Call for Papers

25th - 26th March 2024
University College Dublin

To engage in political activism is to engage with the world in which one lives, to identify issues and injustices and to present a vision of a better future. Cultural production, including literature, film, visual media, and performance, represents an important medium through which activists can communicate political ideas both within their communities and networks and to wider audiences beyond their movements.

Over the past decades, an increasingly globalised world has offered activists new opportunities for communication and network-building, exemplified in prominent examples of transnational student, feminist, and anti-racist activism. Yet, emphasising the transnational contexts of political movements risks obscuring localised concerns, homogenising struggles, and overlooking marginalised voices. 

This conference will explore how the potentials and limitations of transnationalism are addressed in activist cultural production. We take as a point of departure the concept of boundaries, understood in its broadest sense to include, among other examples, national borders, the boundaries between politics and art, junctures between political movements, generational divides, and cultural production across media, to ask:

• How does activist cultural production participate in and shape political discourses?
• What kinds of boundaries are imagined, dismantled, reinforced, or reimagined in political cultural production?
• To what extent do activist writers, performers, and artists embrace or resist the development of transnational political networks?
• What strategies does political cultural production employ to transform its audience into political actors?

Our approach is interdisciplinary and we welcome research papers based on methodological approaches and/or case studies from across artistic media and political movements, including but not limited to:

• Social justice movements
• Identity politics and citizenship
• Nationalisms and inter-/transnationalisms
• Feminisms
• Environmental activisms
• Political and community festivals and commemorations
• Activist artistic practices (including literature, poetry, visual arts, theatre, and film)
• Political media (including print and social media)

To propose a research paper, please submit:

• an abstract/summary of the paper (c. 250 words)
• a short speaker biography (max. 150 words) including your affiliation and research interests
• your contact details

Please submit your abstract HERE (closed).

Research papers should not exceed 20 minutes. 

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 5pm (UK/Ireland time), 10th November 2023.

This conference is generously funded by the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD College of Arts and Humanities. If you have any questions, please contact the organisers at (opens in a new window)transnationalactivisms@gmail.com