Call for Papers
39th Annual Convention, April 10-13, 2008, Buffalo, New
York
This document may be subject to change.
The NeMLA Board of Directors is delighted to offer this range
and quality of proposed panels for our 2008 Convention.
With the speakers and special events that are being arranged,
this convention promises to be an invigorating exchange.
Deadline for abstracts: September 15, 2007 (unless otherwise
noted)
Please include with your abstract: Name and Affiliation /
Email address / Postal address / Telephone number / A/V
requirements (if any; 10$ media service charge)
Panelists renew/join and register no later than Nov. 30, 2007
for the 2008 membership year or risk being dropped from the convention
program. You need not be a NEMLA member in order to submit a
paper for consideration and you may submit to more than one session.
However for the Convention, members may present at only ONE panel,
though members may participate in a panel and a roundtable or
other alternative session.
Panel Areas (click on a link to go to that area's listings)
American
See also under:
British: Poetics of Return
Canadian Literature: Alice
Munro in the 1980s; Northern Exposure: Canadians Writing the U.S.A.;
Surfaces of Inscription: Embodiment in City and Text
Caribbean Literatures: The New Caribbean
Diaspora
Film: 'I Liked the Book Better': Adapting
Literary Text to American Film
Gay-Lesbian: What Hath ANGELS Wrought? Queer
Drama Beyond the Millennium Queer Miscegenations
Pedagogy: Navigating the Fictional World of
Toni Morrison
Popular Culture: Exceptional Dicks: The
Ethics and Ethos of American Tough Guys; Reel Mobsters/Fictional
Gangsters in Literature, Film and Television
Spanish-Portuguese: Writing on the
Wall, Pictures on the Page: Word-and-Image Intersections in Hispanic and
Latino Literature and Visual Culture
Women's Studies: Poetic Justice: Radical
Women and the Language of Community; Revisiting Asian American Women's
'Articulate Silences'
Addiction and Literature in 20th Century American Literature
This panel will investigate the ways in which addiction has manifested
itself in 20th century American literature. Specifically, this panel
will explore addiction and identity, addiction and embodiment, and how
addiction is employed to determine cultural boundaries. Moreover, it
will examine the parallels between queerness and addiction, including
processes of stigmatization, the formation of alternative communities
and spaces, and the regulation of pleasure. Finally, it will consider
the late-20th century phenomenon of addiction's acceptability and
pervasiveness and its renewed uses as a tool of exclusion. Please send
abstracts of 250 words as email attachments to Crystal Gorham Doss at crgorham@buffalo.edu.
Against the Day Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day
returns his readers to a familiar state of delight and befuddlement: how
to understand a book so massive and laden with esoterica? We seek papers
of diverse methodological approaches towards forging hitherto unapparent
critical connections. The many possible foci include: genre; the history
of science, technology, and industry, especially electricity;
connections with other Pynchon texts; religious fundamentalism,
political extremism, and violent resistance; the period leading up to
World War I; mapping and spatiality; music and other popular culture;
and the difficulties of reading a postmodern novel about the modern age.
Christopher Leise, University at Buffalo: cwleise@buffalo.edu
American Cannibal: Empire and Embodiment from 1840 through 1940
In Moby Dick (1851), Herman Melville asks his readers,
"Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?" in order to force them to
question definitions of otherness. This panel will focus on US/American
authors who discuss cannibals, literally and ironically, in their work.
How do narratives of cannibalism inform and critique the (still) growing
nation? How does the United States become embodied by its own stories?
Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Kathryn Dolan at kcdolan@umail.ucsb.edu
American Working-Class Literature Board-Sponsored. This panel
invites papers on any era and aspect of American Working-Class
literature. Papers that examine representations of work, class and labor
in conjunction with place, race, ethnicity, gender and/or sexuality are
especially welcome, as are papers that contemplate the boundaries and
definitions of working-class literature. Please send one-page abstracts
to Matt Lessig, SUNY Cortland, lessigm@cortland.edu
Antebellum at Sea: United States Maritime Narratives and
Constructions of Modernity This panel seeks papers that explore
various ways that antebellum maritime texts, in Cesare Casarino's terms,
"constituted a crucial laboratory for that crisis that goes by the
name of modernity."
While a wide variety of topics and approaches are welcome, papers might
examine how such texts respond to different economic and cultural crises
of the era. Please send abstracts to Jason Berger, jason.berger@uconn.edu.
Becoming Indigenous: The Aesthetics of Place and Community
This panel seeks papers that investigate the importance of indigeneity
in twentieth-century environmental literature. We are especially
interested in texts that use aspects of Native American culture to
establish ethical and sustainable relationships to the land. Questions.
we hope to address include: What does it mean to be a native of a
particular region? How do specific aesthetic forms facilitate a greater
awareness of the natural world? Why might indigeneity be indispensable
to an ecological perspective? Please send 250-word abstracts to:
Benjamin Priest <bdpriest@buffalo.edu>
or Josh Weinstein <jw67@buffalo.edu>
Black Writers and the Left This panel will explore the
connection between Marxism and African American literature. Black
writers who were involved with leftist movements during the early part
of the twentieth century included Claude McKay, Chester Himes, Richard
Wright and Ralph Ellison. Proposals that explore the ways race
complicated the role of the black writers involved in leftist movements,
and the ways these political movements influenced their work are
welcomed. Kristin Moriah, McGill University kristin.moriah@mail.mcgill.ca
Claiming Space in Edith Wharton's Novels In The House of
Mirth, Lily Bart declares "How delicious to have a place like
this all to one's self! What a miserable thing it is to be a
woman." Lily speaks to the unwritten rule that women cannot live
alone. She speaks to her desire to have a space, whether physical or
metaphorical, of her own, a space where she can live her own life. This
panel explores physical and metaphorical spaces in Wharton's novels and
specifically address Wharton's female characters and how they
experience, manipulate, and claim space. Email abstracts of 250-500
words to Miranda Green-Barteet: mgreen-barteet@tamu.edu.
Critical Approaches to Native American Literature Underlying
recent arguments by scholars such as Weaver, Womack, Warrior, and Ortiz
is the basic question of 'literary separatism'--i.e., whether work
produced by Native American writers is more appropriately regarded as
belonging to its own separate and distinct canon (or tribally-specific
canons), with its own set of standards or whether it should be regarded
as belonging to the canon of 'American' literature or even 'World'
literature and analyzed according to the standards of those canons.
Submissions are invited which examine the creative work of Native
authors in light of these issues. Send abstracts of 250-500 words to: achall@ucdavis.edu Deadline: 10/10/07
Doctors, Patients, and Medical Treatments in 19th Century American
Women's Writing This panel will focus on portrayals of doctors,
patients, and medical treatments in nineteenth-century American women's
writing. Papers may explore 1) types of health care such as conventional
medicine, homeopathic medicine, mesmerism, faith healing, and others; 2)
types of doctor-patient relationships, with attention to
gender-inflected interaction, domination and submission, symbiotic
interaction, masochism, or sexual exploitation; and 3) types of health
caregivers, such as mothers, slaves, herbalists, spiritualists, mediums,
charlatans, and others. Georgia Kreiger, Allegany College of Maryland: gkreiger@atlanticbb.net
Early Native American Literature In his recent book The
People and the Word Robert Warrior speaks of a "lengthening of
the historical arc of Native writing," to consider how Native
American literatures of the past might be of use to us today. This panel
calls for papers that focus on pre-twentieth century Native writers,
examining how these authors negotiated their private ambitions and needs
alongside traditional concerns and the demands of print discourse. Send
abstracts of no more than 500 words to Drew Lopenzina, Sam Houston State
University, ajl011@shsu.edu Deadline:
10/10/07
Ecofeminism in American Literature This panel seeks papers
that uses ecofeminist theory as a means to analyze pieces of American
literature. Papers can examine both current and past American authors.
Use of ecofeminism is not limited to only environment and gender but
also race, class, globalization, etc. Please send a 250-500 word
abstract by e-mail to Andrea Campbell, Washington State University: akatecampbell@gmail.com
Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft, and the Philistine: Socialism in a
Capitalist Context Elbert Hubbard published The Philistine: a
Periodical of Protest (1895-1915).In addition to writing a number of
novels and pamphlets, Hubbard opened a print shop, established an
artisan community in East Aurora following William Morris's Arts and
Crafts principles, and built a small empire in upstate New York. This
panel will focus on the Roycroft experiment as it relates to literature,
but I will entertain papers on any aspect of the Roycroft Community.
Send abtracts to Maryanne Felter at felterma@cayuga-cc.edu
Fictions of Female Adolescence: 1880-1930 While the young
adult novel as a distinct genre is generally seen as emerging after the
publication of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye in 1951,
fiction about and for adolescents has a long literary tradition reaching
back to the previous century. This panel seeks proposals on fiction
published between approximately 1880 and 1930-a significant period in
shifting social norms, dire world events, and literary developments- and
written for and/or about girls and young women between the ages of 15
and 22. The panel is open to works from America, Britain, Australia, and
Canada; transnational approaches are also welcome. Please send 1-2 page
proposals and a brief biography to Rita Bode: rbode@trentu.ca. Deadline: 10/07/07.
Food for Thought: Culinary, Literary and Cultural Views of
Inclusion and Impact The Food for Thought panel provides an
opportunity to analyze the role food has played and continues to play in
literature, film, theater and other aspects of culture. Focus can be on
visual arts and film, but written literature is also appropriate. Please
send e-mail or snail mail panel paper abstracts with your name,
affiliation, address, phone number and e-mail address to: Annette Magid
<a_magid@yahoo.com> OR mail
to: Professor Annette M. Magid, Ph.D., Erie Community College, English
Department, 4041 Southwestern Boulevard, Orchard Park, NY 14127.
From the Country to the City: Literary Ecology in American Realism
and Naturalism This panel solicits proposals from scholars working
on any aspect of American realism, naturalism, regionalism, and local
color from an ecocritical perspective that enables discussion of the
representation of city and country landscapes and the relation between
them. Submissions that allow for a dynamic discussion on literary
ecology, city and country, and the relation between landscapes and
persons are especially encouraged. Send abstracts and papers to Karen E.
Waldron at waldron@coa.edu or snail
mail to College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine 04609.
Genius in the 19th Century This panel will explore the
category of genius in the 19th century, attending particularly to the
tension between the genius as an ideal representative of a group and the
genius as a unique, extraordinary individual. The late-19th century turn
toward identifying genius with an abnormal individual suggests a
pessimistic view of the potential for cooperation and intersubjectivity.
How can the category of genius address questions of alterity,
intersubjectivity, and the relationship between individual and
collective? Email 250-500 word abstracts to Kelly Ross, UNC-Chapel Hill:
kbross@email.unc.edu. Deadline: 10/05/07.
George Oppen Centenary Panel April 24, 2008 marks the birth
centenary of George Oppen. In anticipation, this panel (April 10 - 13)
seeks reconsiderations of the familiar: the relationship between his
poetics and his political and/or philosophical concerns; his partnership
with Mary Oppen; Oppen in context (e.g. the Imagists, the Objectivists,
but especially outside those frames). We also hope to explore the
poetics of Oppen's interviews and letters; the archive record; Oppen's
later poetry in relation to memory and/or illness; extensions of Oppen's
relation to/influence on younger poets. Please send proposals of 250-300
words and a brief CV (one page) to Andrew Rippeon (arippeon@buffalo.edu).
Deadline: 10/12/2007
H.D., Beyond Imagism Since Susan Friedman's 1975 essay
"Who Buried H.D.?," mainstream anthologies have expanded their
selection of her work, and New Directions has published volumes of both
collected and selected poems. But what have we made, or should we make,
of this broader representation of H.D.'s work? Proposals are welcome
focused on the poetics of the work of her mid and late career, on the
persistence of Imagist principles even in the long sequences, on her
influence, and on teaching her poetry beyond "Sea Garden."
William Waddell, St. John Fisher College: bwaddell@sjfc.edu Deadline: 10/01/07
Hawthorne and the Ethical This panel will examine the question
of the ethical in the works of Hawthorne. If, as Hawthorne claims, he is
not interested in 'relentlessly . . . impal[ing] the story with its
moral, as with an iron rod' (2), do ambiguity and ambivalence constitute
an ethical stance? Given such stories as 'The Minister's Black Veil' and
'Wakefield,' which seem to offer a view of the radical failure of
relation to the other, what value do the obscene and the impossible hold
in the broader ethical horizon of Hawthorne's fiction? Email 250-word
abstracts to Sean Kelly, sjkelly@buffalo.edu
Imagined Landscapes, Environing Worlds: African-American
Literature as Environmental Writing Defining "environment"
as at once social and material, this panel seeks papers that enrich and
complicate our understanding of how African-American literature may be
read as environmental writing. Especially welcome are papers that
explore the relationships between African-American literary
representations of environment and other forms of discourse
(sociological, anthropological, conservationist, or ?) at particular
historical moments. Also welcome are papers that focus specifically on
the relationship between environmental content and literary form,
perhaps by exploring and/or theorizing encounters between
African-American poetry and ecopoetics. Please email paper abstract and
a brief bio to Anne Raine, araine@uottawa.ca.
Justice and the Big Bad Man: Perspectives on Individual
Responsibility This panel is seeking 250-500 word proposals on any
literary perspective on individual responsibility in the face of a
passively or aggressively oppressive government. Fictional
representations in television, film, and graphic novels, as well as
non-fiction (i.e. documentary) representations are particularly welcome.
Send abstracts to Chad B. Cripe cripeccbc@sbcglobal.net
Literature and the African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865 In
what ways did African colonization, and more particularly, the rhetoric
and propaganda of the American Colonization Society (ACS), influence
antebellum literature? This panel seeks to examine that question from a
variety of perspectives: from that of the white
"philanthropists," in texts like Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin or
Hale's Liberia; from that of the colonists themselves, in the
poetry and letters that filled the ACS's African Repository; from the
vantage-point of the black separatists, in, for example, Delany's Blake;
or from the opposition writings of abolitionist-integrationists. Send
300 word abstracts to Joe Webb, Saint Louis Univ: jwebb16@slu.edu
Literature of New York This panel will consider issues of time
and place in the Literature of New York City and the Hudson River
Valley. This can include such topics as the use of haunting in the
writing of Washington Irving to the spiritual significance of landscape
in native American writing about the Hudson River to social hierarchy in
old New York in the writing of Edith Wharton to the satiric portrayal of
New York intellectuals in the writing of Dorothy Parker and Dawn Powell
in the 1920s and 30s. Sabrina.Fuchs-Abrams@esc.edu
The Many Masks of Louisa May Alcott How do we reconcile the
Louisa May Alcott who wrote domestic fiction with the A. M. Barnard who
wrote sensationalism? Are they contradictory personae or are they
reconcilable? How dissimilar are the themes, content, and characters in
Alcott's domestic versus sensation fiction, and how irreconcilable are
the paradoxes? What social, psychological, and economic undercurrents
influenced this literary life, and who was the woman behind the many
masks? Papers may address either Alcott's domestic or sensation fiction,
or draw connections between them. Please email abstracts of 250-500
words to Grace Wetzel at wetzelg@mailbox.sc.edu.
Native North American Literature This session welcomes
submissions on any aspect of Native American Studies, including
literature, literary separatism, film, culture, spirituality, language,
gender, tribal politics, race, and ethnicity. Papers addressing the
recent critical works by writers such as Robert Warrior, Thomas King,
Craig Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and Robert A. Williams, Jr. are
especially welcome. Please send 250 word abstracts to: Benjamin D.
Carson at benjamin.carson@gmail.com
New Approaches to Mark Twain Board-Sponsored. This panel
invites papers on any aspect of the works of Mark Twain, especially (but
not limited to) papers that focus on under-studied texts, or that
situate his work comparatively. Please send 250-500 word proposals to
Jason Haslam Jason.Haslam@dal.ca
The New Orthodoxy: Religion in Contemporary Jewish American
Literature This panel seeks papers examining the role of religion in
contemporary Jewish American authors such as Allegra Goodman, Nathan
Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, and other, newer, authors. Often, the
religious life is presented as either an escapist fantasy or as
creatively suffocating. In other cases, religion is absent, having been
replaced by science, work or art. Why do the sacred and the secular
continue to inhabit separate spaces and is it still necessary to choose
between a religious life and a secular one? Email 250 word abstracts,
including contact information and affiliation to Amanda R. Toronto, aqt8334@nyu.edu.
Nostalgia: The Loss of Childhood and the Romantic Imagination
This panel calls for papers using a theoretical approach to address the
Romantic yearning to return to childhood. Oftentimes, the parental
figure presents in forms other than "mother." Various
approaches, such as psychoanalytical or feminist readings, may shed
light on the subject's desire to recapture its former, idyllic state.
Send abstracts to Beth Jensen: bjensen@gpc.edu
Old Postmodernists and New Realists: American Contemporary Novel
after 1990 The panel examines the notion of realism and
postmodernism in contemporary American fiction, especially when realism
is equaled with historical and postmodernism with irony and innovative
form. The panel should discuss questions (but is not limited to) such
as: How are realistic elements communicated in fiction? What are the
implications of including realism in postmodern novels? Why is there a
recent tendency to divide realistic and postmodern elements in
contemporary fiction? Please send up to 500 words paper proposals to
Damjana Mraovic-O'Hare, dxm388@psu.edu
Deadline: 10/10/2007
Only By Dreaming or Writing: Joan Didion's The Year of Magical
Thinking This panel seeks papers addressing Didion's text,
Redgrave's performance of it on Broadway, or which more broadly explore
the concept of "magical thinking" as an escape from or
construction of reality and experience. Approaches could include, but
are not limited to: death and dying; grief, mourning, and
representation; staging and performing grief; the stylistics of
bereavement; trauma studies; narrative theory; medicine or medical
humanities; memory and meaning (or the collapse of meaning);
reconstruction and recovery; memoir and lifewriting. Email submissions
preferred; please send 250-500 word abstracts as MSWord attachments to
Dr. Clare Emily Clifford Clifford@uab.edu
Transcribed Performance: 20th/21st Century Talk Poetry We
seek papers which analyze poets whose work originates in a social act of
speech, rather than in an isolated act of written composition. Possible
topics include the Socratic roots of David Antin, the meditative mania
of Kenneth Goldsmith's songs made for WFMU radio, and the narrative
structure of Native American and other culturally distant oral poetries.
When possible, we encourage scholars to examine audio recordings and to
base analyses on sound texts. Submit 250-word abstracts to Jon Cotner j.cotner@rocketmail.com
and to Andy Fitch professorfitch@yahoo.com Deadline: 10/01/2007
Poets of the Niagara Region Creative Session. This panel
invites readings by poets whose work focuses on or is inspired by the
geography, history and peoples of the Niagara region. Send brief bio and
sample poetry to Jennifer Campbell, Erie Community
College North, 6205 Main Street Williamsvile, NY 14221 campbellj@ecc.edu
Race and Literature in the United States Who is Black and who is
White in U.S. literature? When is someone from the Asian continent an
"other" or an "American"? Where do Latino and other
characterization of dark-skinned immigrants fit in a literary tradition
previously dominated by the "one-drop" definition of Black?
This panel will explore the role U.S. literature has played in
constructing and reflecting popular notions of racial categorizations
and race relations throughout the history of the United States. It will
explore how our thinking about race has been reflected by, created in,
and limited by U.S. works of literature. Carlos Hiraldo,
CUNY<chiraldo@lagcc.cuny.edu>
Rapping Back: The Resurgence of Radical Politics to Contemporary
Hip Hop Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, hip hop
has witnessed a resurgence of the politically militant artists. Paris,
the Coup and Public Enemy have all issued new albums in the last two
years while newer acts have emerged as both politically radical and
commercial successes. This panel seeks papers that address early
twenty-first century hip-hop from both a broader socio-historical
context. What is being said, by whom, to what end, and why now? For
consideration, please send 250 word abstracts to Vincent Guihan, vjguihan@connect.carleton.ca.
(Re)Call and Response: Memory in Contemporary African American
Fiction Representations of memory in contemporary African American
fiction, including: Contemporary depictions of memory vs. classic
portrayals; The call-and-response tradition, memory, and history;
Memories of actual historical events; Memory as a privilege; Traumatic
memory; Memory and order; Memory in the absence of official historical
records; Memory, humor, and parody; Teaching literary African American
memory. Abstract & cover letter to Dr. Eva Tettenborn, nemla06@cfp.tettenborn.org
or PSU, 120 Ridge View Dr., Dunmore, PA 18512
Readers in American Fiction Submissions are invited on
representations of readers--children, adolescents, adults--in American
fiction. Papers may focus on scenes of reading or on one or more
characters or writers, such as Twain, James, Alcott, and Howells, who
portray the effects of reading upon their characters. Suggested topics
include the values and dangers of reading, construction of gender roles,
comparison of male and female readers. Please send 300-500 word
abstracts to Elsa Nettels, Department of English, College of William and
Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187 or to exnett@wm.edu
Deadline 10/12/07
Representing Trauma: American Redemption Stories and Lost Cause
Narratives This panel seeks papers that critically engage works of
American literature that represent characters reliving or re-enacting
traumatic events so that distinctions between the past and the present
breakdown as well as narratives that conflate absence and loss so that
historical losses are misrepresented as absence and become lost causes,
which give rise to Redemption stories that promise the recuperation of
what was lost in an imagined, ideal future. Please email inquiries or
500 word abstracts (MSWord attachments only) to: Trisha Brady, SUNY at
Buffalo, email: tmbrady@buffalo.edu
Scientific Influences on Women's Religious Movements Papers
sought that examine the confluence of religious and scientific thinking
within writing by and about nineteenth-century religious movements
founded by women. Potential topics might include movements such as
Spiritualism, Christian Science, mind cure, or the social gospel
movement. Papers could address the practices and writings of
participants in these movements, contemporary works that investigate the
movements, or popular writings about the movements produced by outsiders
attempting to capitalize on their popularity. Email 300 to 500 word
abstracts to Michael Cadwallader at cadwallader@unc.edu. Deadline:
10/10/07
Shifting Notions of Turn-of-the-Century American Lyric This
panel will focus on the relationship between late-nineteenth-century
American poetry, naturalism, and realism. Like realist and naturalist
fiction, poetry of the period engages with radical and rapid changes;
American lyric reflects these contradictions and flows in its form and
content. This panel is interested in the ways that social changes infuse
vitality into the form, how inherited traditions intersect and adjust to
changing political and social circumstances. Trans-Atlantic, formalist,
historicist, and theoretical approaches are welcome, as are studies of
individual poets. Send 250-500 word abstracts to Elissa Zellinger; ezell@email.unc.edu. Deadline: 10/12/07
: The Legacy of Kurt Vonnegut Board-Sponsored. This
panel invites exploration of Vonnegut's fiction and nonfiction, on its
own or within the context of his contemporaries (Mailer, Heller, Styron
in particular) or writers whom he has influenced. Send abstracts in body
of email to nemlasupport@gmail.com,
with "Vonnegut" in subject line. Deadline: 10/07/07
Spaces of Subjectivity: Geography, Gender, and Identity in 20th
Century American Women's Fiction This panel will bring together
analyses of gender, geography, and subjectivity to query the ways that
women writers in the United States have used representations of place
and emplacement to redefine ideals of self, nation, and gender in 20th
century literature. Send abstracts to Shealeen Meaney shealeen@att.net
Time in U.S. Literature and Culture The centrality of
historical narrative for writers from William Bradford to Toni Morrison
has led critics to explore the way understandings of time inform how we
perceive and write the United States into not just its own national
history-but into world history. This panel will examine the many ways
that American writers conceive of temporality and will develop the study
of time as a foundation for thinking about US literature. Panelists
might address topics such as non-linear time, post-Darwinian notions of
progress, the "usable past," or the impact of
industrialization and technology. Aimee Woznick, UC Santa Barbara woznick@umail.ucsb.edu
Traveling Bodies: The Physical Experience of Dislocation This
panel is concerned with literary depictions of the traveling body and
its relation to knowledge in the twentieth century. Can we indeed, as
Emerson once claimed, explore foreign terrains with our imagination
alone? Or are we experiencing something decisively different and
"unimaginable" when we immerse our bodies and minds in foreign
environs? The panel welcomes papers that explore physical experiences of
travel and dislocation and their relation to knowledge in 20th-century
American literature. Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Alexa Weik at
aweik@ucsd.edu.
Twentieth-Century Avante-Garde Women Writers This panel
invites a discussion of twentieth century American women writers whose
work can be considered avant-garde, but whose work may challenge current
definitions of the avant-garde (e.g. Peter Bürger's). Whether they have
not been considered as members of the "historical avant-garde"
because of time of writing, or for formal or cultural reasons, including
limited notions of "modernism" and "postmodernism,"
this panel seeks to question: 1. How definitions of the avant-garde may
serve to exclude experimental female writers, and 2., Whether an
avant-garde is still possible. Stephanie Farrar, University at Buffalo: stephfarrar@yahoo.com
(Un)Safe as Houses: Architecture and the Unhomely in American
Fiction This panel explores the ways in which fictional houses raise
ontological questions about literature's historical and cultural
functions. Paper proposals should address the house in twentieth-century
American literature with attention to relevant historical contexts,
cultural concerns, and/or literary movements. Special consideration will
be given to proposals that examine the intersections of identity factors
such as ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality and a house's particular
signs of the unhomely, undomestic, and unfamiliar. Jennifer Ryan,
Buffalo State College, ryanjd@buffalostate.edu
The Vox Americana Call for papers on the Vox Americana, the
dialogue novel, or American dialect in literature and its influence or
reception in other parts of the Anglophone world. Contact: Dr. Erwin
Ford, English and Modern Languages. Albany State University, Albany, GA.
erwin.ford@asurams.edu Deadline: 10/12/07
Walking the Line: The Boundary in the Early American Literary
Imagination This panel will examine the idea of the boundary in the
Early American literary imagination. Papers will be original work that
makes inquiries into the boundary as property line; as threshold marking
the transition from domestic to wild space; as frontier; as a moral and
metaphysical border to the Puritan imagination; as a liminal space
signifying alterity to the colonial mind; as perimeter marking
territorially and cognitively the seat of civilization. Timothy Strode,
Nassau Community College timstrodemeister@gmail.com
What's Love Got to Do With It?: Marriage in Contemporary American
Literature During the twentieth century in the United States,
numerous factors, including feminism, late capitalism, the increasing
acceptance of interracial marriage and calls for legalizing gay
marriage, as well as conservative backlashes against these movements,
have profoundly altered the way we view marriage. While the range of
topics affecting marriage as well as potential authors studied are open,
papers examining how changing ideas about ethnic, racial, religious,
and/or sexual identity affect the treatment of marriage in late
twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century American literature are
especially welcome. Please email 250-500 word proposals to Kim Freeman
at k.freeman@neu.edu Deadline:
10/10/07
William Wells Brown Board-Sponsored. From 1836-1845 William
Wells Brown, a fugitive from slavery, settled in Buffalo where, as an
operative of the Underground Railroad and local temperance and
antislavery leader, he collected anecdotes and attitudes that would help
to shape his long career in literary activism and experimentation. In
honor of this formative period in Brown's life, NEMLA, in its return to
Buffalo, offers a board-sponsored panel on this fascinating pioneer of
African American fiction, drama, poetry, humor, and historiography.
Papers on any aspect of Brown's work and influence are welcomed. Please
send abstracts (250-500 words) to Clay Hooper at mchooper@buffalo.edu
Top
British/Anglophone
See also under:
American: Genius in the 19th Century
Comparative Literatures: Trans-cultural
Influences, Interpretations, and Encounters: The Transatlantic
Experience
Women's Studies: New Territories: the Tradition of
Women Writing in the Early Atlantic World; Woolf and War
Bridging the Generational Divide: Early Victorian Feminism
Many studies of the feminist canon have focused largely on either late
eighteenth-century or mid to late nineteenth-century feminism. While
worthwhile, this focus has drawn attention away from the contributions
of those working between these two seminal periods. This panel seeks
papers addressing the feminism of the early Victorian Era. What are its
distinctive qualities? How was it influenced by eighteenth-century
feminism? How did it affect forthcoming feminist thought? What writers,
particularly those traditionally underappreciated, expressed feminist
leanings in this relatively conservative period? Email 250-500 word
abstracts to Kristin Le Veness: levenek@ncc.edu.
Deadline 10/07/07
Contemporary British Masculinities In an era of post-feminist
approaches to both narrating and interpreting gender, questions of
social performativity and overdetermination remain as relevant to our
understandings of individual and cultural identity as ever. This session
welcomes abstracts on any topic related to the fictional depiction of
contemporary British masculinities, including: Masculinities and
authority; Masculinity in crisis; New masculinities; Masculinity and
commodity culture; The Englishman s others; Borders and masculinities
(geographic or age-based); Popular masculinities; Queer masculinities;
Female authors depictions of masculinities; Masculinity and genre;
Masculinity theory and its relation to feminism. Please send 250 word
abstracts to: Theodore Miller at millertheodore@gmail.com
Contemporary Scottish Fiction Proposals and completed papers
are solicited for any aspect of Scottish fiction and film since 1997.
Particularly welcome are papers that deal with the following: Scottish
genre fiction (historical novels, detective fiction, sci-fi, children's
and young adult), Scottish fiction in Gaelic and Scots, multi-cultural
Scottish fiction, Scotland's and Scottish fiction/film's new status,
funding, marketing and consuming Scottish fiction and film, film and
stage adaptations. Send abstracts or papers by 1 September to Robert
Morace at rmorace@daemen.edu.
Ethics After Deconstruction: The Moral Turn in Contemporary
British Fiction Many contemporary British novelists have turned
their attention to pressing moral questions that do not easily reward
deconstructive readings. This panel explores novels that investigate
what happens to ethics after hegemonic political and historical
narratives have been dismantled. How does contemporary fiction push us
to think beyond traditional ethical categories? To what extent do these
novels formulate moral imperatives, and how do they reconcile such
imperatives with an emphasis on contingency and the perspectival nature
of truth? How does recent fiction interrogate the moral shortcomings of
modern or early postmodern literature? Submissions: Jeff Roessner jroessner@mercyhurst.edu
The Fiction of Charles Dickens This panel solicits papers
which will examine the novels of Charles Dickens. Especially welcome are
papers which deal with teaching Dickens, or with Dickens and Cultural
Studies. Please send abstracts (250-500 words) by post or e-mail
(WordPerfect documents are preferable) to Eric Lorentzen, at elorentz@umw.edu,
or Dr Eric G. Lorentzen, The University of Mary Washington, Department
of English, Linguistics, and Speech, 304 Combs Hall, Fredericksburg, VA
22401
First Impressions in Victorian Literature Interest in rapid
cognition generated by Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is not new; the first
impressions made by characters play a significant role for Victorian
authors such as the Brontës, Dickens, and Doyle. Whether accurate or
misleading, the first impression raises issues of intersubjective
perception, intuitive response vs. rational observation, and class,
gender, and racial stereotypes. This panel seeks papers that examine the
narrative function and/or theoretic implications of first impressions in
Victorian literature. Essays that address Victorian
scientific/psychological contexts for first impressions are especially
welcome. 300-500 word abstracts to Christy Rieger at crieger@mercyhurst.edu
The Irish Body and Modernism This panel welcomes papers on
modernist Irish writers-- representations of the Irish body as a site of
colonial anxiety and/or their responses to England's representations of
the Irish body (e.g., the simian cartoons of Punch), and the
"Celtic character" (e.g., the stage Irishman, Matthew Arnold's
cultural analysis). Papers on any aspect of Irish modernism's treatment
of the body or response to England's imperial discourse are welcome.
Please send a 300-word abstract to Austin Riede at ariede2@uiuc.edu.
Literature and Contract in the Eighteenth Century This panel
seeks papers which address the relationship between the contract and the
literary in the eighteenth century from a broad range of perspectives:
philosophical contract theory,legal precedent, political development, or
publication contracts, to name only a few. Please send 250-500 word
abstracts to Trevor Speller, SUNY Buffalo; tspeller@buffalo.edu
Medieval Outlaws This panel will address issues of marginality
and exclusion with respect to the Medieval world. Figures who represent
the marginalized (homosexuals, Jews, witches, Muslims, women) and those
who lived outside the law as well as texts that represent such figures
(and the writers who considered them) will be discussed. Any
representation of the outlaw or the culturally/socially marginalized
figure is welcome. Susannah Chewning, Union County College: chewning@ucc.edu
Medieval Space This panel seeks to address the question is
there a relationship between the representation of space and the use of
space in medieval culture? Papers on concepts of medieval space in
literature, architecture, social customs, and other aspects of material
culture and papers that address the link between two concepts of space
(say, between the holy space and vernacular or courtly literature) are
welcome. Please send abstracts to Christopher Roman croman2@kent.edu
John Milton at 400 This panel will explore the ways in which
the prose; and poetry of John Milton (1608-2009) are relevant still
after 400 years. William Moeck, SUNY Nassau Community College moeckw@ncc.edu
More than Decoration: Domestic Objects in the Victorian Novel Victorian
novelists and theorists often relied on an assumed link between one's
taste and one's identity. This relationship is commonly employed in the
novel in descriptive passages of domestic settings which purport to
provide material illustrations of characters' moral and intellectual
lives, in addition to class status and familial prominence. This panel
will address the materiality of the Victorian home as presented in the
novel in order to further our understanding of the relationship between
physical objects, character development and the vital concept of
"home." Please send 250-word abstracts via email to Leslie
Graff at leslie.graff@gmail.com
The Neighbor in Literature How can literature help us in
evaluating the history of "the neighbor" and how can a
reassessment of this figure assist in envisioning new possibilities in
ethics and politics? Some of the questions this panel hopes to address
include: who counts as a "neighbor"? Why should I love my
neighbor? What does it mean to love my neighbor in a secular society?
Can a new response to the neighbor help develop a political community
that moves beyond the friend / enemy distinction? Send Abstracts to Sean
Dempsey, Boston University: sadem@bu.edu
Old Gems in New Settings This panel invites papers on the
teaching of early British literature in survey courses. Practical
pedagogical explorations are welcome, as well as papers addressing
theoretical concerns. How are concerns about manuscript, generic, and
cultural contexts transformed when medieval texts are placed in the
context of a survey course for modern students? How are medieval works
changed when seen in the contexts of post-medieval works? Send one-page
abstracts to Rebecca Lartigue at rlartigu@spfldcol.edu
Deadline: 10/10/07.
Poetics of Return This panel will explore tropes of return,
recollection, and retelling in 20th-century Anglophone poetry. From the
allusive modernist anxiety about how to re-collect a literary past, to
the parodic impulse that characterizes many postmodern texts, what are
the implications of these textual returns? How are traumatic or
nostalgic returns to familiar formal, physical, or cultural spaces
represented in poetry? What motivates these poetic homecomings (to the
extent that they are conceived that way), how they are represented, and
what kinds of cultural, technological, and historical obstacles they
encounter are all important questions for this inquiry. Please send your
250- to 500-word abstract and contact information to Lauryl Tucker
at ltucker@ithaca.edu
The Poetics of Place: Region and Nation in Medieval British
Literature The Poetics of Place seeks to bring together critical
voices working on the various ways in which spatial self-conceptions
mental maps, as it were shape the formation of regional and national
identities in medieval British literature. Papers sought on topics
related to geography, to region (particular location or on the dynamics
of regionalism), and to the vexed and discontinuous process of writing
Britain as a cultural unity. Send 500-word abstracts to Randy Schiff at rpschiff@buffalo.edu Deadline: 09/30/07.
Politics and Gender in William Blake Any aspect of gender
relationship, conflict, or political power of dissension in Blake. In
his depictions of conflict, dominance, tyranny, oppression and
ecological devastation does the Blakean vision propose striving towards
apocalypse and utopia or is imperialism and oppression an intrinsic,
eternal predicament of human strife? Send submissions to Rachel
Billigheimer, 42 Sterling St., Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S4H7. Tel
905-527-1521, email: somoant@mcmaster.caDeadline: Deadline: 10/12/07
Postcolonial Drama and Theatre This panel welcomes abstracts
on any aspect of postcolonial drama, theatre, and performance. This
panel seeks to create dialogue among those interested in both
postcolonialism and drama/theatre. Papers could be related to any
ethnic, racial, or national fields, and could deal with such issues and
methodologies as: politics, identity, genre,
transnational/international, performance theories, history,
historiography, race, class, gender, nationalism, etc. Email 300-word
abstracts to Kyounghye Kwon: kwon.103@osu.edu.
Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature Proposals are
invited for papers examining postcolonial issues within Australian
literature, such as hybridity, first contact, resistance, indigeneity,
colonialism, imperialism, immigration/invasion, national identity,
marginalization, expatriation and diaspora. Paper that emphasize the
postcoloniality of Australian literature are particularly welcome.
Please send 250-word abstracts, institutional affiliation and contact
information via email to Nathanael O Reilly at nathanael.oreilly@wmich.edu.
Reconsidering Early Modern Women's Chastity, Silence, and
Obedience Twenty-five years after the publication of Suzanne Hull s
influential book, Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for
Women, 1475-1640, this panel proposes to interrogate the critical
legacy of this triad of early modern feminine virtues. We invite papers
that investigate literary and cultural negotiations of any or all of
these virtues by women writers or in representations of female
characters before 1800. Please email 250 word abstracts to Jessica C.
Murphy at jessica.c.murphy@gmail.com
Sanctity and Power in Medieval English Literature This panel
invites papers that explore any of the following topics in Medieval
English Literature: royal saints, saints in conflict or communion with
authority and/or sanctifying power. Erin Mullally, Le Moyne College mullalee@lemoyne.edu
Deadline 10/10/07
Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century During the
long eighteenth century, Shakespeare was a currency in which many
traded. He was not merely for all time, as Ben Jonson noted, but for all
uses, as well. This roundtable seeks submissions exploring expressions
of Shakespeare in any medium (ballet, poetry, opera, novels, art,
poetry, etc.) and any cultural context for what those expressions reveal
about the period s attitudes towards race, gender, sexuality,
nationalism, or even the bard. Please send 250-500 word proposals to
Stephen Sweat at sbsweat@email.arizona.edu
Shaw's Pygmalion Call for papers on Bernard Shaw's
Pygmalion. You may write on the original play, the stage or movie
version My Fair Lady, the Pygmalion/Galatea myth, or on GBS's
magical creations, Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins. You may treat
these all together or individually. All interpretations will be
considered: Mythic, dramatic , musical, psycho-analytic, feminist, or
personal response, etc. To foster discussion, accepted panelists must
keep strictly to 15-minute presentations, but finished papers should be
brought. Submit a 250-350 abstract with CV via eMail to Ted Price,
Montclair State University: pricet@mail.montclair.edu
by 9/01/07.
Stuart Drama and Its Discontents This panel examines
intersections of theatrical discourse in the pamphlets and plays of
Jacobean and Caroline England, towards exploring the complex and
ambivalent ways that theatre and theatricality are figured in Stuart
drama. From the omnipresent metaphor of theatre to the staging of
theatre in plays within plays, Stuart dramatists respond to and at times
reflect profound cultural uncertainty about the purpose and effects of
playing. Papers on this panel will illustrate the complicated notions
about theatre within the Stuart theatre itself. Miles Taylor, Le Moyne
College taylorme@lemoyne.edu
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis The J.R.R. Tolkien/C.S. Lewis
2008 NEMLA panel solicits abstracts or full-length papers on the works
and lives of both authors. Papers that concern themselves with the films
inspired by their works are welcome. Presenters are free to choose their
topic and critical approach. William Mistichelli: wxm3@psu.edu
Tough Love: Violence and Desire in Victorian Poetry We often
find in Victorian poetry evidence of those complicated and fascinating
intersections of love and violence, as the age's poets--from Tennyson to
Oscar Wilde--explored the darker and disturbing aspects of love and
desire. This panel will be devoted to an examination of these
intersections and the nature of such explorations. Please send abstracts
of 250 words to Robert E. Lougy rxl1@psu.edu
21st Century British and Irish Playwrights: Exorcising Demons and
Redefining Theatrical Sensibilities Mutilated body parts,
pedophilia, and manufacturing wars serve as muses for the prolific,
subversive, and profound drama from contemporary British and Irish
playwrights such as Alan Bennett, David Hare, Martin McDonough, and
Conor McPherson. With most drama anthologies only reaching the late 20th
century, let the dialogue begin and the spotlight shine on the new
visionaries of drama. Email panel submissions and bio to jtamm@ocean.edu
Victorian Illustration This panel on Victorian illustration
proposes to explore the relationship of text and image throughout the
nineteenth century. It invites papers which consider how illustrations
created the emotional effects of texts, as well as those which
investigate how illustrations were used to market novels. Papers which
consider the different illustrative techniques for the same novels on
both sides of the Atlantic are welcomed. 250-500 word abstracts should
be sent to Elizabeth Anderman, elizabeth.anderman@colorado.edu.
Visionary Poetics and British Romanticism The British
Romantics, from Blake and Wordsworth to Keats and Clare, engaged ideas
of vision and prophecy in crucial, varying fashions. This panel seeks
papers that discuss the Romantics' self-styled visionary stance and the
importance of the visionary posture to the study of the Romantic
imagination and to questions of Romanticism's relationship to
scriptural, literary, political and spiritual history. Papers on women
Romantics as visionaries are especially encouraged. Please send 250-500
word abstracts to Timothy Ruppert timruppert@yahoo.com
Top
Canadian
See also under:
American: Fictions of Female
Adolescence: 1880-1930, Poets of the Niagara Region
Caribbean: The New Caribbean Diaspora
French: Francophone Canadian Writing
Women's Studies: New Territories: the
Tradition of Women Writing in the Early Atlantic World
The Canadian Bestseller From the addition of Anne-Marie
MacDonald and Rohinton Mistry to the Oprah Book Club, to the phenomenal
popularity of works by Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Alice Munro,
Michael Ondaatje, and others, Canadian fiction is arguably enjoying
unprecedented international attention. What about these authors or their
works that has resonated with readers outside of Canada? How do
considerations of early bestselling writers, like Thomas Chandler
Haliburton, Gilbert Parker, Lucy Maud Montgomery, broaden our
understanding of the phenomenon of the Canadian bestseller? Send
abstracts of 200-250 words, with affiliation and contact info, to Andrea
Cabajsky at andrea.cabajsky@umoncton.ca.
Alice Munro in the 1980s This panel will look at Alice Munro's
increasingly-adventurous short fiction of the 1980s. It is the time of
two landmark collections, The Moons of Jupiter (1982) and The
Progress of Love (1986), as well as such later stories as Meneseteung
(1988) and Differently (1989). I am interested in readings of
both familiar (such as the two title stories) and unfamiliar stories
(such as "Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd" and "A Queer
Streak"). Send 500 word proposals to Tracy Ware at tw5@post.queensu.ca
Look Again: Critical Approaches to Black Canadian Film
After 20 years of steady growth, there has been little critical
attention paid to black Canadian film. What might it mean to align black
Canadian film with African Diaspora studies, feminist, queer or
post-colonial studies? How are we to think through critical approaches
to black Canadian cinemas? This panel is looking for new theoretical
approaches to black Canadian film beyond questions of stereotype and
caricature. Analyses of critical methods welcome. Send 350 word
abstracts to Tamara Cooper and Rinaldo Walcott at rwalcott@oise.utoronto.ca
Northern Exposure: Canadians Writing the U.S.A. Canadians and
Canadian authors have a unique perspective of the U.S., with their
relatively free access to U.S. soil, citizens and culture while
maintaining their identity as outside of U.S. culture. While JFK may
have proclaimed, "Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no
man put asunder," the perspectives from this "marriage"
are particularly relevant at this juncture. This panel welcomes papers
on Canadian fiction that features U.S. locales and/or characters. Send
brief abstracts in the body of email to Elizabeth Abele, SUNY Nassau
Community College: abelee@ncc.edu
Surfaces of Inscription: Embodiment in City and Text This
panel invites papers on "scandalous bodies" in the
Canadian/American city within comparative, inter-disciplinary
perspectives. Whether in terms of "race," ethnicity, class,
gender, ableness, or orientation, the body is a "surface of
inscription," and how certain bodies are marginalized in the city
reveals that such bodies have historically been perceived as a threat to
the collective body. Topics may include discussions of the body in
relation to ghettoization, moral panic, urban violence, homelessness,
border spaces, surveillance, gendered spaces, and "queer
space." Please send 250 word proposals by email to domenic.beneventi@gmail.com
Top
Caribbean
See also under:
French: Francophone Caribbean Writing
Caribbean Literature and Gender: Issues in Criticism and Theory in
the New Century Roundtable. Proposals are requested for
presentations on a roundtable on critical or theoretical approaches to
Caribbean literature centrally concerned with gender. The period the
roundtable will address is 1980 to the present. Issues included could
include the shift from feminism to gender as a focus of discussion, the
location of gender within historical developments such as postcolonial
nationalism, and the shift from thinking about exile to thinking about
diaspora and transnationalism. Please contact Elaine Savory at savorye@newschool.edu
or savory@sisna.com with your
proposals.
Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican Women Writers This panel
will study the works of contemporary women writers from the
Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Emphasis will be placed on issues of race,
gender and sexuality. Send abstracts to: Elena Martinez, Baruch College,
55 Lexington Avenue New York, NY 10010; or Elena_Martinez@baruch.cuny.edu
Difficult Subjects: Caribbean Women Writers on Power and Abuse
This panel will explore the ways in which Caribbean women writers
address female sexuality and, in particular, the painful subject of
sexual violence against women and girls. We welcome papers in English
that offer scholarly examinations of representations of female sexuality
in literature from the French, Spanish, or Dutch-speaking Caribbean.
Please send abstracts electronically to: Elizabeth Nunez and Jennifer
Sparrow, English Department, Medgar Evers College. jsparrow@mec.cuny.edu
The New Caribbean Diaspora This panel will focus on the new
generation of Caribbean writers who moved to or grew up in the United
States, Canada, and Europe and whose aesthetics distinguish them from
the previous generation. Papers on any aspect of the New Caribbean
Diaspora's aesthetics are welcome. Please email one-page abstracts to
Carine Mardorossian, University at Buffalo, cm27@buffalo.edu
Comparative Literature
See also panels listed under:
American: Transcribed Performance: 20th/21st Century
Talk Poetry
British: Postcolonial Drama and Theatre;
Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century
German: The Importance of Being First in 19th
Century German Exploration; Multicultural, Intercultural, and
Cross-cultural Swiss Literature; Urban Rebels: Turkish and German Youth
in Contemporary German Fiction and Film
Italian: Italian Literature and Translation;
Italian Theatre; La natura nella letteratura italiana
Pedagogy: Researching Scenarios: Drama Pedagogy
for Foreign Language Learning
Popular Culture: The Secret (And Not so Secret)
Origins of Comic Books
Spanish-Portuguese: Se habla español allí:
Hispanophone Literature Outside Latin America and Spain
Theory: Interrogating the Natural; Political
Rhetoric: Discourses of Liberal, Radical, and Deliberative Democracy;
Speaking the Story: Orality and Fiction
The Answering Word: Poetry and Bakhtinian Theory Scholars have
struggled with Mikhail Bakhtin's characterization of poetry as
essentially non-dialogic or resistant to "novelization" and
have offered compelling models for adapting or rereading Bakhtin's genre
theory, which has been applied most frequently to his favored genre, the
novel. If we take as our premise that dialogism, as Bakhtin understands
it, is possible in poetry, what does it look like? How does it manifest
formally? How does dialogism affect our sense of, e.g., the speaker(s)
or addressee(s)? Panel seeks papers that avoid shallowly appropriated
Bakhtinian terms. Send 500-word proposals and brief bios as attachments
to Mara Scanlon at mscanlon@umw.edu. Deadline: 10/05/07
Comedy and Justice in the Contemporary World How does modern
examples of comic art manifest social criticism? This panel explores how
comedy can provoke engagements between haves and have-nots and how forms
of comedy functions in pluralistic societies in particular? Often an
experience of losing control, comedy is associated with experiences of
physical and psychological extremity (laughing at the clown, function of
shame etc), and contain themes philosophical interest: sense/nonsense,
truth/false, cultured/natural. Andrew Schmitz, D'Youville College schmitz@dyc.edu Deadline: 10/01/07.
Conversion and Writing As attested by their biographers, a
number of literary writers have undergone conversions (religious or
secular) during their careers. This panel invites papers that explore
the effects of conversions on an author's work. Papers may include but
are not limited to comparative analyses of the themes or the structure
(e.g. poetics, narration) of pre-conversion and post-conversion works.
Send abstracts to Scott Powers, The University of Mary Washington: spowers@umw.edu.
Deviants and Monsters in Literature and the Arts This panel
focuses on the various figurations of "monsters" and
"deviants" in literature and the arts as physical and
psychological embodiments of the common human experience that deviate
from the socio-culturally defined norm. Why is it that persons that
differ markedly from the "norm"--either in intelligence,
social adjustment, and/or sexual behaviour-are depicted as monstrous
and/or deviants? Inter- and multi-disciplinary contributions from world
literatures and arts are encouraged as well as differing critical
perspectives. Send 300-400 word proposals to Cristina Santos csantos@brocku.ca
Deadline 10/01/07
Eighteenth-Century Epistolary Forms Papers are invited on any
aspect of letters and letter-writing in the literature and culture of
the long eighteenth century. Of particular interest are epistolary forms
other than the novel (verse epistle, dramatic uses of the letter, letter
manuals), as well as contemporary reworkings of eighteenth-century
epistolary texts and genres. Send abstracts to Cecilia Feilla at cfeilla@mmm.edu.
The Ethics of Interdisciplinary Research: Comparative Literature
This panel is interested in engaging scholars who are interested in
questions of interdisciplinarity from a wide range of fields: from
literary studies through to sociology, women's studies, psychology,
philosophy, the arts, history, geography, economics. The purpose of this
panel is to consider interdisciplinary studies and literary studies. How
far can literary texts be poked and prodded? What are the limits (if
any) of literary study? Is literature a discipline at all? Email
abstracts to Janice Zehentbauer jzehentb@brocku.ca
and/or Jonathan Allan jonathan.allan055@sympatico.ca
"If the Lion Could Speak, This Is What He Would Say":
Literary and Anthropomorphism Frequently criticized by ethnologists
and animal rights advocates alike, anthropomorphism is nevertheless the
most common literary technique in the history of writing. Is
anthropomorphism in literature always politically problematic? The
literary criticisms of Carol Adams and Cary Wolfe have provided
different, but still incomplete answers to this undertreated question.
This panel seeks papers that address the politics of anthropomorphism in
literature from poetic, animal rights, ecocritical, cognitive science or
ethnological perspectives. Please send 250 word abstracts to Vincent
Guihan, vjguihan@connect.carleton.ca.
Modernism and Intermediality: Interactions Between Literature,
Music, and Film An examination of the intersections of literature
with music, film, and the media used to convey these forms to listeners
in the modernist period can provide us with insights concerning where we
may be going in our 'postmodern' phase in which literature encounters
digital forms. This panel seeks papers on how literature interacts with
music, film, or new technologies of the first half of the twentieth
century. Contact Robert P. McParland at mcparlandr@felician.edu
The Modernist Manifesto Dada, Futurism and Surrealism appeared
on the Modernist scene as a series of experiments with the limits of the
manifesto genre. Submit an abstract that presents a particular manifesto
from one of the major Modernist movements to: Monica Duchnowski at Duchnowmon@msn.com
The Politics of Global Modernism: Revisiting Colonial Modernity
This panel proposes to examine the modernist cultural production of
marginal territories falling outside the Paris-London-New York nexus. We
will investigate alternative forms of engagement with modernist
aesthetics on the part of marginalized artists, in particular in a
colonial context dominated by orientalism and exclusive concepts of
Eurocentric modernity. Papers should investigate the intersection of
vernacular cultural productions and theoretical/ political critiques of
modernity. Please send 250-word abstract and short CV to Edwige Tamalet
Talbayev, etamalet@ucsd.eduDeadline: 09/30/07.
.
Prescribing Gender in Medicine and Narrative Roundtable. This
roundtable explores gendered representations of healers (physicians,
nurses, midwives, non-Western healers, etc.) and patients in narrative
(literature, popular culture, memoir, visual art). Topics include but
are not limited to: gendered healing "styles," the
intersection of gender and medicine with race, class, disability,
religion, or nation, "reverse" gender stereotypes, the
gendering of particular medical professions or particular medical
conditions, gender and medicine in children's literature. We welcome
papers from a variety of disciplines, historical periods, and
theoretical perspectives. Send 1-page abstracts and CVs to Angela Laflen
Angela.Laflen@marist.edu
and Marcelline Block mblock@Princeton.edu
Deadline 10/01/2007
Reading Virtues and Vices in 18th Century Literature The panel
will explore the ethical effects of reading by focussing on the
relationship between the text and the reader. Are there such things as
good and bad, vicious and bad readings, and to what extent is the
ethical disposition of the reader affected by the virtues and vices of
the characters depicted in a literary text? How can we adequately
describe the dynamics of moral improvement and corruption in the 18th
century novel? Please send abstracts to Konstanze Baron: k.baron@gmx.de
Remembrance and Dismemberment: Modernist and Postmodernist
Revisions This panel will explore how modernist and postmodernist
texts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries revise canonical
texts. Reading these texts as evidencing continuity with or, conversely,
a series of shifts, fissures, and even breaks from prior texts
highlights how the writers place themselves within a larger tradition.
This panel will focus on how writers represent their relationships to
their literary traditions, declaring linguistic and thematic loyalties
or vehemently severing all ties. As revision can take many forms, I am
interested in papers on poetry, fiction, drama, film and television.
Send 1-2 page abstracts to Lisa Perdigao at lperdiga@fit.edu
Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the
Postmodern Debate What constitutes the aesthetic and political
vanguard within the era of late capitalist subsumption? This panel
focuses on the relationship between art and society within postmodernity
and the creative attempts to move beyond its borders. Possible topics
include: vanguard vs. neo-avant-garde aesthetics and politics;
resistance literature; decolonization, localization, and the role of the
artist; recent collective movements against Empire and the creative
responses. Please send inquiries and/or 250-500 abstracts (MS word
attachments only) to John Maerhofer at jjmaer@aol.com.
Ruined Endings and Exit Strategies in Narrative Literature
This panel seeks to understand the various ways in which fiction and
nonfiction narratives deal with closure. Of particular interest are
suspicious or forced happy endings, enigmatic endings that don't fully
deliver, as well as endings that fail to put a closure because of
internal or external dynamics. Panelists may address various repair
strategies such as substitution, contraction, extension, delay, and even
interruption in case of unexpected developments, as well as their
effects on the narrative experience of the reader, linked to the
reader's "desire for an end." Abbes Maazaoui at maazaoui@lincoln.edu.
Speaking in Borrowed Tongues: An Investigation of Appropriative
Literature With the current heated discourse on copyright and
intellectual property, the issue of appropriative literature-which has
enjoyed a rich and diverse heritage throughout the 20th Century and
beyond-becomes further complicated as financial and legal concerns
overshadow aesthetic ones. Is creativity being compromised in the
process? Is the development of new forms, new styles and new voices
being stifled? Proposals addressing the topic from aesthetic, cultural
and legal perspectives are welcome, along with discussion of particular
writers who utilize appropriative techniques. Please send 250-500 word
abstracts with contact information to Michael S. Hennessey, hennessey.michael@gmail.com Deadline: 10/12/07.
Symptomatic Aesthetics: Medical Discourses and Literary
Representations This panel investigates how modern literature,
including literary theory, assimilates, appropriates, (mis)shapes,
aestheticizes, glorifies, mocks, or challenges 19th century medical
discourses (neurology, psychology, psychiatry, phrenology,
psychoanalysis). We look for papers that engage medical texts and
narrative, addressing medical literariness. Email proposals to mblock@princeton.edu,
mmimran@princeton.edu.
Deadline: 10/01/2007
Trans-Cultural Influences, Interpretations, and Encounters: The
Transatlantic Experience This panel considers in the
literary-cultural and theoretical fields the dynamics and detail of the
transatlantic experience with its intense inter-cultural and
trans-geographic experiences, influences, interpretations, and
conflicts. One can chart multiple versions of the psycho-geography of
such interrelations, and yet there remain striking individual
psycho-geographies emerging from the trans-cultural encounters. The
panel seeks fruitful theoretical readings of the various possibilities
and expressions (but also the limits) of Trans-cultural Influence, from
the personal to the political, the aesthetic to the ideological, and the
imagined to the real. Philip Tew, Brunel University philip.tew@brunel.ac.uk
Travel Writing and the Politics of Travel Travel and travel
writing have traditionally been perceived as of little importance to
history at large. More recent studies, however, have demonstrated how
travel and travel writing during colonial and post-colonial times have
had a major impact on constructions of other cultures and subsequently
on inter-cultural power relations. This interdisciplinary panel solicits
contributions to investigate how travel and travel writing have
influenced Euro-American perceptions of non-Western countries and thus
affected discourses and political debates in their times. The panel also
invites contributions about the impact of tourism and the tourist
industries on political structures. Ulrike Brisson, Worcester
Polytechnic Institute: Ubrisson@wpi.edu
What Work Is, Or Was: Twentieth Century Poetry of Work Much of
the poetry of the last 100 years or so has celebrated or taken up images
of farm- and factory-labor, even while actual examples of this kind of
labor grow increasingly scarce, or less visible, in the world around us.
This panel will explore the ways in which poets such as Robert Frost and
Carl Sandburg, historically, as well as poets such as Seamus Heaney and
Philip Levine, more recently, have represented and continue to represent
work in their poems. Send proposals by e-mail to Andrew Mulvania at
Washington&Jefferson College: amulvania@washjeff.edu
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Composition
See also under:
Pedagogy: Interdisciplinary Challenges in the
Teaching of Literature and Environment
Multi-Modal Composition: Writing and the Internet in Composition
Classes Board-Sponsored. This panel invites abstracts that explore
the value of multi-modal composition, discussing the challenges of
effectively integrating the internet into writing assignments. Alex
Reid, SUNY Cortland reida@cortland.edu
Service Learning and Community Involvement in Composition Classes
Board-Sponsored. This panel invites abstracts that examine service
learning as part of composition classrooms. Questions to consider
include: How do service-learning composition sections differ from
traditionally-taught sections (re design and outcome)? In what way(s)
can we teach and apply reflection? How do students apply specific skills
(i.e., paraphrasing) while conducting their community service? To what
extent do you collaborate with agency partners as you design your
syllabus and specific assignments? How do you promote a service-learning
composition class? Papers can be geared for novice and for seasoned
service-learning composition instructors. John Suarez, SUNY Cortland suarezj@cortland.edu Deadline: 10/12/07.
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Film
See also under:
British: Shaw's Pygmalion
Canadian: Taste and See: Critical Approaches to
Black Canadian Film
French: Reverse Im/migration
German: Comparative Approaches to Migrant Women
in German Film; Film and German Victimhood
Italian: From Paper to Screen and Vice Versa;
Mediterraneismi nel cinema italiano; Sensual and Intellectual
Experiences: Food in Italian Literature and Cinema
Spanish-Portuguese: Literature and Film; Latin
American Cinema: Identity and Nation
Cinematic Representations of the Former East Bloc, 2001-Present
How is the Communist era or its legacy portrayed in recent films from
the former East Bloc or its successor states? Papers may examine either
film or television series. Discussions of cinematic representations of
the GDR in recent German films such as Florian Henckel von
DonnersmarkÄOs The Lives of Others are also welcome. Send
abstracts of no more than 250 words to Alexandar Mihailovic cllazm@hofstra.edu.
"I Liked the Book Better": Adapting Literary Text to
American Film Roundtable. This session will be a roundtable
discussion of American film in the twentieth century, focusing on film
that has been adapted from an original text (novel, play, or short
story). The panel will focus on the currency of language as it shifts
from text to a visual medium. Please send inquiries to Allyson Hyland: ahyland@quincycollege.edu.
The Image of the Prostitute in Film and Popular Culture
Roundtable. This roundtable proposes to study in depth the image of the
prostitute in film and in popular culture in the twentieth century.
Efforts will be made to clarify the evolution of the feminine image from
the idealism of past eras to that of the prostitute in the nineteenth
century and, finally, to its current status in cultural venues of the
twentieth century. Send abstracts to Ted Price and Vincenzo Bollettino bollettinov@mail.Montclair.edu
David Lynch's Hollywood Proposals are invited for a panel on
director David Lynch, with a particular emphasis on the "sunshine
noir" trilogy: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire.
Topics might include: Lynch's experimentalism within various genre
conventions-horror, thriller, melodrama, and noir; to what extent
Lynch's films belong to the tradition of Hollywood satire, as well as
their supplemental place as "secret histories" among popular
and scholarly works on American film; and various critical speculation
that Lynch's increasing reflexivity suggests less an attack on Hollywood
than on film form itself. Send 300-word abstract with a short C.V. to
Daniel Burns at dburns2@elon.edu
Narcissism, Masochism, and Contemporary Hollywood Masculinity
This panel calls for psychoanalytic and queer theory analyses of the
represenation of manhood in contemporay Hollywood film. Male narcissism
and masochism will be the central focus. Please contact David Greven at
Connecticut College via email: dgrev@conncoll.edu
Cinema Cinematic approaches to spontaneous individual
creativity. How does cinema inflect or challenge the link between artist
and object? How have films addressed the constitution of creative acts?
How have they balanced the diverse factors that make claims on the
essence of creation in the western tradition, including personal
expression, aesthetic tradition, medial specificity, and ideology?
Essays on Cocteau's Orphic trilogy are especially encouraged, but any
essay on creation in cinema is welcome. 250-500 word abstracts as Word
or .rtf attachments to sean.desilets@gmail.com.Deadline: 10/01/07
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French and Francophone
See also under:
Comparative Literature: "Symptomatic
Aesthetics: Medical Discourses and Literary Representations"
German: "'On the road again' - The
Sociable Highway between France and Germany"
Theory: "Ethical Criticism After
Barthes"
Artful Narrations: Impact of Visual Arts on Narrative We
invite papers, both in French and English, which explore the impact of
visual arts on the narrative structure in contemporary French and
Francophone novels and short stories. Send a 250-word abstract as a Word
document to Vera Klekovkina, USC klekovki@usc.edu
by August 15.
A Crisis in Numbers? Attracting Undergraduate Students to French
Programs Roundtable. In this roundtable, we will discuss ways in
which faculty can attract students to our programs as many of us face
the problem of dwindling numbers. MLA statistics show that undergraduate
enrollments are steadily falling. Yet, many of us are required to
maintain our numbers due to budgetary issues in our
institutions/departments and to safeguard our positions! This roundtable
will assemble colleagues who have devised ways of attracting and
retaining students, such as extra-curricular activities, study-abroad
programs, publicity, program innovation, interdisciplinary innovations
etc. Natalie Edwards, Wagner College: Natalie.Edwards@wagner.edu
Francophone Canadian Writing Board-Sponsored. This panel
invites abstracts on Canadian writing in French in any genre, with a
particular interest in the role of Quebec theatre. Jane Koustas, Brock
University jkoustas@brocku.ca
Deadline: 10/12/07
Francophone Caribbean Writing Board-Sponsored. This panel
invites abstracts on Caribbean writing in French in any genre. Timothy
Gerhard, Cortland University GerhardT@cortland.edu
Francophone Maghrebian Literature Board-Sponsored. This panel
invites abstracts on the Maghrebian novel in French, with particular
interest in the role of cultural "métissage" and its
consequences. Tamara El-Hoss, Brock University: telhoss@brocku.ca Deadline: 9/28/07
Gendered Migrations in French and Francophone Literature
Recent waves of female migration have led to more works by female
migrant writers, describing their own experiences, often in opposition
to those of male protagonists. The female migrant is frequently
portrayed as more resourceful and flexible than her male counterpart.
Why are gendered migrations portrayed so differently, and what is it
that leads authors to present females as more successful than males (or
vice versa) in migration? What tools to authors employ torepresent this
success or failure? Furthermore, could we say these portrayals have any
bases in reality? Please send 250-word abstracts to Christopher Hogarth,
Wagner College christopher.hogarth@wagner.edu
Medieval Precursors of the Modern Novel Papers are invited
that explore how the romances of Chretien de Troyes and other French
medieval writers influenced (positively or negatively) the modern novel
in such areas as plot, character development, and moral instruction.
Kitty Dean, Nassau Community College kittydean@earthlink.net. Deadline: 10/12/07>
Moliere, Past and Present. Board-Sponsored. This panel invites
abstracts on the works of Moliere, as well as abstracts on Moliere's
influence on Francophone theatre and literature. Send abstracts in body
of email to nemlasupport@gmail.com,
with "Molieret" in the subject line. Deadline: 10/01/07
Newly Published Additions to Already "Completed" Oeuvres
This session explores very recently discovered and/or published texts by
already well known and well studied authors. We are seeking to examine
the ways in which newly discovered texts of this kind, published long
after the rest of the author s uvre, shed light on the corpus and also,
in some cases, on the coming to writing of the young author-to-be and on
original iterations of works with which we are familiar. Especially
welcome are autobiographical texts or journals, which offer a unique new
perspective on later works. Send abstracts in body of e-mail to Bethany
Ladimer ladimer@middlebury.edu Deadline: 9/30/07
North African Francophone Theater: An Ignored Plea for Freedom
For North African theater to regain its true leading role in Francophone
Literature, the proposed panel will offer opportunities to present such
authors' theater works, focusing on their plea for freedom, the cultural
or political issues, author's distinctiveness as well as consider why
they are being ignored. Send 1-page abstracts to David Delamatta: david@centrebilingue.org
Poétique de la maison dans le roman français du XIXe siècle
Comment la maison raconte-t-elle dans le roman français du XIXe siècle
? Les analyses pourront porter, notamment, sur toutes les pièces qui la
constituent - salons, chambres, boudoirs, antichambres, cuisines, salles
à manger, alcôves, ateliers, bibliothèques, serres, etc -, et
voudront expliquer la fonction romanesque des espaces domestiques :
leurs scènes types, leurs personnages, leurs gestes, leurs mots, leurs
choses, leurs symboles, voire leurs bruits. Prière d'acheminer un
résumé (250-500 mots) : Jean-François Richer, Dept. of French,
Italian and Spanish, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive N.W.,
Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada jfricher@ucalgary.ca Deadline: 09/30/07
Poetry Reading: Multicultural Voices from the French-Speaking
World Creative Session. Poets writing in French are invited to
submit sample of their work for this creative poetry reading panel.
Please send no more than ten poems, a brief bio including poetry
publications by email to carruggi@newschool.edu
as well as by postal mail to: Dr. Noëlle Carruggi 605 E 14 Street, 8G
New York, NY 10009
Reverse Im/migration Paper proposals (in French or English)
are invited that elucidate the various stakes (political, cultural,
ethical etc.) of ultra-contemporary literary and filmic works from the
Francophone world that stage French nationals as economic im/migrants in
countries that have traditionally been associated with migration to
metropolitan France. Send abstracts (250-500 words) via e-mail
attachment to Helene Sicard-Cowan at helene.sicard-cowan@mcgill.ca.
Textual/Visual Selves: Photography, Art and Performance in French
Autobiography This panel will examine the proliferation of
autobiographical narratives in French that mix the visual and the
textual. Many autobiographers have relied upon photography as a catalyst
for ordering memory and creating a coherent self in narrative; Proust
discusses photographs in A la recherche du temps perdu, Duras
describes images and objects in L'Amant and Ernaux prints and
then describes photographs in L'Usage de la photo, for example.
In this panel, we will compare and contrast writers' usage of visual
elements in autobiographical narrative, ranging from photography to film
to performance to bande dessinée. Natalie Edwards, Wagner College: Natalie.Edwards@wagner.edu
Twenty-first Century French and Francophone Film
Board-Sponsored. This panel will explore turn of the century and
twenty-first century film in French. What new trends are discernable in
most recent French/Francophone cinema? How do filmmakers represent the
new century? How do their films offer continuity with or rupture from
cinematic tradition? 300-word abstracts due to Natalie Edwards by
September 15: natalie.edwards@wagner.edu
Women and War in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French
Literature Literary and autobiographical representations of female
warriors, peacemakers, or victims of war. Papers addressing fictional or
autobiographical works by male and female authors of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries are welcomed. Send abstracts to: Karen
Sullivan;Dept. of European Languages and Literatures;Queens
College/CUNY;65-30 Kissena Bd.; Flushing, NY 11367-1597; karen.sullivan@qc.cuny.edu Deadline: 10/12/07
Top
Gay / Lesbian
See also under:
Comparative Literature: Symptomatic Aesthetics: Medical Discourses
and Literary Representations
German: 'On the road again' - The Sociable Highway between France and
Germany
Theory: Ethical Criticism After Barthes
From Slash Fiction to 3D Erotic Art: Consumers as Producers of
Subversive Queer Pop Culture This panel seeks papers that examine
popular art, produced by consumers, that take known figures/characters
and re-narrate their stories and, ultimately, their sexuality. Products
can include Slash Fiction (e.g., fan-created fiction that rewrites Harry
Potter and Voldemort as lovers or Jack and Sawyer from Lost as
lovers), 3D Art (e.g., Poser renders that take characters or actors and
depict them in "queer" erotic encounters), and any popular
fan-produced art that calls into question hetero-normative assumptions
about sexuality. 250-500 word abstracts to Andrew Schopp at schoppa@ncc.edu.
From the Lesbian Continuum Board-Sponsored. This panel invites
papers that examines fiction and poetry by women-centered authors. These
papers might interrogate theorized links between identity position and
linguistical innovations or style, as well as how biography is often
read into the works, conflating authors and characters and classifying
the work rather than dealing with the text itself. Send abstracts in
body of email to nemlasupport@gmail.com,
with "Lesbian Continuum" in subject line.
The Gay Science: The Current Medical Discourse of Homosexuality
This panel seeks to analyze medical discourse on homosexuality and queer
response in the 21st century. Specifically, we ask whether medical
discoveries that support the existence of a biologically determined
homosexuality may be seen as a challenge to as well as affirmation of
the complications of queer life. Do such discoveries obscure the role
that choice plays in queerness or might they offer protection against
antigay movements? The panel encourages interdisciplinary work on the
relationship between sexual orientation and science. Send abstracts to
Susannah Boyle: sboyle24@hotmail.com
Progress, Device or Novelty Act? Transgendered Images on Film and
Television Roundtable. Since The World According to Garp
(1982) and Switch (1991), transgendered characters (literal,
figurative and fantastic) have been a regular feature of American film
and television, currently as recurring characters on "All My
Children" and "Ugly Betty." This roundtable will
interrogate the value of these characters, in terms of gender fluidity
and acceptance of transgendered people; do they represent progress or
are they the minstrel figures of the new millennium? Send brief
abstracts in the body of email to Elizabeth Abele, SUNY Nassau Community
College: abelee@ncc.edu Deadline: 10/12/07
Queer Miscegenations The panel welcomes analyses of
inter-racial themes, poetics, or the socio-historical politics relative
to same-sex desire in U. S. literature. Despite its
"invisibility" as a focus in literary studies, the subject of
inter-racial presence in LGQBT literature presents an exciting
opportunity to generate theoretical knowledge and critical discussion
concerning the intersections of race, sexuality, and queer/quare
identities. Reginald A. Wilburn, University of New Hampshire raj27@cisunix.unh.edu
Queer Nature This panel seeks to explore the productive
conjunction between queer theory and environmental studies crystallized
in the problematic--but extremely generative--notion of "queer
nature." It will, at once, take seriously queer theorists
historical frustration with the naturalization of nature, especially in
terms of the violent repercussions of naturalizing a heteronormative
nature, but it will also take seriously environmental theorists call to
figure the other-than-human world into our ethico-political theory and
praxis. Please send proposals to Robert Azzarello at razzarello@gc.cuny.edu.
Queer Theory and Becoming This panel seeks to consider
queerness across a range of temporal concerns and in a variety of
critical, theoretical, political, and cultural texts. Our aim is to
articulate what is at stake in this recent turn to time in feminist and
queer thinking. We hope not only to discuss representations of queer
time-the deviations, divagations, resistances, incoherencies, and
perversions of normative linear/reproductive temporality-but also to
consider queer theory as a theory of time and becoming. E. L. McCallum,
Michigan State University; Mikko Tuhkanenm, East Carolina State
University: tuhkanenm@ecu.edu
(Re)constructing Queer Pedagogy Despite the growth of
composition studies as a field of interest in recent decades and the
simultaneous development of LGBT studies and queer theory, these two
areas of interest are rarely brought together. Drawing on George
Hillocks idea that theory forms the basis of coherent classroom
practice, this panel hopes to continue the discussion on queer pedagogy
by soliciting papers informed by theory, praxis, critical reflection,
and experience. Nowell Marshall, UC-Riverside Nowell.Marshall@email.ucr.edu Deadline: Deadline: 10/01/07
What Hath Angels Wrought? Queer Drama Beyond the Millennium
This panel invites papers that will examine the influence of Tony
Kushner's Angels in America as theatrical and cultural
touchstone, as well as how it may have significantly reinscribed queer
plays and playwrights with a new social and aesthetic agenda. Papers
need not focus primarily on Kushner's play but may use it as a
touchstone for a discussion of later works of queer theatre. Please send
abstracts of 250-500 words, in MSWord format, to Dr. Donald P. Gagnon at
DonnEng@aol.com
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German
The Bildungsroman: Limitations, Evaluations, Reinventions This
panel is not interested in reinforcing a conservative, archaic notion of
Bildungsroman, but rather to (re)evaluate the possibilities of the
traditional concept of the genre and to discover literary reinventions
and to reinvent critical approaches. This panel seeks papers that
critically reexamine novels that have been identified as Bildungsromane;
papers that discuss examples of 20th century novels that play with the
genre; and/or critical approaches towards the genre that do not simply
put new wine in old skins but rather contribute to its reinvention and
reanimation as a topic of scholarly interest. Thomas Herold, Harvard
University (therold@fas.harvard.edu).
Comparative Approaches to Migrant Women in German Film This
panel explores what new insights we can gain about the cinematic
representation of (and/or by) migrant women in Germany through
comparative readings with similar films from other countries Questions
to be investigated include differences and similarities in a) narrative
and stylistic ways of depicting key themes such as (im)migrant women s
subjectivity, space, agency, the relationship between the first and
second/third generation, marriage, education, gender roles b) genre c)
intertextuality d) historical and political contexts and references e)
financing, production, exhibition, and distribution and the related
questions availability and reception. Andrea Reimann, Knox College areimann@knox.edu
Connecting Swiss Post-Wall Filmmakers and Writers with
Transnational Germanophone Culture Roundtable. The goal of this
roundtable is to connect the work by Swiss filmmakers and writers with
post-Wall Germanophone texts and culture to find ways of including Swiss
films and literature in the discourse on post-Wall culture. General
questions are: What are productive ways to talk about recent Swiss
culture? What is the place of Swiss nationality in contemporary German
studies? What new avenues has the shift from the national to the
transnational paradigm opened up? Comparative readings of Swiss, German
and Austrian texts and comparisons of cultural institutions are
particularly welcome. Andrea Reimann, Knox College areimann@knox.edu
Education, Indoctrination, or Just Plain Fun? Deconstructing
Popular Children and Youth Literature By describing childhood and
writing child or youth "appropriate" material, authors set
forth codes and perimeters by which children and young adults function
and thus define their society's understanding of that given period of a
person's life. The question posed - education, indoctrination, or just
plain fun? - aims to analyze what and how children and youth books of
different time periods teach, what narrative strategies they employ,
what common tropes and character depictions they offer, what gender
roles they enforce, and to what end. Please e-mail abstracts in English
or German to Ruxandra Marcu rmarcu@artsci.wustl.edu
Exile Literature in 20th Century German Literature This panel
invites contributions on narratives by authors who were affected one way
or the other by the rise of national socialism in the thirties, e.g.
practical implications of going into exile versus staying put
("innere Emigration"). What topics, writing strategies and
narrative devices were prominent in exile literature respectively in
texts by authors of the "innere Emigration" who needed to make
compromises with the Nazi government in order to still be published?
Contact: Elke Nicolai, Hunter College: enicolai@hunter.cuny.edu Deadline: 10/12/07
Film and German Victimhood How can feature films representing
flight, expulsion and Allied bombings be situated in the still ongoing
discourse on the inclusion of German victimhood in German cultural
memory? Panelists are invited to discuss feature films (tv, cinema) from
1945 until today, but also to compare them with allegedly sober and
objective documentaries on flight, expulsion or Allied bombings or
discuss them in conjunction with fictional literary works focusing on
this issue. Send a 250-word abstract to Kai Artur Diers at Kai.Diers@williams.edu Deadline: 9/29/07
German Soundscapes Our knowledge of the world is informed by
our senses, yet sound scholars argue that the role of sound has largely
been ignored. On this panel, we seek to understand Germany through sound
by examining its "soundscapes," defined as "our sonic
environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all
live" (Schafer). We are soliciting paper proposals from German area
studies scholars, who are investigating the role of sound in German
cultural production. Please send a 300-word abstract and short bio to
both organizers: Florence Feiereisen ffeierei@middlebury.edu
and Alexandra Merley Hill amerley@german.umass.edu
German-German Problems: Continuities and Discontinuites in
Post-unification Germany This session wants to discuss
representative literary texts that investigate and reflect continuing
German-German problems and explore united Germany and its discontents.
Papers may focus on depictions and representations of cultural
differences and constructions of national and multicultural identities;
loss of roots and spaces of security and familiarity; dislocation and
spaces of hybridity; the concept of "Leitkultur" and other
public discourses. Please send 200 word proposals to Barbara Mabee at mabee@oakland.edu.
History and Memory: Post-1945 Trauma Revisited in Literary Texts
This panel aims to attract comments on a variety of post-unification
literary and documentary texts: Public memories and personal,
individualized memoirs; transgenerational differences in remembering (as
expressed by second, third, and fourth generations); collective ways of
remembering. - Please email 250-500 word abstracts to Dagmar
Wienroeder-Skinner, Saint Joseph's University: dskinner@sju.edu.
The Image of America in German-Speaking Europe This panel
welcomes submissions that explore how the cultural construct
"America" has been rendered, interpreted, and re-interpreted
from the 18th through the 21st century. Of specific interest are
submissions that incorporate various media and that address works prior
to World War II. Possible questions considered include: How has America
been constructed by German-speaking Europe? What do the representations
of America and Americans say about the contemporary cultural, social,
and intellectual climate in German-speaking lands? Does America embody
hope or disappointment, an ally or an adversary and how is this
relationship articulated? Eric Klaus klaus@hws.edu
The Importance of Being First in 19th Century German Exploration
This panel investigates the trope of "being there first" in
German exploration writing, both fictional and non-fictional. Being the
first to visit a place was instrumentalized by explorers and armchair
travelers to produce bodies of knowledge and to take territorial
possession, among others. Possible topics for submissions include but
are not limited to the textual erasure of the native guide, the primacy
of visuality and eyewitness testimony, implications of oral history and
native mapping, and colonial fantasies and German emigration. Regine
Heberlein, Fairfield Historical Society rheberlein@fairfieldhs.org Deadline: 10/12/07
Multicultural, Intercultural, and Cross-cultural Swiss Literature
Writers of the second and third generation of immigrants and
inter-racial families in Switzerland use their otherness to challenge
and open up traditional Swiss cultures. One of the results is a rich,
new literary genre: immigration or intercultural literature in which
identity is a main focus while politics per se is basically absent.
Su
