[UPDATE] CFP: Animals, Animality, and National Identity (ACLA 3/17-3/20/2016; due 9/23/15)
Submission for papers begins today through Sept. 23rd.
This seminar will explore how national identities have been forged through the manipulation and deployment of animals and animality. How have animals, and ideas associated with such animals, been used to construct imagined communities? How have these constructions helped to strengthen or weaken national borders? How have assertions of imagined community, as expressed via relations with animals, overlapped with racial/ethnic identities?
In naming both animals and animality, I allude to the intersection of material practices with the representational appropriation of ideas and values of certain animals, which together forged the affective ties of groups or nations. The seminar also hopes to pursue issues surrounding the internal production of national identities by citizens and residents, as well as tensions arising when "outsiders" attempt to challenge, co-op, or otherwise influence these identities.
Interdisciplinary studies of literature, film, and culture are welcome.
- Potential topics include:
nations/peoples, such as the American bald eagle, the English bulldog, the French rooster, the Russian bear, the German eagle, the Chinese dragon, the Indian tiger, the Japanese crane, the Costa Rican quetzal, the Senegal lion, the Ivory Coast elephant, the Australian kangaroo, the New Zealand kiwi
Please see the CFP on the American Comparative Literature Association's website here: http://www.acla.org/seminar/animals-animality-and-national-identity
Abstracts for papers should be submitted between September 1-23, 2015 through ACLA's website (http://www.acla.org/annual-meeting). Please indicate interest in this panel during your submission. Full panels will be submitted to the American Comparative Literature Association for acceptance into the final program.
The American Comparative Literature Association's 2016 Annual Meeting will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts March 17-20, 2016.