cfp.english.upenn.edu

Deadline Extension: December 15th, 2012.

The Louisiana Conference invites papers and creative work on the universal place of fairy tales in the world of communication and education. We are interested in how fairy tales are and have been used to bridge cultures and time, connecting diverse peoples by means of easily translatable concepts. Of particular interest are the struggles of truth and deception, reality and illusion, honesty and trickery; violence, fear, entrapment and salvation; character altering cryptozoological sightings; happiness deferred, denied, and occasionally delivered.

The conference seeks to focus on the importance of fairy tales to the intellectual development of thinkers at all levels, as well as emphasize the many uses of fairy tales in the classroom. Topics may include but are not limited to: problems of origin; revisionist takes; highbrow vs. lowbrow controversies; questions of definition; contemporary adaptations (film, television, music, comics, graphic novels, theatre, early and modern fiction); horror, grotesque and gothic elements in the fairy tale; uses of fairy tales in philosophy, pedagogy, literary theory, contemporary poetry and children’s literature.

We will feature two keynote speakers. The first is Kate Bernheimer, M.F.A., of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. She is the author of novels and children’s books, editor of collections and anthologies such as Horse, Flower, Bird (2010), and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010), and founder and editor of the Fairy Tale Review.

The second keynote speaker is Anne Duggan, Ph.D., of Wayne State University’s Department of Classical & Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She is the author of Salonniéres, Furies, and Fairies: the Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France (2005), has a book in progress, Enchanting Subversions: Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy, and is the Associate Editor of Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies.

For details about our special events (masquerade ball; ghost story telling evening by the lake), see the conference website.

Guidelines for Submission:
•500 word proposals for 20 minute papers should be submitted via email as attachment in rich text (.rtf) format by December 15, 2012,to (laconference2013@gmail.com). Do not include name on abstract. Include name, affiliation, email address, phone number, and title of paper, as well as a brief biographical statement in the body of the email. Indicate possible A/V needs.
• 250 word panel proposals (three presenters) should explain the panel topic and include a 500- word abstract and biographical statement for each presenter.
• Creative submissions should include a short, descriptive abstract as well as a sample of the work to be considered. Please specify “Creative Submission” in your proposal.
Darrell Bourque Award: For information please visit our website.
Creative Writing Award: For information please visit our website.
The Louisiana Conference on Language, Literature, and Culture is a professional conference but welcomes contributions from academics at all levels. For form information and updates visit our website:

http://english.louisiana.edu/laconference/index.html

We hope to hear from you soon.
Maia Butler and Dan Williams, Co-chairs