cfp.english.upenn.edu

Politics and the Corpse
Panel for 2010 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting
April 1 through 4 2010, New Orleans
Deadline for papers: November 13, 2009
Submit proposal to http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

ACLA site:  http://www.acla.org/acla2010/

Politics and the Corpse

The traditional sense of politics links up the functioning of the polis with the living bodies that people it. But what is the relation between politics and the dead body? How does the corpse inform the political sphere? How does politics give meaning to the corpse? To what extent is the labor of mourning bound up with political concerns? And what is the difference between the political meaning of a dead body and its "human" significance? This seminar proposes to investigate the relation between politics and the corpse from a variety of theoretical perspectives and in a range of contexts, including political assassinations, conspiracy theories, natural disasters, memorials, genocide, and war. Though the subject matter is broad, we hope to encourage a conversation that draws from a variety of theoretical perspectives to examine the manner in which politics inflects our understanding of the dead body, and the way that death informs our sense of the political.

Co-organizers of panel:  David Kelman (Cal State Fullerton) and Jennifer Ballengee (Towson University)

Submit proposals to the ACLA site:  http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

Questions can be sent to dgkelman@gmail.com