cfp.english.upenn.edu

“The Art of Reading: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy”

Host: The University of New Hampshire’s English Graduate Organization (EGO)
Location: University of New Hampshire—Durham, Memorial Union Building
Held: Saturday, April 13, 2012. 8:30 am to 5 pm.
Contacts: Eden Wales Freedman (eef25@wildcats.unh.edu) and Luke Dietrich (laz55@wildcats.unh.edu), Co-Presidents of EGO

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Thomas Newkirk, Professor of English, University of New Hampshire

Call for Papers:

In “The Art of Fiction,” Toni Morrison differentiates between reading as a skill and reading as an art. The skill, Morrison writes, enables readers to “negotiate life with some measure of control.” The art is a “different beast all together.”

This conference explores the scope and substance of Morrison’s “beast,” by examining the diversity and divergence of readerly responses to literary texts. Papers should consider in their analyses the purpose and process of reading. Namely, what constitutes our reading experience as scholars, students, and teachers? What makes reading an “art;” what does the practice entail; and why does—or why should—it matter?

Possible paper topics include but are not limited to:
•Reception Studies and Reader Response Criticism
•The reader as artist
•Reading across disciplines and genres
•Reading constructs of race, gender, and sexuality
•Reading trauma in literature
•Reading texts outside the book: engaging with film, photography, theatre, music, dance, etc.
•Teaching active reading
•Reading student writing
•Teaching, reading, and writing the literacy narrative
•“Pleasure” reading: reading outside the academy
•Technologies of reading

Please send abstracts of 500 words max to Eden Wales Freedman (eef25@wildcats.unh.edu) and Luke Dietrich (laz55@wildcats.unh.edu) by December 31.

Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements