cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Colloquium in American Literature and Culture at New York University invites paper proposals for our 2012 spring conference, "Networked New York." This symposium will take place on Friday, March 23, 2012.

We envision this conference as a forum for examining systems of interrelation among writers and artists who live, work, commune, and clash in New York City, whether physical New York (the city's buildings, streetscapes, neighborhoods), digitized New York (its blogs, websites, tweets), or institutional New York (its libraries, archives, museums). We aim to enable discussion about literary, artistic, and intellectual coteries in New York - both historic and contemporary - and to consider the influence of such communities on the cultural production the city generates as well as on the city itself. To these ends, we hope to include papers from a range of historical and disciplinary contexts. Potential paper topics include but are not limited to explorations of the following:

- Neighborhood dynamics and artistic communities
- Collaborations among artists, writers, readers, viewers
- Circulation of ideas and materials
- New York street life and material culture
- Urban space and identity
- Sites, scenes, and modes of interaction
- Digital media and the city

Please send a brief CV and abstract, 300-500 words in length, to Annie Abrams and Blevin Shelnutt at nyucalc@gmail.com by December 15, 2011. Please direct any questions about the conference to this address.