Experimental Writing by Women Panel at the EGSA Mardi Gras Conference at LSU
Experimental Writing by Women
The word "minor," like the word "minority," is somewhat misleading: it seems often to refer not to size or value or number, but to announce the speaker's position in a struggle for unequally distributed attention. In the contested area of the literary field both what's seen as too accessible and what is seen as not accessible enough are regulated to the margins, as minor literature—linked by the fact that they offer an alternative to or escape from the dominant vision. The revolutionary character of a minor literature, as conceptualized by the theorists Deleuze and Guattari, involves its resistance to the representative—a "language of sense is traversed by a line of escape" as they say (21). Language attended to as medium, language in a state of becoming, language interested less in resemblance than in intensities—this description fits a body of work which might be regarded as doubly minor insofar as it is produced by women and labeled as "experimental."
The EGSA is hoping to end its 2012 graduate conference with a panel on experimental writing by women authors and then a reading by experimental women poets. Our keynote speaker for the finale will be poet and critic Lisa Samuels.
Lisa Samuels has a PhD from the University of Virginia and currently teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Auckland in New Zealand. She publishes essays and edited work on poetry, theory, and critical practice. She is the author of four chapbooks and six books of poetry, including The Invention of Culture (Shearsman Books 2008), Throe (Oystercatcher Press 2009), Tomorrowland (Shearsman 2009), Mama Mortality Corridos (Holloway Press 2010), and Gender City (Shearsman Books 2011), as well as a creative non-fiction book, Anti M (Chax Press 2011). Her current projects include an essay collection, Modernism Is Not Enoughan audio recording of Tomorrowland with soundscapes, and a modular novel experiment, Tender Girl. Having lived in various parts of the United States, as well as in Sweden, Israel / Palestine, Yemen, Malaysia, and now New Zealand / Aotearoa, she is interested in transculturalism, especially as embodied in language and the digitas.
The EGSA is calling for papers on experimental women writers (in all genres).
Laura Mullen will be the curator of the ending reading: please contact her directly with an abstract of 250 words if you are interested in participating.
Director, Readers & Writers
Department of English
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
To view the full CFP for the 22nd Annual Mardi Gras Conference at LSU, please visit http://uiswcmsweb.prod.lsu.edu/ArtSci/english/GraduateProgram/MardiGrasC...