Call for papers "Naming, Identity and Tourism"

Universita degli studi della Basilicata

Naming, Identity and Tourism 

International Conference 

May 3–5, 2018 

Call for Papers 

As a multifaceted negotiation process, naming plays a crucial role in the social construction of space and time, in that it inscribes ideological messages about the past (and the present) into the texts of our everyday life. This critical perspective marks a recent shift whereby scholars in the social sciences and humanities are investigating the power relations inherent in naming practices, seen as an active and at the same time contestable process. As a result, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between names and a wide range of identity discourses—national, local, racial/ethnic— on the commodification of places, or on the politics of collective memory and on people attitudes.

Within the outlined trend toward the exploration of the significance of names and naming for issues of identity, attachment, and power relations, the role of tourism is still a rather underinvestigated area of research. Yet, as a few studies have highlighted, a ‘mere’ name may well draw tourists’ attention as a marker which signposts that something is worth visiting. More in detail, the relevance of naming practices in tourism stems from their ability to suggest distinction, originality, authenticity or even romance for a number of reasons ranging from linguistic, literary, historical and archeological references to local traditions as well as to the strategies adopted to rebrand places to make them more appealing to potential visitors.

The international conference invites original contributions to this emerging field of enquiry, fostering a multidisciplinary approach in exploring the broad theme of naming, identity and tourism.

We welcome theoretical contributions, case studies and methodological reconsiderations aimed at investigating the relationship between names/naming and identity within several areas of interest, including but not limited to:

• archaeology and tourism
• collective memory and tourism discourses
• film-induced tourism
• heritage tourism
• intangible heritage tourism
• literature-induced tourism
• naming controversies and tourism 
• recovering lost language in tourism discourses
• the commodification of tourist sights
• the use of minority languages for promotional purposes
• tourism discourses
• translation issues

Especially welcome are original papers within onomastic and critical discourse research or which highlight and apply new methodologies sourced from anywhere across the humanities and social sciences.

 Scientific Committee 

Giuseppe Balirano, Director of I-LanD (Identity, Language and Diversity Interuniversity Research Centre) Italy
Luisa Caiazzo, University of Basilicata, Italy
Oliviu Felecan, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, North University Centre of Baia Mare, Romania
Peter Jordan, Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria
Iman Laversuch Nick, President of the American Name Society, Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics, Germany
Oriana Palusci, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Italy
Grant Smith, Eastern Washington University, United States

Abstract submission 

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words together with a brief biographical note to by January 15, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be sent by February 15, 2018.

Publication 

Selected papers, peer-reviewed by members of the Scientific Committee and other independent reviewers, will be invited for publication. Full paper submission by June 30, 2018.