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Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: I <3 Pop
25
Jul 16

CFP: I <3 Pop

I <3 Pop

An interdisciplinary conference of the PhD Program in Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY

Call for Papers

Dates: November 10-11, 2016
Location: The Graduate Center, CUNY
Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2016
Keynote Speaker: TBD

“If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then—of course—I’d choose Dostoyevsky. But do I have to choose?” –Susan Sontag

 

The information about the conference below has been provided by the “I <3 Pop” organizers:

 

There seems to be no end to the anxieties, fantasies, pleasures, and possibilities of pop culture—how we consume it, avoid it, appreciate it, and allow it to inform our identities.

Yet, can we theorize pop today? And if so, to what extent are we obligated to do so?

Conceptions of pop culture are marked by continuous change, constant revision, and ongoing re-appropriation. Pop can be a stabilizer of the canon, with its distinction of high and low, while also a way to subvert the canon’s very foundations through a critique of elitism. If, as Adorno argued, mass culture is a deception, an industry that reproduces passivity and perpetuates the reification of social life, is there a way to escape this repetition? Or can we conceive of pop culture as a potential space of resistance, following the work of Stuart Hall and other British Cultural studies? Furthermore, are mass culture and pop culture coterminous?

Pop culture and literary studies have maintained a sometimes-uneasy yet necessary kinship. Thus, Elizabethan popular culture becomes the foundation of the English literary canon, while ephemeral magazine columns and stories become permanent fixtures in the literary landscape. The height of modernism makes reference to “The Wasteland” of mass culture and everyday life, at the same time as it elevates the everyman to Ulysses. The pattern continues today in media forms such as TV, which now displays narrative and artistic complexity rivaling art film of international acclaim.

Twenty-first century pop culture presents new questions for consideration: who are we when we absorb or participate in pop culture? The interactive nature of our contemporary forms of pop culture promotes and engages a rhetoric of listening that may in fact imply a dialectical agency for the receiver, rather than blind consumption. However, the politics of this engagement are troubled by various global contexts of reception. Does a study of pop involve universalization and standardization that could pander to dangerous types of political populism or does it engage various registers that foster a productive sense of difference?

We invite papers and presentations from all disciplines focusing on works from any historical period and geographical region, including literature, theory, philosophy, visual arts, film, television, social sciences, technology, and alternative media. Traditional papers are welcome, as well as multi-modal presentations and performances.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Art, advertising, brands, products, food, consumption and the consumer
  • Identity within pop culture, including race and gender
  • Music
  • Technology
  • Comic books, Anime, and narrative forms across media
  • Television
  • Film, including Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, YouTube
  • Popular magazines, journals, sports, and news media
  • Video games and gaming culture
  • Image, the body, and pornography in various media forms
  • Myth and mythology
  • Camp and kitsch
  • The internet and social media
  • Questions of discourse and intellectual property
  • Science fiction, fantasy, horror
  • The taboo, banned media, subcultures, and cult classics
  • Popular language, hybrid language, idioms, text language, and slang
  • Fashion, style, and lifestyle
  • Imitation, appropriation, adaptation
  • Questions of social class and social capital
  • Self-referentiality, pop culture icons and iconography
  • Relations between pop culture and political populism
  • Popular psychology
  • Popular science

 

Please submit a 300-word abstract to cunypop@gmail.com for a 15-20 minute paper, performance, or presentation by September 1st. Proposals should include the title of the paper, the presenter’s name, a 50-word bio including institutional and department affiliation, the form that your presentation will take (if it is not a traditional paper), and any technology requests.

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: Representations of fashion and clothing in Hispanic Literatures
23
Jul 16

CFP: Representations of fashion and clothing in Hispanic Literatures

The Spanish section of the Department of Languages and Literatures of Lehman College, CUNY

invites proposals for its 2017 Symposium

Representations of fashion and clothing in Hispanic Literatures

Dates: April 7 and 8, 2017
Location: Lehman College, CUNY
Paper/Panel Proposals Deadline: October 15, 2016.

The information that follows has been provided by the conference organizers and is also available on the symposium’s website.

 

The Spanish section of the Department of Languages and Literatures of Lehman College of the City University of New York, is currently accepting submissions for the Symposium “Representations of fashion and clothing in Hispanic Literatures.” This event will take place on the 7th and 8th of April, 2017. The symposiums will bring together scholars interested in exploring, from diverse theoretical approaches, the topic of dress, fashion, and clothing in different genres and periods of Hispanic literatures.

The Call For Papers is open but not restricted to the following topics:

  • Clothes and costumes in theatre
  • Clothing, costumes and masks
  • Clothing and identity
  • Clothes and the question of genre, class, race…
  • Clothes as elements of subversion
  • Clothing and nakedness
  • Clothes, erotism and fetiche
  • Poetics and politics of clothing
  • Fashion in the figure of the dandy and the flanneur
  • Dress, clothes and ceremonies
  • Dressing, maurophilia and exotism
  • Dress, satire and parody
  • The clothes as carnavalesque elements
  • Clothing and consumerism

Those interested in participating should send a proposal to the following email address:
symposium.spanish [at] lehman.cuny.edu

In order to submit your proposal, please use the attached document providing your personal information and a 300 words abstract:

Individual proposal document

Closed panels proposals will also be welcomed. All panels must have three participants. In order to send a proposal, the chair of the panel must fill out the following form including the information of all the participants:

Closed panel proposal 

The length of each presentation should not exceed 20 minutes. Papers may be presented in English or in Spanish. Papers will not be read in absentia.

The deadline for sending proposals is October 15, 2016. The Organizing Committee will acknowledge all submissions. Notices of acceptance from the organizing committee will go out by December 15, 2016. Once a proposal is accepted, participants should pay a registration fee of $150 (the fee for graduate students will be of $100).

A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of the online academic journal Ciberletras. The papers considered for publication will be peer reviewed by the Editorial Board of the journal.

Organizing Committee

Carmen Saen-de-Casas
Marco Ramírez Rojas
Daniel Fernández
Oscar Martín
Carmen Esteves
Gerardo Piña-Rosales
Beatriz Lado
Evelin Duran

Contact Information

For any question regarding the symposium please contact:
Marco Ramírez – marco.ramirez [at] lehman.cuny.edu
Carmen Saen – carmen.saen [at] lehman.cuny.edu
Oscar Martín – oscar.martin [at] lehman.cuny.edu
Daniel Fernandez – daniel.fernandez1 [at] lehman.cuny.edu

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: XII International Conference of Literature at St. John’s University
21
Jul 16

CFP: XII International Conference of Literature at St. John’s University

XII International Conference of Literature: Memory and Imagination of Latin America and the Caribbean Through the Oral and Written Paths

and

The International Conference of Romance Literatures of the DLL at St. John’s University

Convened by:

The Department of Languages and Literature (DLL) and the Graduate Program in Hispanic Literature at St. John’s University (New York), The Center for Research for Latin America and the Caribbean (CIALC) of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Perú) and Pontificia Universidad Católica (Ecuador)

 

Conference Dates: October 12-14, 2016
Location: St. John’s University, Queens Campus (New York)
Main Topic: Literature and Languages: Crossing Frontiers and Finding Diversity in Culture
Abstract Deadline: July 23, 2016

The conference will also include a special tribute on the 70th Anniversary of Gabriela Mistral’s Nobel Prize in Literature

 

The information below has been provided by the conference organizers. Find out more about the conference on their Facebook page and on their website.

Subtopics:

  • Literature and its relationship with history, politics
  • Oral and written expression, memory, and literacy
  • Development and reform in the fields of science and technology
  • Ethnicity and cultural diversity
  • Literature, ecology, environment
  • Referential genres (fiction/ no fiction)
  • Gender and body
  • Literature and the arts (film, theater, music, etc.)
  • Literature and science
  • Pop culture and innovations
  • Digital proposals
  • Global migrations
  • Linguistics and acquisition of a second language
  • Creative writing

New proposals of subtopics, as well as initiatives for creating workshops and committees, are welcome. Presentations (to be given be in English, French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese) shall not exceed a 15 minute duration.

In order to be considered, participants should include: Name of the presenter or name of the workshop coordinator, name of the academic association, title of essay, an abstract (250 words max), and a brief curriculum vitae. The information should be sent to the Academic Committee at St. John’s University before July 23, 2016. Contact email: conferenceunamsju16@gmail.com

Contact:
Professor Milton  Fernando Romero Obando: conferenceunamsju16@gmail.com
Professor Marie-Lise Gazarian: gazariam@stjohns.edu

 

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: “Forging Linguistic Identities” at Towson University
26
Feb 16

CFP: “Forging Linguistic Identities” at Towson University

“Forging Linguistic Identities”

a conference of

The Department of Foreign Languages
Towson University

Conference Dates: March 16-18, 2017
Location: Towson University; Towson, Maryland
Keynote: Dr. Jennifer Leeman, Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at George Mason University and Research Sociolinguist at the US Census Bureau
Deadline for Abstracts: October 1, 2016

The information below has been provided by the conference organizers:

The conference seeks to examine language as socially embedded within historical and geographical contexts.   Possible topics might include, but not be limited to:

  • Dialects/diglossia and their role in group identity formation
  • The standardization of national and/or majority language(s) and its impact on national or regional politics
  • Multi-lingualism in states and regions and its negotiation and practice by the communities of use.
  • Use(s) of indigenous languages under transnational states
  • National reception of dialect/minority-language literature and verbal culture
  • Migration
  • Translation studies

The scope of the conference is not limited by region, language, or time period.  Proposals involving languages taught by the Department of Foreign Languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Ancient Greek, Biblical and Modern Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish) are especially encouraged.  Proposals are welcomed across disciplines, from scholars of languages and literatures, education, geography, history, psychology and sociology.  Please send an abstract of 250 words by email to: Prof. George McCool (gmccool [at] towson [dot] edu).  Please include your name, full address, institution affiliation, day telephone, fax and email address.  Please note that Conference papers must be limited to 20 minutes.

Faculty at all ranks are encouraged to participate. We will offer discounted hotel rooms near campus, and a graduated scale of conference fees.

 

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: Romance Studies at Boston University Graduate Student Conference
24
Feb 16

CFP: Romance Studies at Boston University Graduate Student Conference

Re-membering

Boston University Romance Studies Graduate Student Conference

Dates: April 22-23, 2016
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Mahoney, Stonehill College
Deadline for Abstracts: March 1, 2016

“To interrogate a tradition, venerable though it may be, is no longer to pass it on intact.” — Pierre Nora

The following information about the first annual Boston University Romance Studies Graduate Student Conference has been provided by the conference organizing committee:

Pierre Nora, in his essay, “Les lieux de mémoire,” suggests that intellectual inquiry results in the dismemberment of its subject. The self-imposed mission of not just the historian, but of modern society at large, thus becomes to transform this subject back into a coherent whole, to re-member it.

How can a physical, textual, or theoretical body be dismantled and put back together? What reconfigurations are possible? War, memory, renovation, and revolution all create something new from the fragments of a previous order. This conference will seek to examine the process of re-membering through a multidisciplinary lens. Topics may include:

  • Issues of political revolution
  • Re/claiming space within society
  • Lacan and the body
  • Memories of violence or trauma
  • Non-linear storytelling
  • Translations in language or artistic medium
  • Synecdoche and other symbolic constructions
  • Appropriation of the Other
  • Hybridization
  • The Grotesque

The committee welcomes alternative interpretations of the theme.

Please submit abstracts (250 words) to rsgsabu [at] gmail [dot] com. Papers may be submitted in English, French, or Spanish. The deadline for submission is March 1, 2016. Submission decisions will be sent out by March 15.

 

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: Translation Theory Today
13
Feb 16

CFP: Translation Theory Today

Translation Theory Today

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Critical Theory

Dates: May 5-6, 2016
Location: The Graduate Center, CUNY
Keynote Speakers: Homi K. Bhabha (Harvard University), Edwin Frank (The New York Review of Books Classics)
Keynote Roundtable on Practice: Barbara Epler (New Directions), Jonathan Galassi (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux),  and Jill Schoolman (Archipelago Books)
Deadline for Abstracts: March 1, 2016

The Critical Theory Certificate Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in conjunction with The Center for the Humanities presents the fifth annual interdisciplinary conference on Critical Theory to be held May 5th-6th, 2016.  This year’s conference will be devoted to the theory and practice of translation.

Literally meaning “carried across,” translation facilitates the movement of ideas among individuals, cultures languages, time periods, and geographic boundaries. Since antiquity, scholars have questioned translation’s ability to preserve meaning across languages and debated whether the successful translator should provide a word for word conversion of the original or adapt the source material to fit its new context and, in so doing, take on an authorial role. The globalization of the present era has highlighted how translation fosters communication while emphasizing cultural differences and disparities, simultaneously illuminating and distorting meaning. In the liminal space between the spoken and the unspeakable, translation serves as an adaptive tool that facilitates the development of new social memories and historical narratives. This conference seeks to employ Critical Theory to examine all aspects of translation—its history, evolution, practice, and effects on language, identity, culture, and society—in order to interrogate the functions of and standards for a successful translation. We welcome a wide range of disciplines and theoretical approaches, including literary theory, psychoanalysis, identity theory, semiotics, philosophy, social theory, cultural studies, postcolonialism, gender studies, and political theory. Some of the topics that this conference seeks to address include, but are not limited to:

  • Translation’s adaptation of the source material to fit new historical, social, and cultural contexts
  • The creative aspects of a translation, and its capacity to stand on its own artistic merits
  • The translator’s role as an author and translation’s fidelity (or lack thereof) to the original source material
  • The possibility of cultural translation
  • The relationship between translation and globalization
  • Translation as means of comprehending Self and Other
  • The particular characteristics of writers and translators in exile, immigrant, diaspora, and dissident communities
  • The evolution and history of translation, especially with respect to Antiquity and the Middle Ages
  • The psychological effects of translation, particularly with regard to identity politics
  • Translation and its relationships with etymology and philology (e.g. Turǧumān, dragoman, drogman, targum)
  • Translation as an ideological or political tool
  • Translation and memory
  • The function of translation in polyglot communities
  • Theoretical analyses of translations
  • Authors who translate and the inner translator in bilingual and trilingual authors
  • Technology’s effect on translation and the impact of internet translation communities
  • Translation as figure
  • Translation, imitation, and hybridity
  • The consequences of improper or mistranslation

Please submit a 300-word abstract to translationtheorytoday [at] gmail [dot] com by March 1st. Proposals should include the title of the paper, the presenter’s name, a 50-word bio including institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests. We also welcome panel proposals of three to four papers.

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: Symposium on Language & the Sustainable Development Goals
13
Feb 16

CFP: Symposium on Language & the Sustainable Development Goals

A Symposium on Language and the Sustainable Development Goals

Organized by:
The Study Group on Language at the United Nations in cooperation with
The Centre for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems
and the Center for Applied Linguistics 

 

Date: Thursday, April 21, 2016.  1:00-5:00pm
Location: Church Center, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017
Deadline for proposals: February 29, 2016.

The following information was provided by symposium organizers. Find our more on their website: www.languageandtheun.org

Proposals for short 10- or 20-minute presentations or panel discussions should focus on the following themes:

  • Language & Poverty
  • Language & Healthcare
  • Language, Education & Gender
  • Language, Infrastructure & Inclusivity
  • Language, Sustainability & Environment
  • Language & Global Partnerships

For more information and examples of more specific prompts, contact sustainabilityandlanguage [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sustainable Development Goals:

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals approved by the UN General Assembly (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/) for the period 2015-2030 replace the eight Millennium Development Goals that covered the period 2000-2015. They aim to engage not only governments, but “all people, everywhere,” at all levels of civil society. Carrying them out will require active, two-way, democratic communication, in a multiplicity of languages. Furthermore, several of the Goals imply direct attention to issues of language. Study and research on language in relation to economic and social development is a well-established field that does not always receive the attention it merits. What does this field have to contribute to the realization of the SDGs? What linguistic obstacles stand in the way of their successful realization.

Submissions:

If you are interested in participating, submit a one paragraph description of your planned 10- or 20-minute presentation or panel discussion on the topic to sustainabilityandlanguage@gmail.com by February 29. Once accepted, a more detailed description of the presentation or panel should be sent by March 31.

Specific prompts include but are not limited to:

Language & Poverty

  • How does language factor in poverty, socioeconomic identity, and economic mobility?
  • What communicative issues have arisen in the implementation of sustainable and healthy food systems, including production, consumption, and security?
  • How can language policy aid in the reduction of inequality, especially as it relates to the treatment of linguistic minorities?

Language & Healthcare

  • What initiatives have been successful or not so successful in administering healthcare to individuals who do not speak the local language in cities, refugee camps, and elsewhere?

Language, Education & Gender

  • What role do monoglot ideologies play in preventing access to education, especially for adult learners? How can larger scale education on the realities of multilingualism impact adults who are isolated or dependant on younger family members for access to resources?
  • Do access to language education and sociolinguistic issues involving home-language usage disproportionately affect women and girls? If so, how do these issues prevent gender equality?
  • In what ways do language-of-instruction and language-education policies affect career-readiness?

Language, Infrastructure & Inclusivity

  • How does media discourse impact community organizing attempts by underserved communities (often tied to racialization), as in the case of Flint?
  • How can processes of industrialization and infrastructure-building leverage linguistic and cultural heterogeneity as an asset to promote a more inclusive and innovative future?
  • In order to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, what linguistic infrastructure must be available to residents so that all, including those who only speak minority languages, may participate in helping achieve those goals?

Language, Sustainability & Environment

  • When educating consumers, manufacturers and retailers about sustainable consumption and production patterns, what cultural and linguistic hurdles will be faced? How might these hurdles affect legislation and enforcement of sustainability issues.
  • Residents of areas under the jurisdiction of environmental legislation sometimes feel an infringement on their personal freedoms, often leading to costly and ineffective top-down enforcement protocols. Could a more inclusive atmosphere of communication lead to better local enforcement?

Language & Global Partnerships

  • The implementation of a global partnership for sustainable development requires in-depth two-way communications, many times through translation. How have one-way translation methods for the dissemination of policy failed to adequately apply global policy to local needs.
Calls for Papers / LL Journal / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: LL Journal’s Vol. 11, No. 1
09
Feb 16

CFP: LL Journal’s Vol. 11, No. 1

Call for Papers: LL Journal’s Volume 11, Number 1

Deadline for submission: March 13, 2016

The information below was provided by the editorial team of the LL Journal, a publication of the students of the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages PhD program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Find out more about the LL Journal and browse their most recent issue (Vol. 10, No. 1) and archives on their Commons site.

LL Journal CFP Spring 2016

LL Journal los invita a colaborar en su nuevo número (mayo 2016). Requerimos artículos sobre literatura, estudios culturales y de género, lingüística aplicada, lingüística teórica y sociolingüística, que se encuentren en estrecha relación con los mundos hispanos y luso- brasileños. Este número contará con una sección especial (Boundaries) en torno a las nociones de margen, liminalidad, periferia y descentramiento. Los animamos a que envíen artículos vinculados a esta línea de reflexión, pero recordamos que la temática de la revista es siempre abierta.

Todos los trabajos deberán respetar las orientaciones propuestas en las Directrices para autores y se enviarán al siguiente correo electrónico: lljournal [dot] cuny [at] gmail [dot] com.

Para mantener el anonimato durante el proceso de selección, se requiere indicar los datos personales en el cuerpo del correo electrónico y no en el archivo adjunto que contiene el artículo. Los autores seleccionados serán notificados en un plazo no mayor a dos meses.

LL Journal es una publicación coordinada por las y los estudiantes del Programa Doctoral de Lenguas y Literaturas Hispánicas y Luso-Brasileñas. CUNY, The Graduate Center, Nueva York.

 

Calls for Papers / Opportunities — Comments Off on CFP: Realisms: Politics, Art, and Visual Culture in the Americas
05
Feb 16

CFP: Realisms: Politics, Art, and Visual Culture in the Americas

Realisms: Politics, Art, and Visual Culture in the Americas

Symposium for Emerging Scholars at

The Institute of Fine Arts and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art

Date: April 30, 2016
Keynote lecturer: José Luis Falconi
Deadline: February 15​​, 2016 2016

The call for papers that follows has been provided by the symposium organizing committee. Read the full call for papers and find out more about ISLAA on their site. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Institute of Fine Arts and the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art are pleased to announce the inaugural IFA–ISLAA Symposium for emerging scholars, “Realisms: Politics, Art, and Visual Culture in the Americas.” The symposium will take place on April 30, 2016 with a keynote lecture by José Luis Falconi.

In the past few years alone, there has been a proliferation of art initiatives that have attempted to synthesize and analyze Latin American art. While such endeavors have been instrumental in raising the profile of this field, they inherently risk creating an idealized history of visual culture, in which the realities of art-making in the Americas recede or are otherwise mystified. Rather than attempting to understand American visualities through received stylistic categories (e.g. geometric abstraction, figuration, conceptualism), an approach that engages more directly with aesthetic and social realities may begin to expand our understandings.

This conference considers “realism” in the Americas not as a stylistic mode pertaining to figuration, mimesis, or authenticity, but rather as a strategy for critically addressing social, political, and economic conditions. Departing from Jacques Rancière’s proposition that “an image is an element in a system that creates a certain sense of reality,” we aim to examine how visual interventions might “construct different realities…different spatiotemporal systems, different communities of words and things, forms, and meanings.”1 From the struggles for independence circa 1800 to contemporary actions addressing political violence and exclusionary immigration policies, the problem of reality has proven central to representations of life across the hemisphere. At a moment in which “global art history” has gained increasing prominence, and in which Latin American art history has moved from the marginal to the canonical, how can we address the specificities of lived experience, both local and hemispheric, while also acknowledging broader connections?

Current graduate students, recent graduates, and emerging scholars are invited to apply. Applicants from fields outside the realm of art history, but grounded in visual material, are highly encouraged (e.g. Cinema and Media Studies, Latin American and Latina/o studies, Visual Culture).

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Art and activism, human rights

• Decolonization, immigration, asylum

• Subjectivity, affect, intersectionality

• Geographic, social, and political topographies

• Reenactment and the place of memory

• Labor, natural resources, global markets

• Technology, communication, surveillance

• Housing, monuments, space

The conference will serve as the principal event of the Latin American Forum for Spring 2016. This ongoing forum—generously funded by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) and coordinated by Professor Edward J. Sullivan—invites distinguished visiting lecturers to the IFA to foster greater understanding and recognition of Latin American art around the world.

To apply, please submit an abstract of up to 300 words to symposium@islaa.org by Monday, February 15, 2016. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance by Monday, February 29, 2016. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes, with additional time for discussion. In your application, please indicate your current institutional affiliation and from where you will be traveling. Limited funding will be available to assist with travel expenses.

The conference is organized by current IFA PhD candidates in modern and contemporary Latin American art history: Sean Nesselrode Moncada, Juanita Solano, Susanna Temkin, Lizzie Frasco, Blanca Serrano Ortiz, Priscilla Bolanos Salas, Emily Lyver, Brian Bentley, and Madeline Murphy Turner. For further information or with any questions, please contact symposium@islaa.org.

Calls for Papers — Comments Off on CFP: Religion, Myth, and Reason in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures
04
Feb 16

CFP: Religion, Myth, and Reason in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures

Religion, Myth, and Reason in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures

The Catholic University of America

Date: April 23, 2016
Location: Washington, D.C.
Keynote Address: “In Search of the Sacred Book: Religion and the Novel in One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Aníbal González-Pérez (Yale University)
Deadline: February 29, 2016

The Call for Papers that follows was provided by the conference organizing committee. Find out more about the conference, including registration information, on their website.

The idea of modernity as an emancipatory force leading the individual to dispel the influence of the unknown through the sole power of reason, progress, and technique has often situated the interest in religious and mythical thinking in the realms of mere superstition and primitiveness. A fundamental critique of modernity has, in turn, dismissed the absolute validity of the ideals championed by the Enlightenment as being themselves generators of myths and horror. As Horkheimer and Adorno famously put it, “myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” A more nuanced and dynamic understanding of how modernity and reason, on the one hand, and religion and myth, on the other, intersect with each other can shed new light on the way culture shapes our perception of reality. As John C. Lyden says when referring to the influence of popular culture and media in our daily life today, sometimes “we fail to acknowledge the extent to which modern people base their worldviews and ethics upon sources we do not usually label ‘religious,’” an observation that applies not only to popular culture, but to other domains of human imagination and knowledge.

The Hispanic world presents a particular case in the interaction between religion and myth, given the continuing presence of competing forces emanating from the realms of both the secular and the sacred. This conference aims at exploring how textual and visual culture in the Spanish-speaking world has understood the relationship between reason and faith, progress and myth, in a variety of historical periods, from Medieval and Pre-Colonial times to the Present. We would like to invite presentations that touch on topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Remembering the sacred: history and memory
  • Nation, empire: religion and myth in colonial / post-colonial perspective
  • Reading native-American traditions, classical myths and biblical figures in Hispanic culture
  • Oral and written folklore in the Hispanic world
  • Secularizing / Re-sacralizing culture
  • The ethics of writing and reading
  • The sacred role of the intellectual /author
  • Locating spaces of the secular and the sacred: city, country, text
  • Conflict, trauma, religion, and myth
  • Gender-based readings of religious and mythical narratives
  • Religion and myth in popular culture and media
  • The fantastic and the sacred
  • Horror and the Sublime
  • Old, Modern, and Post-modern Saints
  • Iconoclasm and anti-clericalism

Keynote Address

In Search of the Sacred Book: Religion and the Novel in One Hundred Years of Solitude Aníbal González-Pérez

Aníbal González-Pérez (Puerto Rico, 1956) is Professor of Modern Latin American Literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, and founder and general editor of the “Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory” Series of Bucknell University Press. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and has authored several books of literary criticism, including A Companion to Spanish American Modernismo (2007), Love and Politics in the Contemporary Spanish American Novel (2010), and Redentores by Manuel Zeno Gandía (critical edition, 2010). Prof. González Pérez has just completed a book on religion and the novel in contemporary Spanish American literature.

Submission of Proposals

Presentations will be made by graduate students, in either English or Spanish, lasting approximately 20 minutes (7-8 pages double-spaced). The proposals, which are to consist of an abstract of 200-250 words in PDF or Word format not including the name of the presenter, must be sent by January 31, 2016 to cuahispanicgradconf@cua.edu. Said proposals should be accompanied by the following information in the body of the message: name of the presenter, title of the paper containing three to five key words, institutional affiliation, telephone number, address, and a brief professional biography.

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