cfp.english.upenn.edu

Contemporary Slave Narrative

The South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Convention (SAMLA)
Atlanta, Georgia
November 9-11, 2007

Papers are sought for the African American Literature session at SAMLA that=20=
explore the contemporary slave narrative as a genre and in its specific form=
s in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Toni Morrison's stateme=
nt at the end of Beloved that =E2=80=9CThis is not a story to pass on" has b=
een cited as representative of the complexities of the African American nov=
el in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries: do writers recognize and re=
cover the past or attempt to move on? While there is an extensive body of li=
terature on the contemporary slave narrative, we are interested in revisitin=
g Ashraf Rushdy's definition of "neo-slave narratives" by examining how foun=
dational texts in the 1970s and 1980s shape the genre and, moving into a twe=
nty-first century literary tradition, considering how the genre is taking ne=
w shapes and forms. Papers might consider new treatments of earlier works or=
 make cases for new representations of contemporary slave narratives, ultima=
tely exploring how an African American literary tradition remembers the past=
 and lends itself to experimentation and revision. =20
=20
Deadline for 250-500 word abstracts is May 31, 2007. Please send them via e=
mail to Dr. Lisa Perdigao at lperdiga_at_fit.edu or in hard copy to

Dr. Lisa K. Perdigao
Department of Humanities and Communication
Florida Institute of Technology
150 West University Blvd.
Melbourne, FL 32901-6975

All accepted panelists must be SAMLA members. For more information about
the convention see http://www.samla.org.

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Lisa K. Perdigao, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English=20
Department of Humanities and Communication
Florida Institute of Technology
150 W. University Blvd.
Melbourne, FL 32901-6975=20

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Received on Fri May 11 2007 - 18:32:52 EDT