cfp.english.upenn.edu

Among the more manifest changes of globalization is the recent watershed shift in the planet’s population. A world once predominantly rural has become, in the new millennium, predominantly urban, and estimates suggest that the so-called “global countryside” will enter an extended period of decline over the next half-century.

This College English Association (CEA)-sponsored MLA panel proposes to interrogate the implications of the “urban turn” for literary professionals. A recent volume of *PMLA* has suggested the continued relevance – both in- and outside the academy – of the city in literature. Some ten years into a new urban order, however, there has yet to appear a more comprehensive account of how a world always already urban will impinge upon the reading, teaching, and writing of literature. It is the purpose of this panel to initiate such an account. Possible topics might include (but are by no means limited to) the following:

• The city in literature
• Urban Pedagogies: teaching the city in literature, teaching literature in the city
• City as Text
• Inner-city English
• Metropolitan print
• Urban literary modernity
• Urban reception theory
• Urban gender studies
• City vs. Country
• Rural resistance
• Urban “others”
• Metropolitan, cosmopolitan

Proposals not exceeding 350 words, and accompanied by a current cv, may be sent by March 2 to:

David Faflik
Assistant Professor, English Department
South Dakota State University
david.faflik@sdstate.edu