The “Cultures of Movement: Mobile Subjects, Communities, and Technologies in the Americas” conference, will be held in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, on April 8-10, 2010.The submission process is now closed. A preliminary copy of the program is available here. Please notify us of any errors.

Open to students, scholars, and professionals, the conference is meant to build new ties amongst all those interested in the theoretical or applied study of mobilities. The study of mobilities is a young and constantly evolving interdisciplinary field. The concept of “mobility” refers to the social, political, historical, cultural, economic, geographic, communicative, and material dimensions of movement. Students and scholars of mobilities focus their attention on the intersecting movements of bodies, objects, capital, and signs across time-space, paying attention as well as to the way relations between mobility and immobility constitute new networks and patterns of social life. The multiple forms of mobility, or mobilities, are often taken to include—amongst others—subjects such as: transportation; travel and tourism; migration; transnational flows of people, objects, information, and capital; mobile communications; and social networks and meetings. While the conference is open to all themes pertinent to the study of mobilities from a social and cultural perspective—irrespective of the geographical site of empirical or theoretical attention—the main focus of the conference will be on the experience, practice, social organization, and cultural significance of forms of mobility in North, Central, and South America.

Whereas in Europe the new mobilities paradigm has taken a strong hold in academic units, professional research networks, and recognized publication outlets, the study of mobilities is still in its infancy in the Americas. In contrast, mobility is very much part of the core of the social imaginary, geo-politics, and cultural life of the Americas. Indeed, to be “on the move” is amongst the most quintessential characteristics of what it means to be a citizen of the Americas. Furthermore, the Americas are home to many, distinct mobile cultures and practices: from indigenous cultures rooted in traditional meanings of home to the historical institutionalization of colonial and postcolonial trade routes and forced relocations, from controversial experiments in free transnational trade, to the politics and experience of migration and Diaspora, from the widespread diffusion of portable communication technologies, to the mobilization of surveillance systems, and from the leisure mobilities of tourism, to the social and cultural significance of transportation and movement in daily life. 

The registration process will open in January of 2010. Conference registration fees are CAD$ 250 (for faculty and other professionals). Reduced rate for students: CAD$ 200. Travel grants of up to CAD$ 200 may later become available for students; further information on this will be directly communicated to students whose submission has been accepted.   

The conference will be organized by Royal Roads University and is supported by the Pan-American Mobility Network. For more information on the organizers see here. To contact the organization committee please email Prof. Phillip Vannini at phillip.vannini@royalroads.ca