CEFRES invites you to participate at the conference "Boundary as a turn" from the cycle “Boundary – An Interdisciplinary Concept”, within the program “Meetings of PhD Students and Young Researchers” on Wednesday March 27, 2013 at 9 am. The meetings of PhD students and young researchers aim at networking of PhD students enrolled at Czech universities. CEFRES serves as a platform for meetings, exchanges of views from different disciplines and discussing transverse topics. CEFRES promotes confrontations of various interpretations and facilitates contacts among researchers across disciplines. “Boundary as an interdisciplinary concept” is the first cycle of this program. Boundary as a concept or as a metaphor can be found across disciplines and various topics. Boundary is nowadays an à la mode term. Problems of migrations, territorial wars, identities of peoples living in frontiers or of disappearing borders are in the centre of contemporary research.

Deadline for submissions : March 6, 2013.

Nevertheless the cycle “Boundary as an interdisciplinary concept” also tries to deviate from this mainstream. To consider the boundary as a political, geographic, historical or cultural problem is not the only aim. On the contrary, the main objective is to see philosophical or metaphorical aspects of boundary, which means aspects that are common to several domains and that could serve for the exchange of views from different disciplines. Thus the aim is to identify and to analyse the concepts of boundary using various approaches of the social sciences (e.g. history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, religious studies, economy, or law). The cycle “Boundary as an interdisciplinary concept” focuses namely on four aspects: boundary as a limit, boundary as a barrier between two different phenomena, boundary as a turn (“Rubicon”) and boundary as a frontier. In June 2012 the first conference of this cycle titled “Boundary as a Limit” was held, the second conference “Boundary as a Barrier” took place in December 2012.

The third meeting will focus on boundary as a turn - Rubicon. This concept stems from the broader concept of the boundary as a delimitation of an area, not only in the geographic sense, but also in the mental, ideological, conventional or political meaning. The concept of the “Rubicon” can be used for the extreme cases when crossing the boundary and leaving delimited zone. This decision to cross the boundary often leads to a radical change of the situation and it has serious consequences. Within this concept, we can study e.g. theories of revolutions, behaviour during the war (collaboration or resistance) or within authoritarian regimes (dissent). We can also find this concept in law (boundary of a crime), sociology (behaviour that leads to exclusion from a group) and in other social sciences disciplines as well.

Presentations (20 min., in Czech, eventually English) should follow the purpose of this cycle. It should define the concept of the boundary in the specific case/topic that the researcher is dealing with. Where the boundary can be found? How can we characterize it? The contribution should focus on the way the boundary is interpreted; answer whether the boundary is explicit or implicit, natural or artificial, stable or random etc. The contribution should also cover the discursive aspect. Is it a metaphor of the political border between two states or of the cultural boundary between two civilizations and why? Is the concept of the boundary in this specific case interdisciplinary?

Please submit your proposal (250-word abstract in Czech, eventually in English) for the third meeting within the cycle “Boundary – An Interdisciplinary Concept” titled “Boundary as a Turn” to hranice.cefres@gmail.com by 6 March 2013.