The 6th Wenshan Conference on English and American Literature

English Department, National Cheng-Chi University, Taipei.

March 2006
 
Call for papers
 
Conference Theme: "Situated Knowledges: Literature of Belief, Believing, &the Unbelievable"
 
"Situated Knowledges: Literature of Belief, Believing, &the Unbelievable"

This conference revisits and expands Donna Haraway's theme of "situated knowledges" and the idea of "local knowledge" discussed by Clifford Geerz and so many others recently in terms of a global/local dynamic. To situate knowing and believing is to re-cognize the "site" of knowledges whether in terms of social spaces, ecological places, the embodiment in perfomative bodies, the material relations of production of values, and many other such situations and locations of cultural representation. The conference seeks to interpret literary knowledge in terms of the location of the reader both spatially and temporally, the site(s) of the text, and how authors situate themselves. It also looks at how such knowledges differ from site to site, whether in terms of nationality or ethnicity or gender or class.

We are calling for papers that address any period, genre, or source of literature broadly conceived. Suggested subtopics include:

- Situating through the "chronotopes" of literary protagonists, genres, and readers themselves.

- Local knowledge revisited: limiting, disembedding, deterritorializing, or defending beliefs?

- Unbelievable sites in literature. The fantastic as escape from and/or recreation of locations.

- On location: the setting vis-a-vis being "on location" of narrative filmmaking. Settings in literature and their knowledges.

- The country versus the city as sites of conflicting knowledges. Urban literature and nature writing.

- The body as situated knowledges: differential beliefs in the performative body, the gendered body, the aged body

- Ecosystems as situated knowledge in literary works.

- Revisiting the site of class consciousness: how to remap class-based knowledges in the global division of (immaterial) labor.

- Cultural locations and multicultural sites in the production of literary knowledge.

- Ways of believing and disbelieving in interpretive practices. How do texts allow believability and beliefs?

- Beliefs sacred and profane. Devotional literature, meditative writing, the site of epiphanies and doubts.
 

Please email abstracts (up to 300 words) before October 5 to wsconf_at_nccu.edu.tw . Notification of acceptance: December 23, 2005. Deadline for full paper: February 15, 2006. Possible publication in peer-reviewed journals.

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Received on Sat Sep 10 2005 - 12:41:05 EDT