Howling For Justice: Critical Perspectives on Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead
Howling For Justice: Critical Perspectives on Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead
Contributions are sought for a collection of essays offering a wide range of critical responses to Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead (1991), from its socio-cultural, historical and political context, to its popular and critical reception. Given the critical attention afforded Silko's other novels - the publication of a casebook on the 1977 novel Ceremony (Oxford UP, 2002) and a recent collection on the 1999 novel Gardens in the Dunes (Pisa UP, 2007) - a collection focusing solely on Almanac clearly addresses not only the critical silences and hostility of some of the scholarly responses to the text, but also a real gap in the critical work on Silko's oeuvre.
Since the text focuses on inter-cultural and inter-national boundaries, conflicts, relationships and alliances, contributions from scholars outside North America are also welcomed, to reflect not only key textual concerns, but also the international impact of the text itself.
A wide spectrum of responses to the text are therefore invited. Topics of interest might include, but are by no means restricted to:
New theoretical approaches
Environmental or ecocritical analyses
Interdisciplinary and/or 'non-literary' analyses
Comparative approaches
Critical and/or readerly responses to the text
since its publication
The inter-national or trans-national
The Dead and/or death
Justice
'Texts' within the text
Community
Home and/or homelessness
Story
History and/or the intersections between
literature and history
Violence
Gender
Sexuality
Dreams and dreaming
Corruption
Illness and/or suffering
Oppression
Memory
Healers and/or healing
African-Native Americans
Maps and mapping
Borders and border-crossing
Land, land-use and resources
Enforced diaspora and/or removal
Power, and the workings of power
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words (as an email attachment) and a brief CV, plus any queries to Rebecca Tillett (r.tillett@uea.ac.uk) by Monday, December 7th 2009.
Completed essays will be 7-9,000 words, including notes and works cited, and in Chicago style/format, with a final submission deadline of Monday, 28th June 2010.