cfp.english.upenn.edu

Despite the seemingly private and solitary nature of letter writing, there are a number of ways in which letters and, in a broader sense, the epistolary form work to create communities of readers and ideas that extend beyond writer and recipient. In the spirit of the larger conference theme, “Solitude and Sociability,” this panel invites papers that explore ways in which epistolarity works to create unique, surprising, or conflicted communities in eighteenth-century English literature and culture. This panel is particularly interested in papers that engage in innovative ways with issues of form: in what ways does epistolarity work to enable and/or preclude sociability in various eighteenth-century literary (and other discursive) contexts?
Please send 200-300 word abstracts to tcaputo@allegheny.edu by October 1, 2009.