SAMLA - ENGLISH V (MODERN BRITISH)

Exiles and Voyagers Out: The Traveler's Perspective in Modern British Literature

Modernist culture, marked by what Raymond Williams called its "transnational capitals of an art without frontiers," celebrated the traveler, whether author or character, and placed the formerly marginal figures of the exile and émigré at the center of an emergent cosmopolitan aesthetic discourse. The late 19th
century and early decades of the 20th century also saw the creation of travel and communications technologies that allowed borders to be crossed more frequently and with greater ease, even as nation-states saw the need to define and control those borders more strictly (as we see, for instance, in the development of the European passport system during the First World War).

This session of the 2012 South Atlantic Modern Language Association invites paper proposals that address those aspects of Modern British literature that engage questions of travel, dislocation, and/or exile. Topics may include, but are not limited to transnational modernism(s), literary (self-)exiles, border crossings, modernist travel narratives, and voyages as metaphors.

By June 30th, 2012, please submit paper proposals of no more than 500 words and a short c.v. (including complete contact information) to Ryan Shirey, Wake Forest University, at shireyrd@wfu.edu.