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Call For Papers Please submit individual abstracts for the listed panels below to the contact information provided with each individual panel. Because of the extended deadline for panel proposals, the new deadline for individual abstracts is October 8, 2003. Who Is a Woman? Who Wants to Be One? - New 10/02/03 “One is not born, but becomes a woman,”; declared Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. Clearly, in The Second Sex, this is not a particularly cheering prospect. And in fact, for many women, even today, it is more a calamity than a cause for celebration. Our panel seeks to explore various notions of womanhood and reactions to them, celebratory and otherwise. In the last sixty years or so, our understanding of the process of becoming a woman and the production which it results has changed considerably. Furthermore, feminist movements sparked in part by de Beauvoirs philosophizing have changed the world in which discussions of femininity and the female take place. Feminist theory has shown that the meaning of womanhood is culturally inflected in ways de Beauvoir didn’t address. Feminist theorists from a range of perspectives have clearly demonstrated that, not only is gender a social construct, it is constructed and performed quite differently in different times and communities. Thus, the very meaning of womanhood is dependent on ethnic, historical, and social contexts. Our goal in this panel is to explore literary representations of these different constructions of femaleness and femininity, especially as they intersect with other types of identity constructions (race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation). In this exploration of comparative constructs of femaleness and femininity, we would also like to examine resistance to and acceptance of these cultural norms -- and creative alternatives to them too.
Comparative World Literature/AIS Co/chair: Global networks after de Landa’s A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History and Negri’s Empire Taking its point of departure from two texts-- de Landa's A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, and Hardt and Negri's Empire--proposals should address any of these texts in the context of contemporary issues of globalization. Specific proposals addressing the ways in which these texts transform the concept of networks in a comparative and/or global context are especially welcome. Please send abstracts to both Phillip Armstrong, armstrong.202@osu.edu and Gene Holland, holland.l@osu.edu. Phillip Armstrong and Gene Holland "Perverse" Desires and Trans/national Politics What is currently called the era of the postmodern is marked by redistributions of intensities, strange connections, but also radical cuts and separations. Flows of capital, goods, information, and people are closely linked to the traumatic experiences of war, exile, poverty, dictatorship, terrorism, ecological crises. How are such constellations connected to forms of
"perverse" desires and their representation across different
media, to queernesses (from gay/lesbian to sado-masochism, to cybersex...),
to pleasures that challenge notions of normativity? Between commodification, pleasure, and pain, what are the possibilities of such "queer" desires and practices to embody, perform, re-enact, use, and criticize inter/cultural political formations? Across different cultures and disciplines, through theory-informed approaches, this panel seeks to explore strategies of connecting "perverse" desire to trans/national politics. Please send your abstracts and queries to: Andrea Bachner, Or: Itziar Rodriguez de Rivera "The Translatress in her Person Speaks:" Women Translators and the Art of Cultural Mediation. This session will attempt to explore various aspects of women writers' involvement in the linguistic/cultural mediation of the past five hundred years. Often labeled as a secondary/derivative activity, translation nonetheless offered women access to the world of letters, giving them an opportunity to contribute to the intellectual life of their times. As a matter of fact, translations often helped to start literary careers (Mary Wollstonecraft's translations of Jacques Necker and Christian Salzmann, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translation of Aeschylus and George Eliot's translation of David Friedrich Strauss are just a few examples). Participants may choose to focus on the following writers: Mary Sidney, Margaret Tyler, Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, Charlotte Smith, Germaine de Stael, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Dorothea Veit-Schlegel, Henriette Herz, Karolina Pavlova, George Eliot, Margaret Fuller, Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Constance Garnett, Willa Muir, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Gayatri Spivak, Barbara Godard, Suzanne Jill-Levine. Abstracts on cultural/identity mediation by these and other women writers/translators are also welcome. Anna Barker Translationality Ilan Stavans recently noted that “modernity…is not lived through nationality but through translationality,” commenting on the essential, though often unacknowledged, role of translation in today’s world. The seminar I propose seeks to explore the relationship between translation and cultural life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Specifically, how does translation figure within what is called “globalization”? How might a heightened awareness of translation and the role it plays in literature and other aspects of cultural life—law, politics, economics, information technology, ‘the media,’ etc.—help us revise and refine our thinking about the increasingly interwoven quality of our cultures? How might theoretical insights into translation complement/contradict social science theories of globalization? How might such insights deepen our understanding of contemporary writing and of teaching in the humanities? Sandra Bermann Cosmopolitan Writing How do writers imagine global stories? This panel seeks to examine how cosmopolitanism can be represented, asking how literature attempts to forge imagined communities across social and political borders. What are the possibilities and the limitations of works that aspire toward diverse cosmopolitan ideals? How might novels, poems, plays, films, and other forms of art challenge or reshape current scholarly understandings of cosmopolitanism? Shameem Black Places, Memories, Citations The seminar explores the idea of the “network” in the context of premodern literary and artistic practice. One point of departure is the text—verbal or visual; in manuscript or in print; as composed by an author or as re-composed by readers and beholders. Texts are themselves classically pictured as networks of meaning and association, weaving multiple threads to form a single tissue. But texts are also characterized by their connections with (and conflicted responses to) other texts through the play of topoi and reminiscences, echoes and allusions, citations and revisions. So in addition to examining texts as independent networks of meaning, the seminar explores their location in wider, intertextual systems of community and communication—traditions, filiations, disciplines, schools. While the “ethnic” and “global” seem less pertinent, the seminar welcomes notions of ethnos, the related theme of ethos, and the worlds that ethnoi inhabit as distinct yet interdependent ethical communities. The seminar accordingly addresses as broad a spectrum of premodern cultural perspectives as possible. Themes might include: ¨ technologies of storage, retrieval, and citation:
footnotes, libraries, compilations, anthologies, encyclopedias,
rhetorical arts of memory, arts of “amnesty” or forgetting Please send proposals (250-word abstract and current curriculum vitae) by regular post or by e-mail attachment to: Christopher Braider Herbert Marks Borders and Marginalities in the Americas This seminar explores themes in comparative studies
of the Americas. The papers address the topic of borders and marginalities
from a number of different methodological approaches, but in their
broader argumentation complement one another. The theoretical questions explored in these papers
fit well with one another and with the theme for the conference.
Other points of convergence include: Kristine Byron Convergence and Conflict In the Ottoman Empire * Conflict and harmony within different religious Proposals for papers should be sent in electronic form, giving a title and an abstract of 100-250 words in length. Iclal Cetin Global Dandyism This panel will explore dandyism as a daring form of border-crossing: between genders, between nations, between life and art, between the mass media and high culture. Ever since its first appearance in the unsettled Europe of the Romantic period, the concept of the dandy has always traveled across national borders, connecting diverse performers of dissident masculinity into an international-and, more recently, global-network. After first emerging in early 19th-century Britain, the ideal of "dandyism" was soon adopted by the French Aesthetes and Decadents, and then re-imported back to Britain by the Irish Oscar Wilde, who decisively turned the dandy persona into an expression of a new "homosexual" identity. Our panel seeks to explore both this international formation of 19th-century European dandyism and the more recent transformations of dandyism in the Americas, in non-Western cultures, and among ethnic minority Europeans (such as the Black British artist Yinka Shonibare, who recently covered London with posters of his 1998 self-portrait series "Diary of a Victorian Dandy"). For our discussion of "Global Dandyism," we especially seek papers which show how the persona of the dandy has been adapted for the performance of ethnic identities, or, alternately, papers which show how dandyism has been used to perform a cosmopolitan identity that seeks an alternative to racial, national, and ethnic categories. Other pertinent questions include: What happens to ethnic identity when dandies express their ethnicity through stylized, overtly artificial performance? Does the "aristocratic" European origin of dandyism make it an elitist and/or Eurocentric phenomenon? Or can the new global dandyism subvert dominant categories of class and race as well as gender? Can there be a female dandyism? Is post-Wilde male dandyism always identified with same-sex erotic preference? And, above all, how can we better explore these questions by comparing the various versions and projects of dandyism across centuries and in different national and trans-national cultures? Sarah Rose Cole Matthew Smith Islam in Postcolonial Cross-Sections: Myth or Reality This panel invites papers exploring Islam as a postcolonial space and/or Islam within a postcolonial space in interaction with other cultural, political, social or economic forms. Analyses on Islam's ability or inability to participate in what Appiah terms "space-clearing gesture" and the occurrence of this theme in literary works of any genre or country are especially invited. Papers are encouraged to highlight reasons and possible conclusions for Islam's ability to participate in creating a postcolonial space based on these interactions. Minimum 400 word abstracts should be sent by post or e-mail attachments to shirin.e.edwin@vanderbilt.edu or Shirin Edwin, Department of French and Italian, Station B, Box 6312, Nashville, TN 37235. Shirin Edwin Geo-philosophy: Transversals and Passages via Deleuze and Guattari Across the widely divergent fields that comprise the Humanities today, a central point of convergence is a renewed interest in the global constructions of historical, cultural, and political systems of representation. As earlier approaches to geo-politics have become out-paced by a rapid process of globalization, scholars and theorists have begun to explore alternative models of conceptual construction that address the status of global networks, e.g., Deleuze-Guattari's proposal of "geo-philosophy," Deleuze's analysis of Foucault as "a new cartographer," the turn to universalism in Badiou or to theology in Derrida and Zizek. We invite considerations (by no means limited to the names cited) of the ways that "geo-philosophy," broadly-conceived, addresses the global context of cultural and political phenomena. Co-organizers: A. Gelley, Eleanor Kaufman, Univ. of Virginia, Gregg Lambert, Syracuse University Alexander Gelley American Ethnicities and Literatures in a Global Context The aim of this panel is to examine how and whether diaspora, postcolonial or transnational theoretical models can be used to discuss texts written by or featuring ethnic American writers/characters in a comparative context. I invite submissions of papers which question and probe concepts of "Americanness" and "ethnicity" while also proposing fruitful ways in which to read ethnic American texts globally. Proposals are invited for twenty-minute presentations on ethnic American literature and/or characters in a global context. Below are suggestions for topics the papers might address. Other themes or ideas are welcome. · American ethnic texts that situate themselves within a larger diasporic or transnational community · The role of "American" characters in non-U.S. literature · Novels and/or travel books featuring ethnic American travelers in other countries · The influence of ethnic American writers or texts on European, African or Latin American writers · Translations of or appropriations of ethnic American texts by non-U. S. writers · American ethnic texts · Ethnic memoirs/autobiographies · Gender and sexual orientation as markers of American ethnicity Please send 250 word abstracts to Vivian Nun Halloran at vhallora@indiana.edu Vivian Halloran The Theory and Practice of Critique This seminar welcomes theoretical contributions that help further the current debate about what it means to engage in critical theory and critical practice in an interdisciplinary field. What are some of the enabling principles underlying critical work? What challenges, possibilities or limitations await the practitioner of critical work? Perspectives from a variety of schools of thought are welcome (e.g., cultural theory, Marxist theory, Critical Theory, psychoanalysis). Send a one-page abstract by e-mail *only* to Prof. Hanssen at bhanssen@uga.edu Beatrice Hanssen Transnational Exchange in Early-Modern Drama This seminar will explore various forms of international exchange, commerce, and "translation" in early-modern drama. Actual border crossings of acting troupes, dramatists, playscripts, and scenarios will be of concern, as well as old world productions of theater in the new world. We'll consider early-modern drama as, on the one hand, an international system of flexible but recognizable "theatergrams" and, at the same time, a site of contentious intercultural encounter. We will, then, also explore dramatic texts that represent exile, migration, and diaspora, and the figure of the ethnic outsider. Robert Henke Pastiche as Cultural Memory The genre of pastiche, for centuries the "other" of high art, is being rewritten in the context of the radical hybridity that is the mark of contemporary culture. Artistic practices contest the negative sense traditionally associated with "pastiche" and redefine its hybrid status of "neither original nor copy" -- to serve a critical agenda. Although Fredric James rightly stated in 1983 that pastiche is "one of the most significant features or practices in postmodernism today," he wrongly dismissed it as "a dead language." By looking at pastiche structuration in contemporary visual arts, film, some hybrid texts, my paper focuses on the emancipatory potential of the best postmodern pastiches. In their heterogeneous conjunction, forging horizons past and present, they activate and motivate our cultural memory. Ingeborg Hoestery New Perspectives on Comedy Global networks of exchange – cultural, artistic,
critical – are affecting the nature of comic prose and performance
in ways that theory had yet to address. Historically, once the ethical
bases of comedy in Antiquity modulated into social emphases after
the Renaissance, the (often unstated) premise of comedy as a social
form persisted through the 20thC. Because the social premise is
still unexamined, even amid the perceived breakdown of the social
under post-nation pressures of global amalgamations, this seminar
will explore new approaches to such comic staples as ethnic stereotypes
and national comic traditions while stressing the global emergence
of transnational forms, modes, and techniques, as well as critical
perspectives. Our purpose is not simply to point to, say, Japanese
animation techniques in U.S. sit-com formats or to the use of comic
blogs in French fiction, but to explore the significance of such
geotextual transformations for the theory of comedy – ultimately
for the question of how Western theoretical premises can (if they
can) incorporate ancient non-Western comic modes and/or contemporary
electronic media and material. Jan Walsh Hokenson Remembrance of Places Past: Departures, Migrations, and Returns How does one return to the past, when this past also entails a return to the lost home(land)? This panel aims at opening a space to address how the migrant/refugee self returns to the past, how this return is performed through different narratives which at times could be nostalgic, at times a cultural identification practice for both the reader and the narrator, which genres mediate in conveying the past, in dialogue with collective memory, and finally, what kind of a texture this adds to the cultural identity. Asli Igsiz Lily Chiu (Not) All We Do is Talk, Talk: Communication, (Post)coloniality and Transnational Feminist Consciousness "Identities and positionalities are articulations
of embedded experiences and social relations that a given spatiality
entails." Analyzing nineteenth century narratives by European
women about their third-world sisters reveals one of the complexities
of modernity: "the white woman's other burden" (Kumari
Jayawardena). The effort to form international solidarities, embedded
in imperialist discourses, drew upon orientalist tropes of representation
that often mirrored particular anxieties that Euro-American women
felt about their own positions at home-in the nation (see Barbara
Ramusack, Inderpal Grewal, for example). Recent scholarship in this
area emphasizes locating these stories as part of a decentered and
global history and to articulate polycentric models of knowledge
in order to create a "practice that involves forms of alliance,
subversion and complicity within which asymmetries and inequalities
can be critiqued" (Inderpal and Grewal, "Postcolonial
Studies and Transnational Feminist Practices"). Part of this
process involves studying the structures of knowledge that informed
colonialist discourses which continued to represent women as "lack"
in the national imaginary, thus impeding the building of transnational
collectivities. Historicizing difference through these narratives
allows us to study how constructions of the Self and the Other subject
us to specific ethnic formations that continue to haunt the construction
of the national citizen well past the nineteenth century and into
the twenty-first. Our proposed seminar is interested in pursuing
these issues in terms of how representations of woman and womanhood
were treated both in the East and in the West, spanning both the
modern and postmodern epochs. We seek presentations that examine
interconnections and network exchanges between western and eastern
women. In particular, we ask interested panelists to consider the
following: Please send 1 page proposals to Priya Jha at priya.jha@murraystate.edu or to Courtney Wennerstrom at cwenners@Indiana.edu Priya Jha Courtney Wennerstrom Finitude, or the Limits of the Left If it were possible to reduce the conflicting tensions that define the theoretical left today, it might well come down to one central question: how to understand the figure of limits, or finitude. The recent surge of interest in a Deleuzian theory of immanence (found with significant variations in a number of contemporary thinkers, among them Badiou, Hardt and Negri) eschews an emphasis on the limit as an emancipatory figure in favor of an ideal of a constantly shifting plenitude. The other side of the spectrum, ranging from deconstruction to subalternity, stresses the importance of the figure of the limit for a thinking of emancipation. The objective of this seminar is to see how a conversation between these two sides can be broached. International approaches are of course especially welcome, e.g., Nancy, Badiou, Derrida, Hardt, Negri, Laclau, Arditi, Richard, Butler, Moreiras, Spivak. Or themes such as the multitude, the nation, globalization and imperialism, media, the internet, etc. Adriana Johnson Kate Jenckes Speaking the Americas: Ethnic Realities, New Worlds When the last U.S. census was taken in 2000, it contained a category never before seen in this country, creating a national, public space for the existence of those of multiracial heritage. In legitimating the fact of multiraciality, the new category represented an important recognition for multiple cultural identity--taking it out of the silence often imposed by America’s (U.S.) difficult ethnic history and making it a part of authorized public discourse. Such public recognition, however, also opened the door to the way in which multiple cultural reality in the U.S. may be implicated in a more complex understanding, one that recognizes what it means to consider the ways in which multiple cultural and ethnic reality is filtered through the history of the Americas and the development of the New World. The increasing globalization of today’s world and its consequent changing demographics have made multiple ethnic, racial and cultural reality a commonplace of everyday life in many national contexts. Yet although public recognition of this fact in the U.S. and elsewhere may help to create a more just and open society, the failure to examine the deeper cultural significance of such multiple reality may also help to camouflage deep-seated attitudes toward race, national identity, and ethnic culture which have long served to uphold notions of ethnic identity that celebrate notions of its purity and singularity while imposing artificial divisions between peoples of disparate ethnic groups, and placing a wall of silence around those with multiple cultural and racial affiliations. Papers are invited which use the context of the Americas and the New World to consider multiple ethnic and cultural reality from an interdisciplinary, transnational, transhistorical perspective. Possible themes include: · U.S. American ethnic texts, or other ethnic texts of the Americas that concern themselves specifically with the conflict between diasporic cultural reality and the pressure to assume a singular ethnic cultural identity · U.S. American ethnic texts or other ethnic texts of the Americas that discuss the problem of multiracial heritage · Comparisons between ethnic literatures of the Americas · The role of the history of discovery and exploration in ethnic texts of the Americas · Problems of gender, class, and/or sexuality in ethnic texts of the Americas · Issues of language, authority, power and/or voice in ethnic texts of the Americas Please send 250-word abstracts to Cyraina Johnson-Roullier at johnson.64@nd.edu Cyraina Johnson-Roullier Voices from the Periphery: Arabic Literature between the Ages of Imperialism and Globalism. The 2004 Arabic Literature Seminar will be held at the annual convention of the American Comparative Literature Association--Ann Arbor, Michigan 15-18 April 2004. The topic of the Seminar is "Voices from the Periphery: Arabic Literature between the Ages of Imperialism and Globalism." The Seminar will attempt to approach this topic from a broad theoretical basis and/or through the critical consideration of particular texts. Proposals might address, but are not limited to, the following: - Localism vis-à-vis globalism The seminar will be conducted in English in its entirety. Please address enquiries and submit abstracts (accompanied
by brief bio-info) to: Please also see: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~kadhim/als.html Hussein Kadhim Displacing desire – globally Journeys of desire exist throughout literature - Gilgamesh went on a vain search for Immortality; Odysseus sought his own homecoming; Basho recounted moments on the narrow road to the deep north. While these three examples differ in their conceptions of time and immediacy, they portray what Freud termed the death drive, a repetitious cycling of acts in a search for the final return. It is true that Eastern modes of thinking, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, affirm this cycle as the means of enlightenment. But the journey of desire's metonymic displacement continues nonetheless to the point of extinction. This panel is looking for explanations of 'desire' as it pertains to the self in specifically literary texts, the self in space, time, and geography, or the self in theory. This panel is particularly interested in abstracts (with either an Eastern or Western focus) that pertain to notions of desire as displacement whether physical, spiritual, emotional, sexual, literary, psychological, or philosophical. Kristi Krumnow Critical Translation Studies: New Crossings We propose a 3-day seminar that will apply the theme of this year’s conference, “Global Ethnic Networks—Old and New,” to the emerging field we call Critical Translation Studies. Critical Translation Studies combines recent interest in the theory of translation and postcolonial interrogations of global power and universalism, with philological investments in details of rhetorical practice, to hone the critical tools available for analyzing the terms of translational/ transnational exchange. Our diverse experiences working with materials both inside and outside modern, European archives have made it mandatory that we map the conceptual terrain of this field in terms of multiple, equally viable epistemological centers, in such a way that encourages innovation, self-reflection, and a fine-tuned rigor. The papers in this seminar in particular aim to highlight the insights and expertise non-literary disciplines may bring to bear on the enterprise of translation, working within broadly-conceived categories of technology, music, and environment. Of interest are the ways familiar paths (ideological, economic, cultural) in our inherited global networks may be crossed to reveal new cuts in our thinking. Each day of the seminar will feature four fifteen-minute papers that are to serve as a starting point for an open and ongoing discussion on the methods and aims of Critical Translation Studies and its relation to Comparative Literature as a discipline. We ask: Are there more illuminating ways of delineating the materiality of our discipline? How may we think of the objects of our inquiry other than in terms of words and texts? Are there more sophisticated tools available for calibrating the temporal and historical spaces these materials occupy? How do we participate in the circulation of these resources—through tropes of exchange, renewal, ownership? We have deliberately left ample time for discussion and expect presenters to participate in all three days of the seminar. Every effort will be made to include presenters from a variety of specializations and stages in their careers. We also extend a special invitation to scholars with an interest in this field to contribute actively to the discussion regardless of whether or not they are scheduled to present. Days’ Topics: Christi Merrill The Substance of African and Middle Eastern Literatures From the scramble for Africa to the latest proposal for war, Africa and the Middle East have been seen from the outside as spaces of endless natural wealth and raw resources. Diamonds, oil, gold, and even water (to name a few) have held coveted spaces in the imaginations of European and American prospectors, employers, patrons and corporations, and have impacted national and regional mappings and networks. Although there has been much work on the histories of exploration, there has been less sustained thought as to how the resources are viewed from within, and as to how “cultural wealth” reflects and intersects with the reality and mythology of African and Middle Eastern substances. Panel organizer seeks papers that creatively engage the intersections between the natural resources of Africa and the Middle East and the literature of the regions. Approaches may be eclectic and comparative, and may take an aesthetic, historical, textual, anthropological, geographical, or other perspective.
500 word abstracts to Rebecca at rlorins@mail.utexas.edu (attachments or in-email accepted) Rebecca Lorins Crossing the Pre-Modern and the Post-Modern: Challenges to Global Ethnic Networks This seminar invites papers that navigate a crossing between pre- (or early) modern works of literature and post-modern theories of subjectivity in order to deepen and/or to challenge the terms constitutive of "global ethnic networks." Until relatively recently (the past few hundred years), the words "global" and "ethnic" were predominantly descriptive terms, the former designating spherical shape (with all its divine symbolism) and the latter, from its Greek root, referring to a "nation" (but particularly to any non-Judeo-Christian people). In contemporary usage, "ethnic" and "global" retain these basic definitions. However, these words now function within complex networks that are grounded in modern, Cartesian notions of subjectivity, a term which also had very different connotations in the classical, medieval and even the early modern world. In the latter half of the 20th century, certain philosophers and literary scholars began to criticize ideologies of subjectivity (including ethnicity and globalism). In the "premodern" and the "postmodern" periods, there exist historical and theoretical challenges to the conceptions of "ethnic" and "global" that have come to dominate much discourse in literary studies and the world at large. This seminar will pursue the following general questions: Were there such networks (in practice if not by definition) in historically and culturally distant times? How can they be compared to more modern networks? Conversely, does the conceptual lack of "globalism" and "ethnicity" in earlier periods raise questions about the modern terminology? Is it anachronistic to apply these terms to historically and culturally distant periods? Papers must be grounded in at least one pre- or early modern literary text (roughly antiquity through the Renaissance). Proposals should offer a clear definition of terms and provide a careful theoretical framework by which to navigate the crossing. One-page proposals (300 words), electronically or by snail mail. Brenda Machosky Violence and Ethics This panel invites papers that interrogate the relationship between violence and ethics. Philosopher Alain Badiou suggests that contemporary concepts of "ethics" may embody or constitute a kind of epistemic violence that is inseparable from its political implementations. In a cultural climate that opposes ethical practice to institutional violence, and in a political climate in which 'ethics' are wielded to justify the perpetration of violence, this interrelation of violence and ethics demands close and careful scrutiny. To what extent do ethical agendas - political, philosophical, critical, and social - presuppose a violent context? Does ethics' investment in the presence of violence render ethics complicit in violence's perpetration? What role does political expediency play in the marriage between ethics and violence? Can this marriage be dissolved? Should it? Approaches may include, but are not limited to: Aristotle at Auschwitz: Classical conceptions of ethics in contemporary violent contexts; Good bodies and bad: Ethics and the human figure throughout the ages; Ethics and the body politic: race, nation, class; No Graven Images: the ethics of representing - and of not representing - violence; Hurts so good: Ethics, violence, and sexual pleasure; A Light Unto the Nations: Ethics and hegemony; Please send 500-word proposal to Naomi Mandel at mandel@uri.edu or by snail mail to: Naomi Mandel Global Terrorism and Cultural Representation This seminar will investigate various ramifications of the ethnic and global aspects of terrorism, including: the relationship of terrorism to violence, politics, and the state and to cultural production, including the connection between writing and violence and "the writer as terrorist's victim, rival, or double" (M. Scanlan). The philosophical underpinnings and psychological space of terror, ranging from Benjamin's theory of history as a state of siege to Camus' belief that revolt is an essential dimension of humankind and Kristeva's postulate that only the confrontation of "an obstacle, prohibition, authority, or law . . . allows us to realize ourselves as autonomous and free." Topics may include: cinematic adaptations; the paradigm of the good terrorist; rebellion vs. revolution; individual vs. group vs. state terror; creation and revolution; terrorism as fictional construct; "the Essential Terrorist" (Said); political terrorism and the media; anarchy and culture; terrorism on stage/as performance. Send 250-word abstracts to Elaine Martin (University
of Alabama) at Elaine Martin Demanding Satisfaction: The Last Men in the New Imperium Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of the last men has exerted a powerful hold upon the imaginations of thinkers across the political spectrum, from those aligned with the political Right, such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom, to Marxists such as Alexandre Kojeve and Slavoj Zizek. Is Zarathustra's nightmare of a fully satisfied and pacified (and therefore bestial) multitude best understood as a damning indictment of consumer capitalism and liberal democracy? Or does it crystallize the skepticism that universal plenty and a life of ease have inevitably dehumanizing effects, and thereby constitute a powerful refutation of institutionalized communism? Is the ultimate goal of the new imperial order and economic globalization the pacification of potentially explosive populations into "last men," so that they may be exploited by, but also profit from, the world system of liberal capitalism? To what extent is such a transformation "racialized," whether through the dominance of Hollywood film or images advertising the delights offered by capitalist prosperity? Where might one locate sources of resistance to the pressures of such homogenization, both within and beyond the politics of ethnic identity and the militarism of radical Islam? The panel will address such topics as: * Narrative Speculations. How do literature and film explore post-historical societies and dramatize the contradictions that persist in them? * Struggles for Recognition. Is the so-called clash of civilizations between radical Islam and the US imperium a Hegelian conflict between Masters and Slaves? What are the meanings of mastery and slavery in the present context of the "war on terror"? * Global Mafias. Is it possible to understand the US imperium in terms of the redemptive narratives of post-history elaborated by Kojeve and popularized by Fukuyama? Or is the model of the homogeneous and universal world state giving way to the proliferation of global mafias underneath the preeminence of corporate elites? * Free to be a Borg? Does ethnic identity constitute a kind of agalma, a psychic "hidden treasure" among "nonwhite" peoples in an age of increasing cultural homogenization? To what extent can the fear of assimilation among immigrants be understood as anxiety over their offspring becoming "last men," cut off from tradition and familial obligations? * Prozac and Pornography. How are techniques of pacification increasing the possibility of a world of satisfied individuals, for example, the spread of anti-depressants and the ubiquity of web pornography? * Up from Decadence? How might we draw upon the works of thinkers considered conservative or reactionary, such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Junger, and Georges Sorel to critique the new imperialism? Peter Paik Ancient Atomism and Modernity The aim of this panel is to explore the reception of the ancient atomistic traditions (Leucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius) in the modern era, with a special focus on the period from Kant to the present. Areas to be discussed will include the relationships between ancients and moderns and the state of theory then and now in a few domains: social theory, subjectivity, aesthetics, and mechanical reproduction. One-page abstracts should be sent to the co-organizers. James I. Porter Eric Downing Word and Image in Latin America In the context of the current interest in cross-disciplinary approaches to literary studies, the panel welcomes papers that explore the relations between word and image in this region of the Americas. Presentations may address traditional ekphrastic strategies and new regimens of representation, as well as historical perspectives, links between aesthetics and politics, and methodological explorations between arts and media. Preference will be given to analysis of works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but submissions that address colonial art and letters will also be considered. Please submit paper proposals to Dan Russek at dlrussek@midway.uchicago.edu Dan Russek Sacred Tropes: The Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an as Literary Works The Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur'an continue to configure our subjectivity and, by extension, our evolving cultures. Bruce Feiler's best-selling book, *Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths* is only one example of an exploding popular culture interest in the three sacred texts reflecting a continuing search to keep the works relevant to a broader audience and to serve as a reminder of the similarities among the traditions. Recent panels on this topic suggest that, in addition to popular culture appeal, strong and enthusiast academic interest exists in exploring these sacred texts by enlisting current literary practices which often deny the boundaries of academic disciplines. While examining the influence of the sacred texts and traditions on other literary works is undeniably important, this panel focuses on the sacred texts themselves as works of literature that invite examination from a comparatist perspective. The application of twenty-first century theoretical approaches to these sacred texts promises to foster their resonance with contemporary problems and promise. This panel invites the use of polymorphus discourses to examine these works and unearth fresh readings. Suggested literary approaches include, but are not limited to, Philosophical, Ethical, Aesthetic, Literary, Cultural, Sociological, and Psychological readings. Roberta Sabbath An Archaeology of America’s Classical
Origins John Shields Thinking Globally, Teaching Locally: Comparative Literature on the Regional Campus This panel will explore the challenges experienced by comparatists teaching international languages and/or literatures at regional, state, or community colleges and universities. At such institutions, a local student body often arrives on campus as an already cohesive culture that is more than usually resistant to the universalizing values of academia. Tensions between students' local culture and the goals and values of a transplanted faculty may be played out in a number of culturally resonant oppositions that vary the theme of the ethnic vs. the global. These might include, but are not limited to, domestic vs. foreign; provincial vs. cosmopolitan; rural vs. urban; "street" vs. elite; religious vs. secular; fundamentalist vs. postmodernist; patriotic vs. "anti-American"; etc. This panel calls on professors of international languages and/or literatures who have found themselves at the crux of such oppositions to draw upon their experiences traversing the boundaries of local and global difference in their pedagogy as well as their scholarship. In what ways are teachers and scholars of comparative literature uniquely positioned to address such ethnic/global confrontations in the classroom? How might comparatist theories and methods be applied to the practice of teaching international cultures in local settings? Or, conversely, what can we theorize from our pedagogical adaptations to such settings? Karen R. Smith Memory and the City What is the relationship between memory, individually or collectively inscribed, and ever-changing urban populations and landscapes? How does memory affect the organization of cities, and vice versa? Cities, as some have argued, resist theorization. To what extent do they also resist memorialization? How does memory, evoked and erased, come to play in discourses of urban decay and renewal? How can one begin to map or trace urban networks of memory across neighborhoods and/or ethnic groups? Deborah Starr States of Exposure Exposure can be defined as a condition of passivity before an uncontrollable alterity. We propose its treatment as a key concept through which to rethink the logic of the subject, be it the political subject, the witness to the event, the embodied subject, the affective subject. It may also be viewed as a concept that defines perhaps more than any other the event to which art is above all dedicated and which it tries to bring about. Figures and topics of investigation include: exposure to light, the encounter with the stranger, shame, nudity, shock, the nomadic/exilic subject, the unsheltered, woundedness. Interdisciplinary work in literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, film, and the visual arts is encouraged. Emily Sun Eyal Peretz Metamorphosis: Cultural Imaginations of the Hybrid From Ovid to Apuleius, Dante, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Kafka, metamorphosis has been a significant motif for a cultural and poetic imagination invested in exploring the limits of the human or the limits of narrative representation. Recounting manifold transformations of the human into the natural or the divine, narratives of metamorphosis try to articulate emergence or evolution as a time of transition or a hybrid merging of animal body and human consciousness. Metamorphoses seem to have occupied the cultural imagination particularly in times of crisis, and mythological, philosophical, literary, and scientific inquiries have drawn on the concept of metamorphosis to explore transitions triggered by the clash of highly adapted systems with radically altered environments. Within the cultural imagination of metamorphosis, the hybrid is not only a recurring motif, it also affected theories of development, transition, and evolution and informed the cross-fertilization of literature and science from 1800 to the present. Please send abstracts to Theisen@jhu.edu. Bianca Theisen (Post)-Coloniality on the East and South-East Margins of Europe This panel plans to continue conversations started
in San Marcos on Possible issues to examine in the proposals/presentations include (but are not limited to) the following: 1. How do cultural and literary "texts" from East and South-East Europe respond to recent efforts to build "new" empires? Are the "new" empires ignored, feared, or celebrated? How does East and South-East Europe narrate its own role(s) in the formation of "new" empires? 2. How do "texts" explain the sometimes vociferous nationalism in the Balkans, Mitteleuropa, and Eurasia in relation to old empires and especially to new ones? Do ethnic identifications aid or detract in empire formation? Do "texts" envision a future without nationalism in these geographical areas? 3. How do "texts" represent the introduction of mass market consumerism in the Balkans, Mitteleuropa and Eurasia? How do mass market issues relate to issues relevant for old and new empires? How can these geographical spaces survive the introduction of mass markets and rampant consumerism? 4. How do exilic communities from the Balkans, Mitteleuropa, and Eurasia contribute to conversations about old and new empires that operate in East and South-East Europe? Do exiles offer new insights, travel different paths, or merely repeat the old hegemonic patterns? Email 250-300 word proposals with basic contact information
to Vlatka Velcic Cross-Cultural and Gendered Collecting Presentations are invited for panels on collecting as a site of trans-cultural exchange and dialogue in the age of imperialism/colonialism. From the beginnings of imperialist expansion to the
present, Western people have collected objects from Non-Western
locales, the traffic in objects becoming a process of (unequal)
negotiation between Western and Non-Western cultures. We start from
the practice of collecting as rooted in material culture but wish
to extend the notion of collecting to include the appropriation
of other people in a colonialist context We are thinking of the following topics, but we would be open to others as well: Western collecting of Non-Western art. Collecting of objects as a simulation of the colonialist encounter: the cabinet, the ethnological museum, the colonial exposition. Collecting as a means of transforming the meaning of the Other: Orientalism, fetishism, nostalgia, imperialist/colonialist desire. Collecting, the writer and the artist. The artist or writer who collects Non-Western art (Van Gogh, Edmond de Goncourt). Japonisme, Chinoiserie. Relationships between the collection of objects and the appropriation, in literature and art, of images, ideas, techniques, and styles of Non-Western traditions. Gender and collecting. Female American collectors
of Native American art (Millicent Rogers, Georgia O'Keeffe). Collecting/appropriating
the colonized Other through colonialist desire. Collected objects
as sexual currency in colonialism. Female collecting and the amassing
of cultural value. The effect of the national appropriation of foreign
objects on social, economic, and religious hierarchies in regard
to We are planning to put together a volume of papers from the seminar for publication. Please send 500-word abstracts and a brief c.v. by
email to all of the seminar leaders: Janet Walker, Julie Rajan, Helen Fazio Global Chinese Network and Transnational Cinema As one of the oldest and most populated civilizations
wide spreading in the world, Chinese societies and the diasporas
serve as a fascinating site for scholars to study ethnicity in relation
to globalism. Due to historical reasons, the global Chinese network
stretches in multiple forms: nation-states (Mainland China, Taiwan),
post-colonial city-state (Hong Kong), ethnic majority/minority (Singapore,
Indonesia), and immigrant diasporic communities (Asian-Americans,
etc.). Within the network, the ethnic bonding coexists with regional
tensions and sub-cultural diversities. The interactions with other
cultural systems, accelerating in the age of globalization today,
bring even more complex dimensions to the network. This panel seeks
to understand the dynamics of Chinese ethnic connection in relation
to globalization through Chinese transnational cinemas. Combining
ethnic allegiances with transnational industrial collaboration,
a number of Chinese language films not only frequent! Please send 200-word abstracts to Li Yang at lucyyang@mail.utexas.edu Chair: Organizer/Panelist:
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