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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 21st CENTURY EUROPEAN LITERATURES
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS: 15-17th SEPTEMBER 2010

21st-Century European Literature: Mapping New Trends

CALL FOR PAPERS

Organising body: School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews

Convenor: Professor Margaret-Anne Hutton, Department of French

Subject convenors:
British literature: Dr Sarah Dillon (sjd16@st-andrews.ac.uk)
French-language literature: Prof. Margaret-Anne Hutton (mh80@st-
andrews.ac.uk)
German-language literature: Dr Michael Gratzke (mg43@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Italian literature: Dr Rossella Riccobono (rmr8@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Russian literature: Dr Claire Whitehead (cew12@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Spanish literature: Dr Ricardo Fernàndez (rfr1@st-andrews.ac.uk)

This major international conference offers scholars from six disciplines the rare opportunity to come together to discuss what is happening in European literatures now. We are seeking to map out emerging trends in a range of national literatures with a view to putting together inter-disciplinary panels which will reveal significant convergences, divergences and cross-fertilisations in literary trends across Europe.

The focus will be on post-2000 literature only. We invite you to tell us what is new, right now, in the national literature you research; what patterns are already discernible; what clusters of texts exploring common themes, ethical or aesthetic imperatives, theoretical or generic preoccupations, can be identified in the new millennium. This extreme contemporary approach opens up fields of enquiry that inevitably have to be explored speculatively. We encourage colleagues to take risks whilst adhering to good practice in literary scholarship. The aim is to position each literary text, author or topic presented in each paper within today’s cultural landscape. What is the trend? Why might it have emerged? What next?

To facilitate communication we will be asking all contributors to present their papers in English, though we may be in a position to offer some help with translation should this prove to be crucial.

The following list, which comprises just some of the possible trends which might be explored, should be regarded as neither exhaustive nor in any way prescriptive:

Writing the future
• Responding to global risk
• (Post-) apocalyptic fictions
• Understanding time
• A new ethics
• Atheism and the messianic

Dealing with trauma
• The event
• Re-viewing WWII
• Archiving and memorialising the past
• Historical revisionisms
• 9/11 and after

Re-working genres
• Literary engagements with the canon
• Return to modernism - the end of postmodernism
• Science fiction in the mainstream
• New takes on old genres (crime, thriller, romance, historical novel, saga, fairy-tale)
• Literary engagements with theory
• Skeuomorphism

Re-positioning Identities
• (Post-) Autofictions
• Blogosphere narratives: between essay and fiction
• New sexualities - Post-queer
• Family configurations
• Urban / rural dialogues
• Immigrant fictions
• New (post-) nationalisms
• Diasporic identities
• The question of the animal
• Science and technology

Submissions for papers and panels on any aspect of 21st- century literature are welcome. This includes prose, drama and poetry. The St Andrews Poetry Forum will be running panels concentrating on the newest developments in European poetry. Topics may include:

• Musicality and poetry
• Poetry and ethics
• Self-poetry and autobiographisms
• New mysticism
• Political, performative and heteroglossic poetry
• Gnoseological poetry
• Reworking poetic classics

All poetry proposals should be send to Dr Rossella Riccobono (rmr8@st-andrews.ac.uk).

PROPOSALS

DATE for SUBMISSION: 1 September 2009

(i) Individual proposals
Should be of 300-400 words, and must be in English. Please also supply a short bio-bibliographical statement. Individual proposals should be submitted electronically to the appropriate subject convenor (above).

(ii) Panel proposals
Panels must cover at least three of the subjects (e.g. ‘post queer literature in France, UK and Germany’). One proposal (in English) of 400-500 words should be submitted electronically to the conference convenor (Prof. M-A Hutton).

Please also supply a short bio-bibliographical statement for each proposed speaker.