This seminar solicits papers that cue from or explicitly address Charles Bernheimer's call in his 1993 report to the ACLA for a comparative literature that includes "comparisons between media, from early manuscripts to television, hypertext, and virtual realities." Of particular interest are papers that speak to North American contexts (Canada, Mexico, the US). How have the textual spaces of the New World been named, claimed, and mapped? What configurations have printing presses, silk-screens, soapstone carvings, postcards, typewriters, skyscrapers, photography, x-rays, kaleidoscopes, radio, film, email, video, or even dot coms, brought about in the cultural landscape? What strategies must scholarship grounded in the humanities and literature adopt or adapt in order to account for the materiality of media?

Contact: Monique Tschofen, Department of English, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3; mtschofe@acs.ryerson.ca

Abstracts (250 words) and a brief summary cv are due by September 15.