The Centers for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (GWZ) will jointly host the 3rd Borders & Identity conference (BIC) from March 16th to 19th, 2015, at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). BIC2015 provides a meeting place for researchers interested in interdisciplinary approaches to exploring Urban Fragmentation(s) from linguistic, literary, sociological, and historical points of view, or a combination thereof. The conference will be organized in three parallel strands, each chaired by a corresponding GWZ-center (ZAS, Center for General Linguistics; ZfL, Center for Literary and Cultural Research; ZMO, Center for Modern Oriental Studies). There will be three plenary talks (speakers to be announced) - organized by the respective centers.

-- Literature & Translation (ZfL)
-- Language & Linguistic Creativity (ZAS)
-- Society & Governance (ZMO)

We invite abstracts for presentations and posters on topics including, but not limited to, the following areas listed below. Interdisciplinary submissions are highly welcome.

1. Literature & Translation (ZfL)
Writing the city
-- Urban soundscapes: Fragments, collages, remixes
-- Literary interventions in urban society: Cutting across town
-- Multilingual literatures in pluricultural cities
-- Plural topographies in urban literatures and cultures

“The ‘translation’ is the message”
-- Translating the self: Writers in exile and migration
-- Translating the other: Appropriating foreign forms of cultural expression
-- The role and function of cultural mediators (artists, publishers, teachers,
etc.)
-- New subjectivities
-- Suburban subjectivities: Figurations of the self in recent post-socialist
literature
-- (Urban) cultures of affect: Fragmented memories, distorted belongings,
violent riots

2. Language & Linguistic Creativity (ZAS)
Linguistic diversity in the city
-- Multilingualism in the classroom
-- Multilingual cities as loci of language contact and change
-- Migration patterns and linguistic fragmentation

Citylects
-- Linguistic creativity / Multiethnolects
-- Language change / Language decay
-- Language variation and social networks

Language attitudes / Linguistic stereotypes
-- Perceptual ethnolectology
-- Language ideologies
-- Linguistic expressions of style

3. Society & Governance (ZMO)
Negotiating diversities
-- Cultural, ethnic, and religious fragmentation in the city
-- Governance of plurality
-- Spaces of interaction, spaces of fragmentation

Contesting visions-- Splintering urbanism in networked cities
-- Urban contestations and violence
-- Unifying and fragmenting visions of urbanism
--Fragmented authenticity of urban heritage

Rethinking Marginalities
--Urban centrality and marginality: Concepts and terminologies
--Urban centrality and marginality: Case studies