Seminars

Literary Translation and the Cold War

Organizer: Claire Solomon

This seminar invites proposals for papers that explore the aesthetics and politics of Cold War literary translations. Around the world, literary translation increased during a period of intense... more

Intersections between Race/Caste and Religion in Literature

Organizer: Ali Ahsan

The intersection between religion and race may seem unlikely at first, but history shows a continuous pattern where religion aligns with social hierarchies like race and caste. Geraldine Heng (2018)... more

Aesthetic Approaches to the Qur'an and Islam

Organizer: Pardis Dabashi

Building from efforts within Islamic studies, Qur’anic studies, and literary studies, this seminar invites papers that examine the question of aesthetics, broadly conceived, in and around the Qur’an... more

GROWING UP IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: CHILDREN AGENCY AND WORLD-MAKING IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Organizer: Marco Ramirez Rojas

This CFP is open for contributions that look at modern and contemporary literary representations of children and young adults across the various areas of the Global South. Engaging with the surge of... more

The Persistence of Existentialism

Organizer: Ben Roth

Existentialism never had much influence on Anglo-American philosophy. Peaking perhaps with Thomas Nagel’s 1971 article “The Absurd,” it has more often been sneeringly dismissed, or simply... more

Situation and Narrative Form

Organizer: Marcie Frank

At once a distillation of the essential shape of a narrative and a prompt for producing that shape in the first place, situation is a useful term for both the interpretation and the production of... more

Queer and Trans Life-Writing: Archives, Activism, Remediations

Organizer: Sarah McDaniel

This seminar invites papers on queer and trans life-writing practices between the 19th century and the present. We take a capacious view of what constitutes “life-writing”: in addition to... more

Locating Bhabha in Postcolonial Studies

Organizer: Nisarg P.

The year 2024 will mark a thirty-year anniversary of Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture [LoC], first published as a gathering of essays, primarily written between 1983 and 1991, and published as a... more

Late Stages

Organizer: Abigail RayAlexander

What are the symptoms of being late-stage? What do we reflect upon, appreciate, fear, endeavor to do, and look forward to during such times? One arena of late stages involves political and social... more

Giving Up: Literature, Criticism, Politics

Organizer: Carson Hammond

Adam Phillips’ recent book On Giving Up comes at a moment of widespread exhaustion. Whether the latter is measured in terms of depression diagnoses, symptoms of cultural-aesthetic stagnation,... more

Mimesis in a Global and Historical Context

Organizer: Samuel Hodgkin

Mimesis is a fundamental way of conceiving of the relationship between artistic expression and reality in Western thinking. It has been theorized in depth in the western context over the centuries... more

The Beauty of Palm: Greek Technē in the digital era

Organizer: Vivien Jiaqian Zhu

How to approach the Greek notion of technē in the digital era? What are various means to make the reception of technē expressive, accessible, and durable? To what extent does the paradox of science... more

Unpredictable Architectures: The Aesthetics and Politics of Gardening in Latin America

Organizer: Valeria Meiller

Considered either as material landscapes or symbols, gardens are usually thought of as spaces where nature is enclosed and controlled. They continue to live behind walls that separate them from the... more

Scale, Form, and Urban Crisis: Literature and the City

Organizer: Eric Prieto

This seminar seeks to build on and contribute to the growing body of theory and criticism situated at the intersection of literary studies and urban studies. Following the lead of literary critics... more

Farming and Fiction

Organizer: Ayşe Çelikkol

Amidst renewed attention to crop and animal husbandry in the public sphere, this panel seeks to advance our understanding of the connection between farming and fiction. Relations among humans, other... more

Literary Genres in the Age of Convergence

Organizer: Francesca Medaglia

Throughout history, literary genres have served various functions, from a simple classificatory role to a more normative one, depending on the context and era. The discussion of genres began with... more

Seeing Periodicals through Translation & Gender

Organizer: Anna Learn

Since the 19th century, discourses of translation and gender have played out in the “radical[ly] heterogeneous” pages of periodicals (Liggins, 612). While Francesca Orsini and others have begun to... more

Dissident Writing, the Cold War, and the Decolonizing World

Organizer: Peter Kalliney

Dissident writers and repressive states are ubiquitous features of the long Cold War. During the second half of the twentieth century, literature became a fiercely contested site as writers faced... more

Fugitive Modernities: South African Modernism and the Global Mind in Crisis

Organizer: Bogdan Andrei

This paper explores South African modernism within the broader framework of global modernity, focusing on how it responds to and critiques the crises of consciousness and identity that have... more

Odd Temporalities

Organizer: Juan Meneses

At one level, power is about the control of time. This is not so much a question of “what happens when?” but, rather, of deciding “when do things happen?” While this is a strategy of direct control,... more

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