INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:

“Anglophone Literatures in International Contexts”

Department of English Language and Literature

Bilkent University

Date of Meetings: October 16-17, 2008

Location of Meetings: Seminar Room A-130, FEASS Building

Principal Organizer and Contact: Associate Professor Don Randall randall@bilkent.edu.tr

Co-Organizer: Assistant Professor Valerie Kennedy kennedy@bilkent.edu.tr

Purpose of Conference:

We wish to establish a more international presence and connectedness for our Department, and for Bilkent University’s Faculty of Humanities and Letters. In this way we hope to augment and diversify Bilkent University’s international profile. We also hope to update and re-evaluate our sense of the discipline of English studies; to re-examine our place within this discipline and its place within the university.

We have scheduled the meetings within the fall teaching term because we intend to engage our students, and the faculty and students of affiliate departments, and to demonstrate for them the international scope of studies in English Language and Literature and in the contemporary Humanities more broadly considered.

The specific address of the conference intends to bring into focus our situation as teachers and scholars of English language and literature who pursue our profession in a non-Anglophone national and social context. We wish to understand our situation more clearly and to learn also what it might reveal about, and contribute to, the contemporary shape of English studies.

Keynote Speaker: Elleke Boehmer, Professor in World Writing in English, Wolfson College, University of Oxford