We invite proposals that interrogate the trope of return in a comparative context. Though inspired by postcolonial and transnational representations of nostalgia, exile, memory, and place, the seminar could usefully explore the concept of return across various historical periods and genres. Particular areas of interest include the relation of sexuality to discourses of connection and return, gender and the logics of belonging, the teleology of return in cultural politics, melancholia and the suspension of return, and return as a spatial articulation of the relation between past and future.

In addition to these topics, other possibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Return in quest narratives in various traditions (premodern, modern, or postmodern)
• Diasporic conventions and disruptions of return
• Return in film, performance art, and other media
• The invention of space through return
• Nationalism (or race, sexuality, class, etc) and return
• The uses of return in literatures of trauma
• Resisting return
• Relations between narratology and discourses of return
• Lyric invocations of return
• Pop-culture nostalgia

Please email one to two-page abstracts and a short or summary CV by September 10 to:

Katherine Sugg (ksugg@ucdavis.edu) or Marisa Belausteguigoitia (mailto:misabel@uclink4.berkeley.edu or mail to Katherine Sugg, 8560 Holmes Ln., Winters, CA, 95694.