american

This panel welcomes papers that explore how contemporary literary genres attempt to think through the traditionally raced and class divided formulations (and representations) of the neoliberal city-scape. We particularly invite presenters to consider creative works that destabilize the city as the ultimate signifier of minority cultures and reimagine the spatial expanse of minority resistance. Other themes that panelists might address in their work include, but are not limited to:

ideology and effect of 'urban renewal' /gentrification/displacements and dispossessions
urban discourse of raced deviance
new immigrant destinations

This proposed panel seeks to present new and challenging perspectives on the history of the slave narrative genre. Recent studies have sought to recontextualize and/or reconsider the generic contours of the Anglo-American slave narrative. For example, Daphne Brooks has suggested the development of a "sonic slave narrative"; Nicole Aljoe and Ian Finseth have drawn attention to the "journeys" of the form in the early Americas; Deborah Jenson has highlighted popular sources from the Haitian Revolutionary period; John MacKay has written comparatively about the autobiographical writings of American slaves and Russian serfs.

There has been a significant shift in the boundaries between the private and public realm in recent years. The increasing indistinction between the two spheres has multiple causes, among them the rise of identity politics and the popularity of the confessional mode. The former might be said to underwrite the latter: the feminist rallying cry, 'the personal is the political' providing a substantial justification for radical autobiography. The motto continues as a cornerstone of feminist consciousness, as well as other forms of identity politics, but the ongoing consequences for public discourse are unclear.

Ordinary Chronicles of the End of the World

We seek submissions for a collection of new examinations of settler colonialism as expressed and developed through literature or other "texts" (including films, historical documents, art, architecture, music, maps, and advertisements, among other types of texts). We are particularly interested in submissions that approach these texts as articulations of transnational connections developed by ways of settler migration and/or colonial displacement.