cfp.english.upenn.edu

Marvelous Bodies: Corporeality in Literature
Eleventh Annual Academic Conference
The Department of English
Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, Spain
24-25 May, 2013
Submission Deadline 15 March, 2013
slumadridconference@gmail.com

Keynote Speaker: Michael Davidson, Vice Chair of the Department of
Literature, University of California, San Diego

The Department of English at Saint Louis University´s Madrid campus will hosts its eleventh annual International Academic Conference on Friday, 24 May and Saturday, 25 May 2013. The theme of this year´s conference is “Marvelous Bodies: Corporeality in Literature.” While we welcome papers and panel proposals on any aspect of English literary studies, we would like to encourage proposals that explore the corporeal as it is represented in literature. How might distinct literary genres, cultures, or periods be understood to materialize through the vessel of the body? How are cultural constructions of monstrous, marvelous, or disabled bodies used to delineate as well as problematize ideas of the “normal” body? How has the inscription of gender, race, and disability on the body changed? How do classifications of identity via the body in literature affect society? Papers may approach questions of physical transformation or identity formation through the body from any of the following critical or theoretical perspectives: cultural studies, theological studies, transnational studies, comparative studies, migration studies, postcolonial studies, digital humanities, cross-cultural communication, ecocriticism, disability studies, trauma studies, cognitive theory, and/or linguistic studies.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

The Body and Identity
Abjection
The Limited or Transcendental Body
Out-of-Body Experiences
Literature and Medicine
Colonized Bodies
The Body-Mediated Bildungsroman
Disability in Literature
The Ekphrastic Body
The Body in Pain
Disability Studies and Ecocriticism
The Neuronovel
BiosemioticsWriting and the Body: Tattoos and Modifications, Scars and Mutilations
Monstrous and Marvelous Bodies
Illness and/or Recovery
Tropes of Nourishment and Depravity
Writing Body Parts out of Literature: Amputation and Phantom Limbs
The Post-human Body
Gendered Rites of Passage
The Body and Carnival
The Comical Body
Eroticism and the Carnal Body
Transnational Bodies
Transgender Bodies

Submissions:

Presentations will be 15 minutes in length. Submission of 300-word proposals in English (abstract only; no full papers) along with short bios should be sent to slumadridconference@gmail.com by 15 March, 2013.