2011 CFP: British and Anglophone

British and Anglophone: “Dickens in 2012: Preparing for Boz’s Bicentennial”

Cultural Studies and Film: “Detective Fiction and Other Genres: Friends or Foes?”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Comparative Approaches to Early Modern Spanish and British Drama”

Transnational Literatures: “Journeys of the Bicultural Self: Narrative Geographies from the Middle East”; “Memory of Borders, Borders of Memory: Life Writing at a Distance”; “Modernism, Modernity, and Politics: Face-off or Interface?”; “Post/Colonial Nostalgia in South Asian Literature”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing”; “Flânerie and the Rise of the Modern Urban Woman”; “Interdisciplinary Studies and Women Modernists”

African Modernisms, African Modernities: This panel will explore the intersections between modernist studies and African literary studies. Of particular interest are papers that address how African literary engagements with both modernism and modernity evaluate and lead us to rethink a notion of the modern that has traditionally been centered in Europe. Please send 200-300 word abstracts to Mark DiGiacomo (markjd@eden.rutgers.edu) or Megan Paustian (mpausti@rutgers.edu).
Amateur Performance in the Long Nineteenth Century: The ubiquity of amateur performance in the long nineteenth century (1780-1914) is often peripherally mentioned but rarely made the primary focus of scholarship on the period. Proposals are invited that consider country home theatricals, performance aboard naval and merchant vessels, middle-class parlor theatricals, school and university performances, amateur benefit productions, and anything in-between. Please submit a proposal of 250-500 words electronically to (mary.isbell@gmail.com)
Arthurian Avatars: The King Arthur Myth from Medieval to Modern Times: The myth of King Arthur has appeared in many forms, including prose and lyric romances, serious and satiric novels, operas and musicals, films and graphic novels. Each version offers new insights into the ethical, theological, psychological and socio-political ramifications of the chivalric ideal. Why has this legend retained its fascination over the centuries? How does it inform our understanding of culture and cultural values, such as honor, devotion, and both spiritual and carnal love? Send 250-400 word abstract to Josh.Cohen@massart.edu.
The Black Maritime Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century: This panel invites papers on Black Atlantic sailors, migrants, slaves and pirates in nineteenth-century maritime literature, addressing the variety of literary forms engaged in representing sea-faring. Questions papers might consider are: In what terms are the multiple racial geographies of maritime experience described and narrated? What sorts of literary and cosmopolitan cultural exchange are developed along with the intermingling of different racial and ethnic groups aboard ships? Kristie Allen <kristie.allen08@gmail.com>EXTENDED to 10/10
Bodies and Victorian Machines: This panel will examine the representational and material relations between bodies and machines in the Victorian era: laborers-as-machines; factory accidents; robots and automatons; prostheses and machine-as-appendage; women as baby machines; networks and communication machines. Also welcome are papers that explore this topic in Steampunk texts and contexts. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Jessica Kuskey jekuskey@syr.edu
Coming of Age: The Australian Young Adult Novel: Board Sponsored. This session welcomes abstracts on novels written by Australian authors with youths as the main protagonists, including the recent novels The Book Thief and Vernon God Little. Andrew Schopp <schoppa@ncc.edu>
Contemporary Theatre in South Africa: Board-Sponsored. This session seeks papers exploring South African drama in the 20th century and up to the present. Papers might explore tragic, comic, historical, musical, ethnic, postcolonial, subcultural, mythic, religious, gender-bending, genre-blending, traditional, or innovative themes or techniques. Send inquires and abstracts (as MS Word attachments) to Suzanne Kaebnick: Suzanne.kaebnick@ncc.edu. EXTENDED TO 10/10
Creativity and Imagination at the Fin De Siècle (1870-1910) (Roundtable): This panel will discuss the roles, powers and dangers attributed to creativity and the imagination at the fin de siècle. Inspired by evolutionary science and experimental psychology, many writers of this era took the mind’s faculty of imagination as their subject. The topic preoccupied New Women writers, utopian socialists, and those interested in drug addiction alike. Since this topic has yet to undergo sustained critical consideration, this roundtable seeks to raise the profile of this emergent field of inquiry. (emccormick@lagcc.cuny.edu)
The Criminal Underworld in Medieval Literature: How does medieval literature imagine criminal transgression? Do texts portray criminal transgression in the same way as moral transgression? What is the role of punishment in medieval literature? Papers will consider such themes as morality, legality, perceptions of the body and the body politic, social cooperation, community, conflict, and conflict resolution. Please send abstracts to Pamela Longo, Jeremy DeAngelo, and Jeanette Zissell via crimenemla@gmail.com
Dickens in 2012: Preparing for Boz’s Bicentennial: In 2012, Dickensians around the globe will mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth. This panel seeks contributions to a general discussion of how we can join the celebration in our classrooms and communities, including suggestions about exhibits, course modules, service learning projects or readings and/or performances of Dickens’s works. One-page abstracts may be sent via regular or electronic mail to Mary Ann Tobin, English Department, Triton College, 2000 Fifth Avenue, River Grove, IL 60171 or mtobin@triton.edu.
Dracula and Beyond: The Evolution of the Vampire: This panel seeks papers that explore the figure of the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, and popular culture, including Stoker’s Dracula and its literary predecessors and descendents. Papers should address the evolution of the metaphorical significance of vampires as cultural barometers for analyzing themes of sexuality, xenophobia, contagion, and/or consumption. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Anne DeLong at delong@kutztown.edu
Drag, Dress & Disguise in Eighteenth-Century Novels: Though masquerades were roundly denounced by many in pamphlets and sermons, and the ease of the lower-classes to ape their betters sartorially worried preachers and snobs alike, the novels of the eighteenth-century portray masquerades, disguises, and class cross-dressing in a variety of lights, both positive and negative. This panel will explore these tropes in order to facilitate a discussion of eighteenth-century discourses on dress, sexuality, class and empire. Please send abstracts of 250 words to Ula Lukszo (ulukszo@ic.sunysb.edu).
Economies of Witchcraft in African Literature: The goal of this panel is to provide a forum for exploring intersections between witchcraft, political economies, and African literature. How have African writers approached the problem of witchcraft? What do these approaches suggest about dynamics of modernity, gender, medicine, religion, science, history, and, above all, economics? Please send 250-300 word abstracts to timothy.johns@murraystate.edu.
Facing In-Yer-Face Drama: This panel will explore lasting impact of the In Yer Face Theater movement. This panel will profile the subsequent playwrights, producers, and directors that transformed the legacy of In Yer Face from forgettable phase to instrumental movement in British drama. Please send inquiries or abstracts to bartley.sean@gmail.com.
Feeling In Common: Cultivating Sympathy in the Writings of George Eliot (Seminar): This seminar proposes to consider the aesthetic, social, and ethical significance of communal feeling in George Eliot’s writing. The extension of sympathy is the aesthetic and ethical aim of Eliot’s fiction, but this aim is complicated and limited by differences of geography, class, culture, nation, and gender. Eliot’s exploration of the dynamics of communal feeling thus provides a rich site for considering nineteenth-century projects of culture formation. Please send 250-300 word abstracts to Meghan Freeman at mfreeman@tulane.edu
‘I am born’: The Characters of Charles Dickens: Saluting the 2012 Boz Bicentennial, this panel explores Charles Dickens’s art of characterization in his novels and stories. The ability of readers to visualize figures in OT, CC, DC, TTC, and GE, for example, links his oeuvre with the allegorical tradition of Spenser, Bunyan, Hogarth and Grimm. Papers analyzing Dickens’s adaptation of allegory in his character portrayals are as welcome as those analyzing the way characters have been further adapted by the stage, cinema, and visual arts. Send 1-page abstracts to Wm Moeck (moeckw@ncc.edu).
Intellectual and Manual Labor in Early Modern England (Seminar): Focused on early modern England, this seminar will explore interrelations between intellectual and manual labor, ambiguities inherent in the concept of labor, and models and metaphors of labor. Papers might consider, for instance, representations of one form of labor in terms of another, divisions of labor in domestic and other spaces, and management of agrarian labor—in poetry, drama, prose fictions, sermons, and other texts. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to logans@msu.edu.
John Milton and the History of the Book: Complementing Rutgers exhibition of Milton’s printed and manuscript work, this panel will explore problems in the history of the book in the 17th century, focusing on various aspects of the material text and the history of reading: the relationship between manuscripts and printed texts, the ways in which books were marked by readers, the relationship between author and stationer, and the problems of authorship in early modern texts. Papers need not be focused on Milton. Thomas Fulton (thomas.fulton@rutgers.edu)
The Languages of James Joyce: This panel welcomes papers investigating Joyce’s multilingualism. What are the aesthetic, ethic and political implications of crossing language boundaries, narrating through multilingual puns and polyglot pastiche in Joyce’s works? Suitable topics include the author’s complicated relation with Irish, the relationship between Joyce’s multilingualism and cosmopolitanism, and the challenge of translating Joyce’s multilingual texts. Send 250-word abstract to salvatop@rci.rutgers.edu and mkager@eden.rutgers.edu
Magic and Modernism: What is the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology, and the occult on the development of early Modernism, Surrealism, and Neo-Romanticism in the first part of the twentieth century? How does magic function in literary and visual narrative representations as a counterpoint to modernity’s transparency and rational progress? Inquiries and 300-500 word abstracts exploring the tension between progressive modernity and romantic knowledge to Noreen O’Connor, King’s College, noreenoconnor@kings.edu.
Marvell and the Theorization of History: This panel will examine the major poems of Andrew Marvell through innovative modes. It will highlight approaches that theorize history and yet avoid the common emphases on high politics and micro-history. And it is interested in attempts to tackle critical enigmas, such as coming to terms with an oeuvre that includes perhaps the greatest carpe diem poem in English, “To His Coy Mistress,” and yet often also exhibits a marked tendency to avoid adult sexuality. Philip Mirabelli philmirabelli@aol.com
Midnight’s Children: Thirty Years Later: Board Sponsored. Thirty years after winning the Booker Prize, Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), continues to garner critical, scholarly, and popular acclaim (in 2008, it was awarded the title of Best of the Booker). This panel will draw together papers that consider the novel’s place in Rushdie’s oeuvre, its influence on contemporary fiction, and any new perspectives that might cast new critical light on it. Send abstracts in body of email to Neela Saxena <neela.saxena@ncc.edu> with ‘Rushdie’ in the subject line.
Mothers of the Novel: Women’s Writing of the Eighteenth Century: This panel seeks proposals for papers treating the English-language novel and women’s writing as it emerged in the eighteenth century. How did women contribute to the formation of this genre, and how did they use it to debate such issues as masculinity and femininity, Englishness and otherness, power and powerlessness? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Kristine Jennings at kjennin1@binghamton.edu.
Muriel Spark: Before, During and After The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: The panel seeks papers on the works of Muriel Spark, poetry, prose, and literary criticism. Papers might address how Sparks’ career has been defined by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Sparks’ experimentation with the novel as compared to other writers such as Ian McEwan or Flann O’Brien, Sparks’ place as a Scottish woman writer, and her work as a literary critic. Papers on teaching Sparks’ work are also welcome as are treatments of the film, radio, and theater adaptations of her work. Beverly Schneller: beverly.schneller@millersville.edu.
‘My dwelling place among you’: Faith and Landscape in the Middle Ages: This panel seeks papers addressing these questions: How does cosmology inform representations of place? How are representations of places in medieval texts dependent upon Scriptural authority? How do medieval landscapes self-consciously mirror Biblical landscapes? Do medieval metaphors of place assume a Biblical cosmology? In what ways do medieval narratives explicitly reference Biblical landscapes as an aid to commentary upon social or political concerns of their day? Send abstracts to Erin Mullally at mullalee@lemoyne.edu
Narrative is the Essence of History: The History of the Historical Novel (Roundtable): This roundtable will explore the genre of historical fiction. Topics include: reception; historical context; historiographic and literary theory; fact and fiction; reappraisal of those who have not received their critical due; “serious” and “popular” historical fiction; recent subgenres within historical fiction, etc. What is the essence of historical fiction? Why does it continue to be such a popular and resilient genre? What is its history? Please submit 250-300 word abstracts (MSWord) to Jackie Cameron at jackiec159@hotmail.com.
Neomedievalism: Neomedievalism, as cultural antithetical fantasy to our ongoing “modernity,” has since Umberto Eco’s 1973 essay “Dreaming of the Middle Ages,” developed as mode of global/local geopolitical and socio-economic analysis. This panel seeks papers on aspects of neomedievalism in Renaissance to contemporary literature and popular culture (film, RPGs and videogames, comics, music), and sociopolitical theories (nation state fragmentation, faith vs. science, sovereignty, the postsecular, neoconservatism). 300-word abstracts to daniel.lukes@nyu.edu
New Approaches to Early Modern Historical Drama: This panel seeks to elicit new work on the history play of the English renaissance. Submissions on any aspect of the historical drama of the period are welcome, including studies of individual plays and playwrights. Especially desirable is work that seeks to re-evaluate how we contemplate the history play in terms of genre. Miles Taylor <taylorme@lemoyne.edu>
New Old Stories: Reinventing African Narratives in Black British Fiction: While the conventions of the European novel shape the work of contemporary Black British authors such as Diran Adebayo, Diana Evans, and Valerie Mason-John, their fiction is informed in equal measure by African narrative traditions, which the authors engage in productive dialogic relationships with modern European novelistic discourses. This panel will explore the appropriation, reinvention and transformation of African narratives by British novelists of African descent. Send abstracts to Magdalena Maczynska <mmaczynska@mmm.edu>.
New Perspectives on Victorian Sensation Fiction and Modernity: Panel participants should examine specific text(s) that demonstrate literary, historic and cultural links between sensation fiction and Modernity. 500 word Abstract and CV to Sophie Lavin SUNY Stony Brook: blavin@optonline.net. Abstracts that explore underrepresented texts and/or authors are especially encouraged.
The New William Golding: This panel will seek to trace the recent progress of Golding studies. Can Golding be read as a constituent of popular cultural movements of his period, such as the Angry Young Men? Does he fit with Lessing’s fabular discourse? Papers studying any aspect of Golding’s work, his cultural ties in Britain from the fifties to the eighties, the reasons for his relative obscurity, and/or his contribution to literary studies more broadly are welcomed. Send 500wd (max) abstracts to nckprkr@gmail.com w/ Subject: ‘Golding Panel’ EXTENDED TO OCT. 10/10
Performing Knowledge: This panel invites papers that examine how literary texts perform knowledge, and how literature becomes an object of scholarly knowledge in a variety of disciplinary settings. Panelists might address literary representations of the cleric, the virtuoso, or the pedant; the use of scholarly paratexts (the gloss, the appendix, the footnote); or, more broadly, the influence of disciplinarity and professionalization on the literary text. Send abstracts to Sean Barry, sean.barry@rutgers.edu, and John Savarese, john.savarese@rutgers.edu.
‘Quit the road to ill-being’: Nineteenth-Century Ecocriticism: This panel invites ecocritical readings of 19th-century British literature. The Romantics are better known for their ecological consciousness, but how did the Victorians relate to the non-human world? react to industry? I am interested in “against the grain” readings: discussions of Austen, Scott, or Victorian authors engaging with urban spaces or transforming landscapes. How do these readings shed light on our current climate crisis? Please e-mail abstracts of 250-500 words to Margaret Wright, mswright@ic.sunysb.edu.
Re-tellings: Literature as Literary Criticism: Whether we call them twice told tales or parallel texts, creative re-tellings locate their source in previous texts, inspired by them, responding to them, or indeed, writing against them. This panelinvites proposals that examine not only the ways in which twice told tales respond to previous works but how the re-tellings function as a form of literary criticism transforming the original story. Please direct queries and / or submit proposals and a brief biography to rbode@trentu.ca.
Religion in the Shelley Circle: In recognition of the 200th anniversary of Percy Shelley’s The Necessity of Atheism, this panel encourages participants to examine the works of the younger Romantics in terms of their treatment of religion. Papers specifically on the writers of the Shelley circle are especially encouraged, but those focusing on other writers of the time or which consider connections to writers of the previous generation of Romantics will also be considered. Proposals should be emailed as MS Word attachments to L. Adam Mekler, adam.mekler@morgan.edu.
Renaissance Trauma: This panel seeks papers that explore the experience and/or representation of trauma in Early-Modern texts and of how Early-Modern cultural, religious, and political institutions dealt with trauma. Papers that look at trauma theory and its use in Early-Modern studies are also invited. Send 250-500 word abstracts and a brief biography or CV to Paul Rosa <Paul.Rosa@ncc.edu>
Revisiting Easter 1916: In the words of William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising gave birth to a new and ‘terrible beauty,’ which in five years will see its 100th birthday. Looking ahead to this centennial, this panel session will reexamine the literary, cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of the Easter Rising. Please submit 300-400 word abstracts to William Chad Stanley, Wilkes University, chad.stanley@wilkes.edu.EXTENDED TO 10/10
Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature (Seminar): The seminar session seeks to explore the complex and paradoxical relationship between the discourses of philosophy and literature focusing on the works of one of the 20th century European masters Samuel Beckett. It encourages papers on Beckett’s reading of philosophers and vice versa to problematize the philosophy-literature interface. Please send your abstracts (300-500 words) to Arka Chattopadhyay, Jadavpur University at the following e-mail-ids--arkaless@gmail.com.
Samuel Beckett’s Bilingualism: This panel will address the specific question of bilingualism in the work of Samuel Beckett. How can we understand this unique literary language? Can Beckett’s bilingualism be understood as a phenomenon that goes beyond linguistic boundaries? Please submit 300-500 word abstracts in French or English on any aspect of Beckett’s bilingualism to Nadia Louar, Email: louarn@uwosh.edu.
Secrets and Surveillance in the Victorian Novel: This panel seeks papers that will consider the Victorian novel’s preoccupation with secrets and issues of privacy. How do Victorian novelists conceptualize the interplay between secrets and surveillance in their texts? What is the cultural significance of the Victorian novel’s attention to secrecy? And what does the preoccupation with images of surveillance in Victorian texts reveal? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Karina Everett, everett@fordham.edu.
Shakespearean Adaptations and Appropriations (Roundtable): Shakespeare and his characters sell everything from fishing equipment to candy. Popular television shows and movies have been inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. This roundtable will explore the ways in which Shakespeare and his plays ‘appear’ in modern popular culture. Participants will consider how these appropriations and adaptations use Shakespeare and examine the impact of these variations in the modern world. Please send an proposal of 250 words to Pamela Monaco, Brandman University, pmonaco@brandman.edu.
‘The record of bitter moments’: Prison Writing as a Genre: This panel seeks papers on the role of prisons in textual and literary creation. What are the various prison experiences across time periods--the gaol, the bridewell, the convent, the workhouse-prison, the psychiatric hospital--and how does each serve as a site of cultural production? How does the prison intersect with issues of gender, class, and nation? How does prison writing fit with other generic forms? Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and brief biographical statements to Kristina Lucenko, kristina.lucenko@stonybrook.edu.
Theorizing the Victorian Novel: This session will explore the ways in which literary theory can be helpful in illuminating Victorian novels and those accompanying social contexts and issues that we find in the Victorian age. How might Victorian novels in turn be helpful in illuminating different schools of theory? (Robert Lougy, Penn State University, rxl1@psu.edu)
Transnational Ireland: The Celtic Tiger and Beyond: This panel seeks papers exploring how literary and filmic representations of Ireland have been affected by both the Celtic Tiger and its precipitous end. How is the Irish identity negotiated within a transnational context? How have new models of representation influenced contemporary artists? How has the transnational transcended the hegemony of patriarchal structures to provide a more significant platform for women’s voices? Send inquiries or abstracts (as MS Word attachments) to Daniel Shea, Mount Saint Mary College: shea@msmc.edu.
Twentieth-Century Blake: This panel seeks to find new links between Blake and the twentieth-century writers with whom he is most often associated - Yeats, Huxley, and Lawrence, among others - and to put Blake’s art in dialogue with other artists, including graphic novelists, filmmakers, and non-Anglo-American writers. Submissions that address Blake’s relationship to issues in contemporary philosophy will also be considered. Please send 300-500-word abstracts as Word or PDF attachments to Jon Gagas, Temple University, jongagas@temple.edu.
Urban Spaces and Contact Zones in Early 20th Century Literature: This panel is interested in the modern metropolis’s complex relationship to the periphery and in recasting the conversation by examining literary urban representations of diasporic, migrant, and marginal communities emerging within the built environment. This session will explore the literary city as a material and mythologized space to ask how urban spaces become sites of contact that produce narratives of identity/community/exchange/movement etc. in British and American literature. Abstracts to sarahcornish@gmail.com
Victorian Women Writers: Constructions of Masculinity: Few critics have addressed fully the various models of masculinity extant in British Victorian women’s writings. How are men ‘constructed’? Do these women writers adhere to the same ideals of Victorian manliness as male authors? This panel will focus on Victorian women writers’ representations of masculinity in the mid to late nineteenth-century. We welcome abstracts on British authors ranging from Elizabeth Gaskell to Florence Nightingale. Email 250-500 word abstracts to KJEPIKE@salisbury.edu and Kristin.LeVeness@ncc.edu
Wilde Family Values: This panel invites papers that examine either the lives and works of members of Oscar Wilde’s family—Jane Francesca Wilde (“Speranza”), Constance Lloyd, Vyvyan Holland, Dolly Wilde, Merlin Holland, etc.—or representations from any media of these figures, including biopics, stage dramas, and Neo-Victorian novels. Margaret D. Stetz, University of Delaware, stetzm@udel.edu

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