ACLA 2011

Migrations II: Nations, Theories, Genres

acla2 — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:05:28 +0000

Legal discourse defines a “migrant” as anyone who has crossed an international border, whether legally or illegally, thus focusing on the movement of bodies in space. In world literature, textual migrations occur through translation and retelling rather than through determinations of one’s refugee or asylum status. Whether migration is seen as a passage of bodies or of concepts and texts, it can be a site of translation and transmission, but also of hindrance and confrontation. Historically, (im)migration narratives have been constructed as a linear movement from tradition to modernity, from oppression into freedom. Similarly, a translation of a non-Western text into a “global language” enables its admittance into the world literature canon – a linear movement from obscurity to the global market. In regards to gender and sexual identity, transgendered and queer subjects are sometimes viewed as having “migrating identities,” travelling to places or bodies where they can feel liberated. Yet all of these narratives are often not as linear as their idealized forms may seem. An ethnic, literary, or queer migrant is subject to multiple forms of surveillance and intellectual scrutiny, normalization techniques and disciplinary strategies. At the same time, migration disrupts discourses that seek to delimit citizenship, define gender roles, or construct a national literature. Migration is thus a complex process of renegotiating limits – those of the canon, cultural tradition, gender, sexuality, and citizenship.

Papers for this session should explore the issue of migration in the broadest sense of the term. Potential topics can include migrations of texts and of concepts; translations and mistranslations; migrating genders and identities; queer migrations; migration and citizenship in world literature; or (im)migration narratives. We are particularly interested in papers that explore connections between multiple forms of migration. Analyses of literary works, theoretical essays, films, and the visual arts are equally welcome.

Cognitive Patterns in Comparative Literature II

acla1 — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:45:58 +0000

This panel welcomes presentations studying conceptual templates and other cognitive patterns in world literature. To offer useful generalizations for Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, papers will deal with texts in more than one language.

Claudio Guillén, in his classical work on the methodology of comparative literature, defined three major models of supranationality (The challenge of comparative literature. Cambridge, MA, 1993, pp. 69-70):

a) Genetic relationship, that is, influence or contact.

b) Common sociohistorical conditions in genetically independent phenomena.

c) Supranational entities in accordance with principles and purposes from the theory of literature.

Cognitive approaches to literature have experienced tremendous growth over the last decades. This research has far-reaching implications for comparative literature. It could be argued that it can build a new model of supranationality beyond Guillén’s A, B, and C. But, instead of becoming D, it is perhaps better to think of the contribution of cognitive approaches as adding a fourth dimension, which should permeate each of these three models, grounding comparative analyses of influence, sociohistorical conditions, and literary theory in cognition. This would also allow Comparative Literature to participate in the multidisciplinary study of the human mind.

Thus, we aim to establish some interesting models of supranationality based on cognitive patterns. Our emphasis will be on meaning. Examples might include: conceptual templates in figurative language as studied by cognitive linguistics or relevance theory, patterns in cognitive poetics ranging from rhyme and rhythm to narratology, psycholinguistic studies of literary phenomena, and many more.

Postmemory and the Holocaust in Transnational Contexts

acla2 — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:07:05 +0000

This seminar will examine the literatures on postmemory and the Holocaust and will foreground discussions of generationality, youth, complicity and violence in a transnational context. Turning to novels like Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, memoirs such as Still Here by Ruth Kluger, At The Mind’s Limits by Jean Améry and Violent Legacies by Gabriele Schwab, and films such as Two Or Three Things I know About Him by Malte Ludin, Caché by Michael Haneke and The Maelström: A Family Chronicle by Peter Forgacs, the seminar seeks to provoke unsettling conversations about the unfinished afterlife of the Holocaust for victims and perpetrators, for those who remember and those who try to forget.

History As It Never Was

acla2 — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:05:48 +0000

The relation of history and literature has long been a major concern of literary, film and cultural theorists. Often though the analysis is coloured by questions of the fidelity to history or ways in which cultural products (films, novels, poetry etc.) reflect or accurately portray the history with which they deal. This panel seeks to investigate those areas of cultural production wherein history is not used to ‘uncover the truth’ or, as Walter Benjamin diagnosed, to show history “how it actually happened” (“wie es eigentlich gewesen isst”) but rather employed to make an intervention in the present. Such a procedure should not be equated with the fabrication of history, but rather should be understood as an attempt to shed light on the present through the prism of the past. While this panel is open to all papers dealing with any aspect of filmic or literary production dealing with such an investigation of the present through the past, papers dealing with what Raymond Williams has termed ‘oppositional culture’ are especially encouraged.

Writing the Map: Cartography as Spatial Figure of Social Control in/as Literature

acla2 — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:02:14 +0000

The act of mapping introduces the principle of alterity into human society like little else. Maps introduce the principle of differentiation, surveillance, and control into the relationships between humans and animals, humans and the earth, humans and other humans. By creating boundaries, maps give place-names, toponymy, definitions, and identities, and in the process, often eliminate important and meaningful \’other\’ or alternate routes.

We are inviting proposals that investigate the intersection of spaces and ideology. On the concrete level, how do politics inform decisions about urban interventions, city planning, and architectural design? On a more abstract level, What is the relationship between urban space and/or urban design and narrative? Can urban planning constitute an act of violence, and if so, what are some potential responses and re-appropriations of such cartographical violence?

We welcome case studies from Anthropology, History, or Cultural Studies, particularly projects that treat urban re-development and planning and its social consequences in either colonial or metropolitan contexts. Analyses of literary, philosophical, or theoretical texts, in which the cultural work of mapping plays an integral role, are also strongly encouraged.

Translation and Literary History

acla1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:28:54 +0000

This seminar seeks to explore how translation makes or alters literary history. Most theories of world literature assume that texts begin in one national tradition and then move out to other traditions. How does thinking about the uptake and influence of translations complicate distinctions between national literature and world literature? How do we account for texts that are made up of more than one language, that exist from the start in multiple language editions, or that begin as adaptations, collaborations, or revisions? What kinds of writing and what kinds of writers become newly visible when we pay attention to translations? Possible topics might include studies of specific translations; new conceptions of literary history, national literature, or world literature in the light of translation; translation and institutions of literary study such as anthologies and libraries; teaching translations; multilingualism; etc. The seminar welcomes papers that address these issues from a range of historical and theoretical perspectives.

Revising the State and Urban Spaces beyond Repression and Coercion

acla1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:23:50 +0000

The radical and social political reforms including a series of military interventions throughout the 70s-90s as well as the still latent violent situations in many Latin-American countries have made significant imprints on modern day culture in addition to a prolific literary production. The stimulus to confront and contest the nation’s political history has always been prevalent, and new forms of literary critique have continued to generate. Several writers create interstices, gaps and in-between spaces that the political and historical national discourses have wrought.

These official and hegemonic discourses create a collective imaginary that so often conflict with social and cultural heterogenic spaces. Subjects are being cast away or affected by their seclusion and/or partial integration to the national ideal. Cultural, sexual, gendered and ethnic discourses, often rightly, contest the totalizing ideals. It is through fissures and peripheral spaces that writers amalgamate their critique and assessment. They create new discourses of rural or urban spaces as well as nationalistic ideas that deviate from the official political discourse. Resulting then in a questionable debate of whether or not they are effective in (re)creating such spaces that portray and denounce regulated State boundaries.

To what extent does literature enact possibilities in the socio-political sphere? How are these urban spaces portrayed and re-defined in their discourses? How do the official emblems and national symbols get other dissident meanings? How are gender and queer subjects intersecting borders and negotiating spaces in the normalization techniques and disciplinary strategies?

Theater and film productions are also welcome. Papers presented in Spanish are also welcome.

Proustian Poetics Across National Borders

acla1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:21:44 +0000

“What can be called a Proustian poetics furnishes a lens for visualizing how modernist aesthetics operates across national borders. Authors including but not limited to Tanpinar, Pamuk, and Sebald look at memory through the perspective Proust developed for recovering lost time. This seminar invites papers that examine how the search or recovery of lost time operates in response to different personal and historical conditions. Do the Proustian categories remain operative and informative across national borders? Our seminar welcomes papers that examine the specificity of those categories in different authors while also attending to what makes the term “Proustian poetics” applicable to all.”

Mahfouz at 100: The Arabic Novel and the Changing World

acla1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:20:11 +0000

2011 marks the centennial of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz, the only writer in Arabic to have won a Noble prize for literature. In a culture that has celebrated the poem for a millennium, it was of no small irony that the prize would fall on the shoulders of a novelist. Still, it was the novel form, Mahfouz said, that was the only form capable of capturing the social and political dynamism of his moment. With Mahfouz’s career in mind, we hope to attract papers that speculate critically on the political and cultural role of novel writing in the Arab world. How did the emergence of regional traditions surrounding the Lebanese civil war, the plight of Palestinians, social transformations in post-independence Algeria, or the impact of oil in the Gulf illuminate the cultural and political interstices of those historical moments? How have novelists sustained or deviated from the Mahfouzian model? How have novel writing, film, blogging and other narrative and artistic forms in the Arabic world borrowed from one another? At their core, we see these questions convening around the classical dichotomy of content and form and as such we also welcome essays that tackle the broader theoretical notion that “each cultural work” is but “a vision of a moment” (Said, Culture and Imperialism). Is the novel still a viable tool for analyzing social and political zeitgeist? What is gained or lost in reading the novel as a socio-historic phenomenon, or as a formal legacy in its own right?

Forms of Devotion: Fan Culture(s) and Transformative Works

acla1 — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:15:26 +0000

As Donna Haraway puts it, “when were love and knowledge not co-constitutive?” Fandom, as a derivative of “fanatic,” amply demonstrates the tight bond between devotion and critical response which has become a hallmark of its (their?) (re)appropriative, transformative, fiercely contested responses to its (their) beloved source texts. As source text touches belonging, and belonging is predicated on participation, fandom presence is rendered conscious and agential, which becomes important in light of fandom’s consistent search for legitimacy and authority, even as it actively shuns legitimation from extant commercial entities. How, then, does fan culture work in the plurality of linguistic, cultural, and geopolitical or physical conditions facilitated by new media, and specifically the online environments which define contemporary fandom experience? What are its canons? Who actively reads fandom’s texts, and what does that literacy entail? And whose purposes do these questions serve?

These questions ghost across the vast fields which must be addressed in order to sketch the origins, methodologies, and myriad ontologies of fandom’s pervasive, illegitimate presence in what media theorist Henry Jenkins calls “the interplay between media industries and their consumers.” This panel seeks to actively engage with the transnational, translational, affective, and transformative aspects of fandom communities, especially in (but not limited to) new media contexts, and welcomes paper submissions from across a wide spectrum of disciplines and interdisciplines.