In the city and on the road
Saturday, March 25 - Sunday, March 26, 2006
Department of English
University of South Carolina, Columbia (USA)
ATTENTION
If you used the Submit Abstracts page prior to November 30 and received an error message, then we did not receive it. Please send your abstract again to ensure that we have your submission.
Call for Papers:
The Twentieth century witnessed enormous shifts in patterns of mobility and the meanings bound up with “moving”–shifts that went hand in hand with new definitions and associations for “stasis.” These changes were bound up with a range of social factors: the massive expansion of industrial capitalism, the growth of the modern city, new communication systems, etc. The changes gave rise to intense artistic debates about the value of a new, highly mechanized, and often urban, mobility on one hand, and an older, rural conception of organic communities and stasis on the other.
Working within the modern city, therefore, Walter Benjamin divides street walkers into two categories: the “flâneur” who meanders aimlessly and the “pilgrim” who seeks a destination. These same ideas, in a broader sense, have dominated the works of writers, poets, essayists, sociologists, filmmakers, musicians, politicians, and others as they sought to represent the city and the road as a means of answering questions about human identity. Artists, such as Joyce, Cela, and DeLillo, to name a few, have explored ideas of mobility within cities while Steinbeck, Dennis Hopper, and Baudrillard have similarly created an aesthetic of travel. Meanwhile, this mobile century saw widespread migrations, such as rural African Americans to Northern cities, rural Spaniards to Madrid, and other movements towards wartime and post-war industrial opportunity. Contrarily, artists, such as Kerouac and Picasso see the city as that which dwarfs and thwarts autonomy as it reflects, in the words of Alfred Kazin, the “trauma of modern man.”
Following the success of the previous two years’ conferences, we invite papers that not only examine and build upon these issues, but encourage the analysis and exploration of multiple types of literature such as hypertext, film, art, and music, in addition to poetry and fiction. We strongly encourage cross-genre discussions.
Topics may include, but certainly are not limited to: environmental literature
migration, miscegenation, hybridity
the postcolonial, or “imagined” city
community versus individuality/alienation
the romanticization of the American West
communities in exile
the road-buddy film or song
mapping the postmodern city
the hobo or vagabond as hero
urban and rural responses to war, terrorism and dictatorship
the city or the road as sexual landscape
travel literature
flâneurship
Blues music and mobility, Jazz music and the city
the city as destroyer
religious and spiritual journeys
existential ideas of the city and the road
wilderness versus civilization
Joyce’s Dublin, Cela’s Madrid, Dos Passos’ Manhattan
immigration and assimilation
historicizing the modernist city
the loss of rural space
racial/ethnic and environment
relationship of gender to travel and/or stasis
urban vs. rural communities
Information on our Keynote addresses:
Professor Gordon Ball – Virginia Military Institute
Gordon Ball, Professor of English and Fine Arts at the Virginia Military Institute, is a renowned independent film maker, photographer, and scholar on the Beat Generation and film. Ball was a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, about whom he has written extensively, and has edited two volumes of Ginsberg’s journals, including Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties (1977). His book Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness (1974) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Ball has also published a memoir titled 66 Frames (1999) and a book of prose poetry. Ball earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Professor Priscilla Wald – Duke University
An internationally respected critic and scholar, Priscilla Wald is Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Duke University. In addition to her notable work on Theodore Dreiser, Wald employs an interdisciplinary approach to analyze popular media as a site for a socially constructed vision of science. The author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (1995), Wald is also the Associate Editor of American Literature, and serves on the editorial board of Literature and Medicine. She is a member of PMLA’s advisory board. Wald earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
The deadline for submission is Friday, January 6, 2006.
Department of English
University of South Carolina, Columbia (USA)
ATTENTION
If you used the Submit Abstracts page prior to November 30 and received an error message, then we did not receive it. Please send your abstract again to ensure that we have your submission.
Call for Papers:
The Twentieth century witnessed enormous shifts in patterns of mobility and the meanings bound up with “moving”–shifts that went hand in hand with new definitions and associations for “stasis.” These changes were bound up with a range of social factors: the massive expansion of industrial capitalism, the growth of the modern city, new communication systems, etc. The changes gave rise to intense artistic debates about the value of a new, highly mechanized, and often urban, mobility on one hand, and an older, rural conception of organic communities and stasis on the other.
Working within the modern city, therefore, Walter Benjamin divides street walkers into two categories: the “flâneur” who meanders aimlessly and the “pilgrim” who seeks a destination. These same ideas, in a broader sense, have dominated the works of writers, poets, essayists, sociologists, filmmakers, musicians, politicians, and others as they sought to represent the city and the road as a means of answering questions about human identity. Artists, such as Joyce, Cela, and DeLillo, to name a few, have explored ideas of mobility within cities while Steinbeck, Dennis Hopper, and Baudrillard have similarly created an aesthetic of travel. Meanwhile, this mobile century saw widespread migrations, such as rural African Americans to Northern cities, rural Spaniards to Madrid, and other movements towards wartime and post-war industrial opportunity. Contrarily, artists, such as Kerouac and Picasso see the city as that which dwarfs and thwarts autonomy as it reflects, in the words of Alfred Kazin, the “trauma of modern man.”
Following the success of the previous two years’ conferences, we invite papers that not only examine and build upon these issues, but encourage the analysis and exploration of multiple types of literature such as hypertext, film, art, and music, in addition to poetry and fiction. We strongly encourage cross-genre discussions.
Topics may include, but certainly are not limited to: environmental literature
migration, miscegenation, hybridity
the postcolonial, or “imagined” city
community versus individuality/alienation
the romanticization of the American West
communities in exile
the road-buddy film or song
mapping the postmodern city
the hobo or vagabond as hero
urban and rural responses to war, terrorism and dictatorship
the city or the road as sexual landscape
travel literature
flâneurship
Blues music and mobility, Jazz music and the city
the city as destroyer
religious and spiritual journeys
existential ideas of the city and the road
wilderness versus civilization
Joyce’s Dublin, Cela’s Madrid, Dos Passos’ Manhattan
immigration and assimilation
historicizing the modernist city
the loss of rural space
racial/ethnic and environment
relationship of gender to travel and/or stasis
urban vs. rural communities
Information on our Keynote addresses:
Professor Gordon Ball – Virginia Military Institute
Gordon Ball, Professor of English and Fine Arts at the Virginia Military Institute, is a renowned independent film maker, photographer, and scholar on the Beat Generation and film. Ball was a close friend of Allen Ginsberg, about whom he has written extensively, and has edited two volumes of Ginsberg’s journals, including Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties (1977). His book Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness (1974) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Ball has also published a memoir titled 66 Frames (1999) and a book of prose poetry. Ball earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Professor Priscilla Wald – Duke University
An internationally respected critic and scholar, Priscilla Wald is Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Duke University. In addition to her notable work on Theodore Dreiser, Wald employs an interdisciplinary approach to analyze popular media as a site for a socially constructed vision of science. The author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (1995), Wald is also the Associate Editor of American Literature, and serves on the editorial board of Literature and Medicine. She is a member of PMLA’s advisory board. Wald earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
The deadline for submission is Friday, January 6, 2006.
Heide Jäger - 11. Dec, 11:26
