cfp.english.upenn.edu

I invite proposals on the relation between terrorism and temporality for a special session at the 2014 MLA Convention in Chicago. Notions of temporality are central to terrorism, from the attempt to destroy the home of Greenwich mean time in Joseph Conrad’s _Secret Agent_, to Frantz Fanon’s claim that anticolonial violence can “embody history,” to the pervasive belief that 9/11 ushered in a new era. How do terrorist literary narratives reflect, respond to, or reconfigure notions of temporality, including but not limited to chronology, periodization, history, the present, Jetztzeit, futurity, the new, the "post-," or repetition? 250-word abstracts by 15 March 2013 to Todd Kuchta (todd.kuchta@wmich.edu). While the MLA has not yet approved this session, panelists must be MLA members by 7 April 2013.