cfp.english.upenn.edu

The 10th Annual New Voices Conference focuses on representations of the Apocalypse as they manifest throughout history, across cultures, and in language. The conference committee invites papers dealing with any aspect of mankind's conception of the End-of-Days. Individual papers or panel proposals may center upon any time period and any culture or people. They may furthermore draw thematically from such academic disciplines as literary criticism and theory, poetry, fiction, philosophy, religious studies, medieval and renaissance studies, art history, biblical history, cultural geography, and folklore. We also welcome papers exploring the rhetoric of the apocalypse, which may range from interrogations of the political rhetoric of alarmism to the religious rhetoric of technology-age theology.

Topics, periods, authors, or movements considered may include, but are not limited to:

• William Blake
• John Milton
• Herman Melville / Nathanial Hawthorn / Anti-Transcendentalism
• Jonathan Edwards / Renaissance Eschatology
• William Butler Yeats
• Cotton Mather
• Daniel Defoe / The Journal of the Plague Year
• Biblical History & Prophecy
• Film Representations & Art History
• Religious Primitivism & Folklore
• Historical Records of the Cultural Impact of Pandemic Disease
• Rhetoric and Prophecies of the End-of-Days
• Rhetoric of Political and Economic crisis
• Religious rhetoric
• Scandinavian Mythology / Anglo-Saxon & Norse Fatalism
• Medieval & Renaissance Homiletic Representations of the Second Coming
• Eco-Criticism & The Problem of an Unsustainable Globe
• Margaret Atwood
• Rhetoric and the Resurrection of the Dead at Judgment Day
• Studies in Zombies and the Post-Apocalyptic Undead
• Creative / Original Poetry and Fiction (See Creative Writing CFP)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Presentation lengths will be strictly limited to 15 minutes, or roughly 9 double-spaced pages. Please submit a 150-250 word proposal by September 30, 2009. Please include name, title of work, email address, and daytime / business telephone number.

Submit hard copies of proposals to: Phil Purser, Department of English, Georgia State University. P.O. Box 3970 Atlanta, GA 30302 or submit as Microsoft Word attachment to NewVoices@langate.gsu.edu