cfp.english.upenn.edu

This interdisciplinary collection builds on the premise that much can be learned about a society by examining how it transacts, deploys, and deals with “shame.” The work sets out to explore how American identity is culturally and historically bound to its distinctive emotional landscape, and in particular, to understand how public shaming practices express and fuel collective anxieties of distinction, separation, and status. Topics may include the historical influences shaping American attitudes toward the public punishment, condemnation and regulation of others; how shame displays inscribe bodily, geographical, and conceptual borders; shaming as media entertainment commodity, legal practice or public policy; its meanings in foundational cultural and religious narratives (including Puritan theology); stigmatization as political strategy or disciplinary process targeting distinct groups; shame spectacles in a post-surveillance, post 9/11 American society. Please send proposal (500 words) and CV to mendible@fgcu.edu before Nov. 1, 2012.