cfp.english.upenn.edu

This panel addresses the roles that syntax and performance play in telling the stories of people who live, or live within, bodily transformations. An accident, an operation, a condition, even a diagnosis can alter the definition of the self. What results is a literary genre, the memoirs of people with bodies in pain. Is the vulnerability of language to nonsense (as in the loss of a syllable from a familiar word) analogous to the experience of such a self? How does the loss of an organ, of a function, of a potential, or the compensatory gain of a prosthesis produce writing? How can the ontological condition of "becoming a patient" be seen as an artistic genre or condition? If pain influences the use of language, are the syntax and morphology of the resulting expression open to diagnosis in regular fashion?

Submission deadline: November, 13
Please submit your proposals directly via the "submit a paper proposal" button on the ACLA 2010 page of the acla.org website

Should you need additional information, please contact me at plutesc@aol.com
Catalina Florina Florescu, Ph.D.