2011 CFP: Comparative Languages
See also under:
British and Anglophone: “John Milton and the History of the Book”; “The Languages of James Joyce”; “‘My dwelling place among you’: Faith and Landscape in the Middle Ages”; “Performing Knowledge”
German: “Suddenness (Plötzlichkeit) and Literature”
Italian: “The Ecogothic in Italian Literature and Culture”; “Language(s) and Politics in/of Italian Theatre”; “Petrarch, Petrarchism and Beyond”; “Representations of Dante’s Inferno in the Visual Arts and in Literature”; “Traveling in and out of Italy”
LGBTQ: “LGBTQ Identities in Latin America”
Pedagogy: “Teaching Translation in the 21st Century”
Professional: “Translation: The ‘Next Big Thing’ to Revitalize the Humanities?”
Russian/Eastern European: “Russian Poetry: from Golden Age to Silver Age”
Spanish/Portuguese: “Women, Love, and Eroticism in Latin American Poetry”
Theory and Literary Criticism: “The Spatial Turn in Literary Theory”
Transnational Literatures: “Complicated Space: Reading the Transnational Text”; “Contemporary Nordic Literature”; “The Legacy of Scandinavian Drama”; “Traditional and Modern Medicine in Caribbean Literature”
Women’s and Gender Studies: “The Devil Comes in Many Genders: Depictions of the Diabolical in Literature”; “The Female Player in European Fiction (1780-1900): Gender Issues”
- Aesthetics and Politics of Literary Multilingualism
- Literary multilingualism has an ancient and continuous history and yet scholars and critics have taken up this issue only intermittently. This panel aims to discuss recent theories of literary multilingualism, its aesthetic elements and political implications as well as specific examples able to provide relevant models of analysis. Please send abstract (200-300 words) to Paola Gambarota, gambarot@rci.rutgers.edu
- Duly Noted: Approaches to Paratext
- This panel welcomes papers that question and analyze the roles and uses of paratexts in literature. It aims to show a broad spectrum of modalities of paratext across historical, national, linguistic, and technological boundaries. Possible topics include the origins of paratextual norms in different traditions, issues of authorship and intellectual property, paratexts as constructing alternate narratives, and paratexts as political tools. Please send 250-300 word abstracts in English to Anna Strowe (astrowe@complit.umass.edu).
- The Fin de Siècle and the Idea of ‘End’ and Degeneration
- This panel welcomes papers dealing with the different ideas and the representation of ‘end’ and degeneration in the arts and literature of the Western European fin de siècle. Among other things, the comparative study will reveal how the concept of degeneration is related to the national culture and identity. Marja Harmanmaa <marja.harmanmaa@helsinki.fi>
- Fractured Identities and Transgressive Practices in the Fin-de-Siècle Novel
- This panel will explore a number of preoccupations from fin-de-siècle European narrative (1880-1900) by examining texts notable for their decadent vision. Such works, imbued with an indelible sense of perversity, artificiality, egoism, and curiosity, present fractured identities and transgressive practices in order to consider l’Inconnaissable (the unknowable). Topics may include but are not limited to degeneration, fecundity, hysteria, industrialization, and sexual corruption. Send 500 word abstracts to Bryan Cameron at bryanc@sas.upenn.edu.
- The Immortal Fairy Tale: Re-writings and Re-visions (Seminar)
- Recent literary production has seen a resurgence of a re-appropriation of the fairy tale that addresses current issues of identity construction inherent in its deconstruction of fairy tale stereotypes. The fairy tale genre has been re-written and re-visioned from a variety of perspectives: feminist theory, alterity, men studies and gender studies (to name a few). The fairy tale has become “immortal” in that it is continuously adapting to its new socio-cultural environment. Submit 250 word abstracts to Cristina Santos at csantos@brocku.ca.
- Literary Dress: Fashioning the Fictional Self
- This panel seeks to analyze how fashion operates in literature, with a particular interest in the concept of ‘fashion’ as a verb. Paper topics might include, but are not limited to: fashion as a Foucauldian technology of self; the pro-consumerist ‘girl-power’ movement as reaction to second-wave feminism; self-fashioning in the biography and autobiography; theories and criticism of text and fashion. Please send inquiries or 500-word abstracts as MSWord attachments to Heath Sledge and Helen Dunn at confabstracts@gmail.com
- New Latin American Writing in the U.S.
- This panel invites papers that examine the role of new Latin American writing in the U.S today. Fifty years after what was labeled as the “boom,” how are we approaching new Latin American texts? What do recent critiques reveal about our understanding and expectations of literary works written by Hispanic writers (writing in English, Spanish, or ‘Spanglish’)? What is the new Latin American narrative and what is getting lost in translation? Email abstracts (250-500 words) to Bernabé Mendoza (San Francisco State University) at mendozas@sfsu.edu
- Revolutionary Terror (Seminar)
- We will also discuss how the French Revolution has been represented in literature and philosophically remembered. This panel welcomes discussions of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophical sources (Rousseau, Robespierre, Kant, Burke, Marx) as well as later texts (Bataille, Blanchot, Lyotard, Arendt, Lefort), including works of fiction, that represent the revolution. Send 500 word abstracts via email (MSWORD files only) to Trisha Brady, SUNY at Buffalo, tmbrady@buffalo.edu.
- The Space of Memory
- How do writers capture and locate the capricious memory within river of time and space? How does collective memory interact with personal memory? How is memory perceived through senses, conceived, and reserved? How does the act of creative writing relate to the writers’ cultural, racial and personal past? How can memory be dead, alive or incarnated? This panel welcomes any theory in relation to space and memory, and the genres of film and literature as they relate to the themes of memory. Yu-Min Chen <yumchen@indiana.edu>
- The Specter of Degeneration in 19th Century Literature
- We invite papers analyzing degeneration in Western and non-Western works of, or portraying, the 19th century. What do fictions of degeneration tell us about the scientific, sexual and cultural politics of the 19th century? In what contexts is the fear of degeneration exacerbated or sublimated at the end of the century? How does contemporaneous biological theory become literature? Comparative approaches and papers dealing with 19th century popular literature welcomed. 400 word abstracts to Ana Oancea, aio2101@columbia.edu.
- Unreliability as a Narrative Trope in Postcolonial Literature
- This panel seeks papers that address the absence of reliable perspective as an aesthetic, ethical or political practice in postcolonial literature. Papers on postcolonial novels, memoirs, travel writing and comparative studies of postcolonial and Western texts are welcome. Please send inquiries or 250-300 word abstract in MS word document or PDF to Sohineeroy@hotmail.com
