In 1787 the First Fleet transported petty criminals and social outcasts alike to exile in Van Diemen's Land. In the 1800s, Robben Island held lepers, the insane, the chronically ill, and tribal leaders. In the 1900s, it held Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. During the Boer War, the first concentration camp was established in Ceylon. In the 1980s, people testing positive for HIV were forcibly committed to sanitoriums in Cuba.

For this seminar, we invite papers that address various cultural or literary manifestations of confinement. In an attempt to better understand the social, political, and economic investments in geographical and social isolation, we will ask: How are such investments implemented through policy, program, or law? How are they reinforced in daily life through cultural (literature), social (family, church, school), or scientific (medicine) practices? What fears and anxieties do they draw on? What renders them effective? What happens when categories such as dissidence, illness, and criminality overlap? Is any recourse, resistance, or escape possible?

Proposed topics include: real and imaginary islands, penitentiaries, the panopticon, concentration camps, quarantine, solitary confinement, contamination, relapses and repeat offenders.

Please send 1 page abstracts

either by regular mail to: Guillermina De Ferrari, Border and Transnational Studies Research Circle, U. of Wisconsin-Madison, 1002 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr, Madison, WI 53706

or by email to: Helen Kapstein, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, hk122@columbia.edu

by Sept 15, 2000