cfp.english.upenn.edu

CFP: Ventures into the Unknown: The Writing of City Spaces (NeMLA, New Brunswick, NJ April 7-10, 2011)
In his essay “Walking the City” (1984) Michel de Certeau speaks of the experience of walking through a city as a “trace structure of movement, exchange, and quotidian practices”, a perspective which cannot be reproduced by looking down from a high rise building as if onto a map. For the pedestrian, the city presents itself like a text that is rendered ambiguous by the very process of walking, a little in the way that waking life is displaced by dreaming- to take one of de Certeau’s analogies.
The modern experience of the city has inspired many authors ranging from Kafka to W. G. Sebald. In this panel we are interested in how space is related to literary production, in terms of the city as a literary genre, its relation to identity and memory. Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:
- Spatial theories by Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Henri Lefebvre etc.
- Theoretical writings on city spaces by Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Georg Simmel etc.
- Literary texts relating to the city and memory, the city and identity, the city and as literary genre (Franz Kafka, W.G. Sebald, Leo Spitzer, John Dos Pasos, …)

Please send 250- 300 word abstracts (MSWord preferred) to katrin_springer22@yahoo AND ssivkoff@rci.rutgers.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2010

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 42nd Annual Convention will feature approximately 360 sessions, as well as pre-conference workshops, dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2011 Convention will be posted in June: www.nemla.org.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. Do not accept a slot if you may cancel to present on another session.

42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-10, 2011
New Brunswick, NJ – Hyatt New Brunswick
Host Institution: Rutgers University