signifying disappearance, silence and loss, the mark of the past and of a cultural heritage, often used as the emblem of present times.
The Near East and Mediterranean world are a land and sea of passages and exchanges, a contact zone interlacing diverse cultures and civilisations. Thus the local vestiges are not only a sign of erasure, but they constitute a palimpsest. Different periods are interwoven in the traces which show on the surface; they testify to various influences that may be seen as contradictory and a source of memorial conflicts as regards past history and in present times. Vestiges « re-present » and stand for the past ; although they signify absence, they make the past present (Ricoeur) ; they constitute documents and archives (Foucault), they hold the memory of places formerly inhabited by various people and cultures, but they are also turned towards the future as the cultural and linguistic heritage is a legacy for future generations (J. Hassoun). Marks of a past which re-surfaces, and signs of a « survival » (Didi-Huberman), vestiges come to life again through the photographer’s or painter’s eyes, and with the writer’s pen. Traces can thus also be textual and iconographic; they disseminate and form a web of tropes, images and figures; they are transformed by the cultural gaze of the newcomer who appropriates, reinvents, reshapes and fixes them. As objects of scientific or aesthetic discovery made by archeologists and ordinary travellers, vestiges acquire a mythopoietic dimension in the process. The diversity and hybridity of traces, languages and cultures in the area may also be found in the deterritorialisation of writing and images which become “nomadic” (Deleuze et Guattari).
The organizers of this international and interdisciplinary conference in anglophone et francophone studies (literature and visual arts) propose to examine the following notions : vestige, trace, imprint, mark, exchange and passage, contact zone, palimpsest, re-writing, hybridity, nomadism and deterritorialisation, and their modes de representation in fiction, autobiography, letters and essays, travel books photography and painting (18th-21st century)

Submissions for papers including an abstract (about 300 words) and a short bio-bibliographical note should be sent before 15 June 2013 to the organizers Catherine Delmas (catherine.delmas@u-grenoble3.fr) and Daniel Lançon (daniel.lancon@u-grenoble3.fr). Acceptance of proposals will be notified by September 2014. All papers must be delivered in English or French and a selection of the proceedings will be the object of a publication.
Registration fees: 45 euros