Author: modernistudies

CFP: Radical America: Revolutionary, Dissident and Extremist Magazines

BORDERS OF MODERNISM

International Conference, Perugia, 14-16 December 2016

CFP

Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.

(Neal Stephenson)

(Invisible boundaries by Rowan Mersch)

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Claire Davison Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

Prof. Daniel Ferrer, Item (Institut des textes & manuscrits modernes), Paris

Prof. Paolo Giovannetti, Iulm, Milan

Prof. Catriona Kelly, University of Oxford, Oxford

Prof. Andrew Thacker, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham

Originally deriving from the Old French bordure (meaning “seam” and “edge of a shield”), in its geopolitical sense the term “border” was first used in Scotland in the 1530s. The Borders was indeed the name of the district adjoining the English boundary. Accordingly, over the centuries borders have been used to signal differences, separations, distinctions, discontinuities, the beginning of the other, as well as the need for protection and preservation. One could mention cultural, linguistic, political, social, gender borders, and the list could of course be much longer. In The Order of Things Michel Foucault maintained that the concepts of boundaries and partitions should be replaced by that of “threshold” and “hinges”, whereby the latter are “porous borders” that both separate and communicate. Such a contiguity inherent in the very notion of threshold suggests a physical adjacency, a spatial contact that, although it can or cannot be pursued, certainly calls for attention. In this regard, modernism as a wide-ranging of philosophical and artistic expressions that cross several ideological, political and cultural boundaries epitomises Foucault’s concept of permeable lines and borders. In particular, this conference will explore those borders that modernism has either dissolved or provocatively recovered in light of an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and trans-geographical approach.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers which address but are not limited to the points below:

• CHRONOLOGICAL BORDERS

Modernism in context: modernism and aestheticism; modernism and 19^th century realism; modernism and contemporary literary movements (such as avant-garde, vorticism, imagism, etc.), modernism, postmodernism and beyond.

• GENERIC BORDERS

Modernism/literary and artistic genres.

• GEOGRAPHICAL BORDERS

Eastern and western modernism, European, American and Eurasian modernism; modernism and colonialism; national modernisms and the emergence of a wider notion of modernism, transnational or, more appropriately, European.

• LITERARY BORDERS

Interdisciplinary modernism: modernism and science, modernism and medicine, modernism and music, modernism and art, modernism and media, modernism and law, etc.

• SOCIO-CULTURAL BORDERS

The interconnections between high and middlebrow literature. Does modernism address only to high literature or is there such a thing as a “modernist pop literature”? Is there a left and a right modernism?

• GENDER BORDERS

Is there a female modernism and a male modernism or perhaps a trans-sexual modernism? How does gender affect modernism?

• DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Mapping modernism through digitalization, 3-d mapping and electronic literary analysis.

Please submit a 300-word proposal along with a 200 words max biographical note to conference@cemstudies.eu by May 31. Notifications of acceptance will be given by June 20.

Please also notice that all participants will have to cover their own costs including conference registration € 40.

Scientific Board:                    

Francesco Fiorentino (Roma Tre), Paolo Tamassia (Trento), Valeria Tocco (Pisa), Massimiliano Tortora (Perugia), Annalisa Volpone (Perugia)

Organizing Committee:  

Valentino Baldi (Malta), Novella di Nunzio (Vilnius), Rossella Riccobono (St. Andrews)

www.cemstudies.eu

Waste and the Archive

This proposed panel for MSA 18 will explore the relationship between waste and the archive in modernism. Concerns about waste pervaded the modern period: many high modernists sought to eradicate wasteful and excess language from their literary productions, while the rise of a consumer culture created increasing amounts of rubbish. Our idea of the modern archive has expanded too in recent years to include cultural productions such as the lowbrow, middlebrow, and popular culture: ‘trashy’ literature is now precious. Considering the conference’s theme of culture and industry, this panel seeks papers that examine the material and figurative excesses and waste created in modern cultural production and what kind of unofficial, portable, ad-hoc, and non-traditional archives these wastes and excesses produced in turn. From the detritus of a life, collected in the literary archive—scribblings, lists, works-in-progress—to things we might not consider cultural archives at all—rubbish, odors, food scraps—this panel will examine the possibilities of and anxieties surrounding modernist archives full of waste.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

–alternative archives: lowbrow and middlebrow, popular culture, non-literary archives

–thing theory, object studies, collectors, hoarders

–waste studies, recycling, environmental and natural archives

–portable archives, new technologies, data and information

–works-in-progress, leftovers, excesses, remains, overflow

–the politics of archives in relation to gender, racial, class, and sexual identities

Please submit paper proposals of no more than 250 words and a brief bio to laura.james@stonybrook.edu and r.m.bowler@keele.ac.uk by March 31 2016.

Adding to an expanding sense of what encompasses “institutions of modernism,” this panel proposes to examine the space of literary and cultural production that non-governmental organizations have occupied. If high modernist institutions have popularly been configured as networks of print matter, late modernist institutions can include forms that reflect technological change and the shifting global arena. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 gave rise to the powerful institutional ideal of the modern day NGO. From the outset, NGOs with a literary or cultural focus, such as PEN, Amnesty International, and UNESCO, engaged in issues like censorship, literacy, and educational access, which were themselves issues imbricated with the post-war discourse of modernist influence.

This panel seeks proposals that critically examine the framework of these NGOs. While some NGOs promote a progressive platform, especially when it comes to issues such as human rights, literacy campaigns, and democratization, they can still perpetuate hegemonic discourses of literary forms and cultural hierarchies.

Paper topics may involve:

• Historicizing NGOs within the milieu of post-World War II politics
• Analyzing forms of knowledge produced by literary and cultural-focused NGOs
• Address the more recent NGO boom and its effect on the cultural politics of literary form
• Present a specific NGO in the context of a literary development

Differentiate between NGOs and other non-state actors (such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom or the Rockefeller Foundation) in light of one of the areas listed above

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract with a short bio to matthewchambers@protonmail.com by April 1^st.