cfp.english.upenn.edu

Howling For Justice: Critical Perspectives on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead

Contributions are sought for a collection of essays offering a wide range of critical responses to Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991), from its socio-cultural, historical and political context, to its popular and critical reception. Given the critical attention afforded Silko's other novels - the publication of a casebook on the 1977 novel Ceremony (Oxford UP, 2002) and a recent collection on the 1999 novel Gardens in the Dunes (Pisa UP, 2007) - a collection focusing solely on Almanac clearly addresses not only the critical silences and hostility of some of the scholarly responses to the text, but also a real gap in the critical work on Silko's oeuvre.

Since the text focuses on inter-cultural and inter-national boundaries, conflicts, relationships and alliances, contributions from scholars outside North America are also welcomed, to reflect not only key textual concerns, but also the international impact of the text itself.

A wide spectrum of responses to the text are therefore invited. Topics of interest might include, but are by no means restricted to:

 New theoretical approaches
 Environmental or ecocritical analyses
 Interdisciplinary and/or ‘non-literary’ analyses
 Comparative approaches
 Critical and/or readerly responses to the text
since its publication
 The inter-national or trans-national
 The Dead and/or death
 Justice
 ‘Texts’ within the text
 Community
 Home and/or homelessness
 Story
 History and/or the intersections between
literature and history
 Violence
 Gender
 Sexuality
 Dreams and dreaming
 Corruption
 Illness and/or suffering
 Oppression
 Memory
 Healers and/or healing
 African-Native Americans
 Maps and mapping
 Borders and border-crossing
 Land, land-use and resources
 Enforced diaspora and/or removal
 Power, and the workings of power

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words (as an email attachment) and a brief CV, plus any queries to Rebecca Tillett (r.tillett@uea.ac.uk) by Monday, December 7th 2009.

Completed essays will be 7-9,000 words, including notes and works cited, and in Chicago style/format, with a final submission deadline of Monday, 28th June 2010.