cfp.english.upenn.edu

This seminar, a session to be held at ACLA 2012 Conference at Brown University, March 29h -April 1st, invites papers that present new interdisciplinary perspectives to explore “traveling” sexualities in the early modern world. Considering sexuality through various sites of “global” interactions, dialogues, circulating discourses and practices, and translations, which put pressure on traditional gender and sexual binaries and geographical boundaries, this seminar calls for papers analyzing non-heteronormative sexual interactions and/or reconfigurations of gender roles in early modern societies. Although we strongly encourage papers that address eastern and western encounters and interactions, we welcome papers analyzing other territorial interactions as well.
Some possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• the East, the West, and sex
• Islamicate sexualities
• sexualities and religions
• ancient and early modern sexualities
• the Ottoman and Europeans sexual practices and representations
• same-sex love and desire
• ‘the beloved boys’
• normative sexualities and sexual politics
• effeminacy and androgyny
• the nature of desire and sexuality
• ethnography and the representation of “other” sexualities
• sexual diseases and catastrophes
Submissions may address these or related topics from a variety of perspectives from any literary or cultural traditions falling between the 15th and mid- 17th centuries. Paper proposals should be submitted no later than November 15th, 2011.
For submission guidelines, please visit the conference website: http://acla.org/acla2012/
For any inquiries, please contact the organizer:
Abdulhamit Arvas, Michigan State U., arvas@msu.edu