cfp.english.upenn.edu

"… Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?"
"Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me — I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it..."
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

The seventh annual AEGIS (Association of English Graduate Instructors and Students) graduate conference invites paper proposals on interdisciplinary topics in revelation, revulsion, and revolution in literature, cinema, the writing process, popular culture and art, or in creative works of short fiction and poetry that explore this theme.

The sudden discovery of the horrific often brings along with it feelings of both revulsion and attraction. Catherine yearns to know what lies beyond the veil as she reads The Mysteries of Udolpho, even though the discovery will terrify her. We, too, as readers find ourselves lusting after that which we know will shock and repulse us upon its discovery. This sense of revulsion, which can either repulse or attract, leads subsequently to revelation. Often, the sudden discovery of what should shock or harm results in fascination to the point that entire systems of thought and practice are uprooted and exchanged for something new and unorthodox. The gap between pleasure and pain is sometimes remarkably thin, and it is this narrow space that we wish to explore.

This conference will take place Friday April 5th, 2013 - Saturday, April 6th, 2013 on the campus of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL.

Please send paper abstracts of 250-500 words, along with a brief bio of approximately 100 words, to Jason Kirker (siucaegis@gmail.com) as an attached .doc, .docx, or .pdf file by Jan 13, 2013.

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

- Cinematic and Graphic Representations of Pain as Voyeurism
- Cultural Differences in Composition and Writing Center Studies
- Disability Studies
- Globalization
- The Gothic
- The Gross or Scatological in Creative Writing
- Horror, Mystery, and Crime Novels or Films
- La Terreur, Jacobin Hysteria, and Responses to the French Revolution
- "Memento Mori" and other Social Reminders of Death
- Political Implications of Loss and the Grotesque
- Post-colonial Theory and the Abandonment of Spent Nations
- Psychological Fixation
- Trauma Studies
- Torture and Punishment