Viennese Achilles

The Durrell School of Corfu opens each annual session with a symposium that examines themes of importance to the Durrells and to our world. The first symposium in 2002 took "Understanding Misunderstanding" as its central theme and it included distinguished leaders in politics, economics, the arts and environmental studies among its participants.

Keynote speakers in 2004 include: Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University professor and cultural theorist; Lee Durrell from the Durrell World Wildlife Trust; and David Bellamy, internationally acclaimed ecologist and botanist.

Previous participants have included: John Brandon of the Asia Foundation; Elemer Hankiss, dean of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Marwan Bishara from the American Univerisity of Paris; and the environmentalist David Bellamy.

The Venetian Winged Lion

CALL FOR SEMINAR PAPERS

EMPIRE AND AFTERMATH: CORE AND PERIPHERY
(4-10 June 2006)

The Durrell School of Corfu will hold a seminar on the topic 'Empire and Aftermath: Core and Periphery� at its Library and Study Centre in Corfu, 4-10 June 2006..

Introduction:

The 400-year rule of the Ionian islands by the �Serenissima� Republic of Venice and the 50-year administration of the 'Septinsular Republic' of those islands by Britain provide us with examples of strategic control of Mediterranean communications by interests vested in the diplomatic and commercial manipulation of trade routes and nodes of power.

Although Venice created an aristocracy in the Ionian islands (remnants of which are still evident), it cannot be said to have 'colonised' the islands, nor can the many British people living in Corfu today claim any connection with the previous British presence. Nevertheless, The British empire, as the most extensive territorial and economic enterprise in the world, had many continuing links with the Ionian islands. One of its greatest architects, W.E. Gladstone, was 'Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary' in Corfu 1858-59. General Charles Napier, later famed for his one-word telegram to London signalling that he had captured the city of Sind ('i>Peccavi'), was Commissioner in Cephallonia 1822-30.

Venetian Bell Tower & Rue de Rivoli

It is a debatable proposition that an imperial, rather than a colonial, presence on the part of Venice and Britain had a benign effect on these islands, and this may contrast with the experience of societies elsewhere which continue to live in the aftermath of colonisation: colonisation is essentially invasive and rapine, encouraging movements towards resistance and independence, whereas imperial administration per se may not lead to such movements.

The Durrell School of Corfu�s seminar will therefore concentrate on post-imperial, rather than post-colonial, issues, although it is acknowledged, expected and hoped that many contested areas will be addressed by participants.

Focus

The purpose of the seminar is to examine:

• the relations between the centre of empire and the subjects of its rule at its periphery, both during the imperial period and after withdrawal/independence;
• discourse (or the lack of it) between core and periphery, particularly through the lenses of literature;
• the effects of the aftermath of empire in former imperial subjects.

• Venice (1386-1797)
• France (Republic, 1979-99; Empire, 1807-14)
• Britain (1814-64),

• interaction between imperial and indigenous cultures
• the symbiosis of 'coloniser' and 'colonised'
• the imperial subject as 'other' or 'different': can the 'other' ever become 'the same'?
• critiques of 'orientalism'
• the transition of societies under imperial rule
• Eurocentrism and the rhetoric of map-making
• the meaning of 'subaltern'
• real and imaginary perceptions of landscape from the imperial and indigenous perspectives
• 'allochronism': linear time and circular or periodic time
• suppression of, or revolt or collaboration by, imperial subjects
• nationalist and independence/resistance movements: emphasis may be placed on cultural nationalism and questions of emergent identity
• post-imperial or post-colonial literatures, especially 'varieties of english', including Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean: is there such a genre as 'Commonwealth literature'?
• the literature(s) of Latin America
• post-imperial literature(s) re-writing the 'Western canon': 'the empire writes back'
• the role of narrative in post-imperial society: memory and re-membering
• departure and arrival in the moment of freedom/independence
• revisionism in post-imperial historiography

• the Macaulay memorandum on Indian education (1835) and its aftermath
• the relationship of English writers with India (especially those born in India, including Rudyard Kipling and Lawrence Durrell)
• the development of Indian writing in English

• the launching of the 4th Crusade from Corfu (1203)
• the architectural contribution to the islands of the Venetians, French and British
• the pervasiveness of Italian culture: language, cuisine, music and literature
• the effects of British administration
• enosis with Greece in 1864
• is The Tempest set in Corfu?