Organised under the auspices of the ICPS and the Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA), this interdisciplinary conference re-evaluates the postcolonial city-space as a site of cultural production.

The postcolonial city has reconfigured itself in literature and culture, as an urban space that incessantly explores its modernity along various, conflicting lines of identity, representation and consumption. The event brings together practicing cultural producers and their critics, early career scholars and postgraduate students working with the subject of the postcolonial city. In order to re-evaluate the impact of the postcolonial city on lives beyond the remit of the academy, we seek to posit the figure of the cultural producer as a primary focus area of our conference. How do cultural producers construct the postcolonial metropolis? Do they reconstruct existing colonial spaces and ideologies? Or do they produce new spaces to engage with the problematic questions of hybridity, decentred subjectivities and the popular? How do cultural industries, ranging radically from those of internationally acclaimed publishers and reviewers to the street loafer, represent the discourse of the postcolonial city in both innovative and commercially viable ways? What patterns of consumption influence the production, reconstruction and representation of the postcolonial city across both local and global markets?

We welcome contributions from creative writers, artists, performers, postgraduate researchers and early career scholars. The conference will comprise mixed panels showcasing presentations of perspectives on the postcolonial city from academics and cultural practitioners/producers. To this end, we invite proposals for papers, readings and performances. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20 minute papers along with a short biography (200 words max.) to thepostcolonialcity2012@gmail.com by 24th October 2011. Updates relating to the conference may be found at http://thepostcolonialcity2012.wordpress.com/. 

It is both a pleasure and privilege to confirm our keynote speakers for the event:  internationally acclaimed author and academic, Caryl Phillips; and Latin American playwright, Javier Stanziola, currently a lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds.

Topics for papers, panels, presentations, workshops and performances may be based on, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Exploring the postcolonial city as a global and local space;
• Colonial memory and the postcolonial city;
• 'Post'-colonial cities and today's empires;
• Architecture as narrative in the postcolonial cityscape;
• Technology, virtual space and the postcolonial urban;
• Urban identities, essentialism and hybridity;
• Cultural production and popular consciousness in the fashioning of postcolonial modernity;
• Challenging patriarchal narratives of the postcolonial city;
• The cultural industry in the postcolonial city;
• Negotiating artistic creativity and commercial viability when producing 'postcolonial culture';
• Theatre and performing the postcolonial city;
• Shoppers, eaters, clubbers and flâneurs: postcolonial consumption and the pleasures of the city crowd;
• Revisiting the 'carnival' in the postcolonial city;
• The artist, the disseminator and the audience: discursive mediations of the postcolonial metropolis.

This conference draws its inspiration particularly from the 'Postcolonial City' seminar series, convened during the 2010-11 academic session by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) in conjunction with the Institute of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (ICPS) at the University of Leeds.