Call for papers for a panel sponsored by Atlantikos: A Journal of Transatlantic Scholarship at the
Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, February 21-23, 2008.

What does it mean to read twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts through a transatlantic lens?
Transatlantic movement is often perceived as an eighteenth or nineteenth century phenomenon,
while the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are most frequently understood as belonging to
the era of postcolonialism and globalization. Nonetheless, there remains a distinctly
transatlantic literary and cultural movement throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,
which is often subsumed by competing theoretical frameworks focused on economic, material, or
political conditions.

Examples of this movement are diverse. The work of expatriate artists such as Ernest
Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Josephine Baker was enhanced by the cultural interchange
produced by their movement between European and American societies. The impulse to go
“back to Africa,” advocated or followed by figures such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm
X, and even the comedian Dave Chappelle, highlights the strong cultural influence that Africa has
continued to exert on Americans throughout the century. More currently, the novels of Zadie
Smith feature characters defined by their cultural ties to both Britain and the Americas.
  
Given this range of transatlanticism since 1900, this panel provides the opportunity to create
new vocabulary and epistemological structures that maximize, rather than minimize, the
complex dynamics of movement in, across, and around the Atlantic Ocean. Questions to
consider include the following:
Is there a transatlantic concept of nation that differs from the categories provided by
postcolonialism (governed as it is by considerations of the British empire) or globalization (whose
conception of a “democratic” global network often negates or obscures individual and national
differences)? Is there a transatlantic identity that expands beyond the typical categories of race,
gender, nation, and sexuality? Is there a unique transatlantic aesthetic generated by the cultural
interplay and movement between sites bordering the Atlantic?

Please send a 200-250-word proposal with the paper’s title to Shel Veenstra
(veenst16_at_msu.edu) before September 13, 2007. Please include your affiliation, mailing address,
phone/fax, email address, and a brief CV (no more than 2-3 pages).

===================================
 From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
            cfp_at_english.upenn.edu
             more information at
         http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
===================================
Received on Sat Sep 08 2007 - 14:03:06 EDT