Call for Papers: Aviation – The Impact on Time and Space

CEI-IUL is one of the organizers of the International Conference “Aviation: The Impact on Time and Space” to be held on Santa Maria – Azores, September 6^th – 10^th, 2017. The Call for Papers is now open and there is an April 15 2017 deadline for abstract submission (abstract of 200 words and biographical note of 100 words).

The impact of aviation on the 20^th and 21^st centuries on both time and space has been enormous. From the first adventurers and explorers, through the first legacy companies, the jet age, and now the low cost operators, aviation has tremendously changed concepts of time and space, which in turn has impacted on commerce, security and culture.

This was notably an Atlantic phenomenon, for as its margins were bound together after the age of discovery and colonization through maritime navigation a common western culture emerged, albeit separated by the tempestuous ocean. Aviation then largely succeeded seaborne traffic as the instrument for interconnecting and nurturing the cohesion of the Atlantic States, after the Second World War.

For all territories, aviation was revolutionary and particularly for those spaces that were inaccessible, be it inland territories where a train couldn’t reach or a peripheral island with no practical harbor. St. Hellen’s airport operations starting in 2016 might be an interesting event in the light of all the Atlantic Revolutions.

But this was, naturally, also a global trend through the great colonial powers who recognized aviation as an essential means to link their territories throughout the world. Different cultures which interacted only at long distance were now closer than ever. This promoted the connection of these different territories and cultures, but also raised security problems, commercial opportunities and the consciousness of identity and otherness.

Aviation has brought together not only different cultures and their exotic goods and traditions, but also people and their interests and ways of life. This has bloomed the economy of peace – tourism – but has also turned airplanes and airports into battlegrounds and shaped new kinds of borders. Aviation allowed distant and inaccessible territories to be a day-to-day presence in the most populated centers of the world, and the other way around. A flux that has unified and diversified our civilization.

Aviation: The Impact on Time and Space aims to analyze the role of aviation on changing the notions of time and space and its effects on commerce, security, culture and territories. From the first explorers and airliners who conquered new spaces that were forever changed by the function that they were called to fulfill; the cultural impacts of watching the world from a higher perspective and on a faster rhythm broadcasted by literature and the press, by cinema and other visual arts; the geopolitical issues that it brought about and how this has allowed powerful States to compete and others to insert themselves on the international sphere.

LPAZ Association, in co-organisation with the University of the Azores (UAc), the Center for International Studies of ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and APEF – Portuguese Association for French Studies, welcomes scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to present their contributions on the theme of the conference. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Contributions of aviation to a new perception of time and space;
2. Commercial implications of accelerating time and shortening distances;
3. Literary and artistic representations of space and time through aviation;
4. Islands and Aviation;
5. Military and security issues raised by aviation;
6. Civil aviation and its successive stages of development;
7. Contributions to (re)thinking Europe and the transatlantic relationships/communities;
8. Aviation’s impact on cultural interaction;
9. Cultural representation of aviators and aviation: reality vs fiction;
10. Air Museums and Archives: preserving aviation history;
11. Aviation: Architecture and Urbanism.

Languages: Papers can be presented in English, French and Portuguese.

Deadlines:

April 15 2017: deadline for abstract submission (abstract of 200 words and biographical note of 100 words, to be sent to forumlpaz@gmail.com).

May 15 2017: Notification of acceptance.

May 30 2017: definitive conference program.

 Photo by Greg and Cindy, CC BY 2.0.

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