cfp.english.upenn.edu

Graduate students from the humanities and social sciences are encouraged to submit 250 word abstracts on a wide range of topics related to the explication of texts. “Texts” are understood to include any of the following mediums: visual, written, physically constructed, filmed, performed, naturally occurring, manicured, or exhibited.Accepted presentations of 15-20 minutes will be of a critical, analytical nature. Abstracts are due by Friday, Dec. 3 at gradengl@lasierra.edu.
Paper topics might include, but are not limited to:
Textual Politics:
• Inspiration: the power politics of textual creation
• Influential forces on textual production and reception
• Interpretive acts: from close readings to metacriticism
• Breaking Good: the politics of interstitial, intragenre, and agenre texts
• The publication history of a text
• Politics within Texts: the ‘isms embedded within texts
• Canon creation and deconstruction
Ecocriticism:
• Concrete Jungles: The Nature of Cities and Urban Texts
• Nature writing/Natures rites
• The history and depiction of the environmental movement (e.g. DDT, Rachel Carson, global climate change, new energy)
• Can the subterranean speak? The problem of nature’s silence in ecocritical approaches to reading culture.
• The environment in paranormal, fantastic, and science fiction texts