twentieth century and beyond

Narrative Surplus, Literary Specificity, and the Modernist Novel at NeMLA, March 7-10, 2024 Boston, MA Host: Tufts University, School of Arts and Sciences.

What would it mean to think of a novel’s depiction of thoughts, ideas, or emotions as surplus to its plot? What details—historical, social, political—are lost if we think of narrative information as mere details and therefore surplus to literary meaning? Once we extract all essential facts, what is left for the critic to make sense of?

“There’s something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator,” Maria Semple.

7th November 2023

“nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.”

– Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

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What a Waste! is an interdisciplinary graduate conference that seeks to explicate the position of waste in the cultural output of the post-war. This conference will be held at the University of St Andrews on 23rd September 2023, and invites proposals from postgraduates and early career researchers.

Is there such thing as too much memory? According to nineteenth-century French psychologists, there is, which is how they coined the term “hypermnesia,” or “the disease of too much memory” (Michael Roth). As Michael Roth has usefully charted, a “typical” or normal” memory, then, would be one that brings order, allowing for a clear link between the past and present that consequently allows for “possible futures.” In contrast, surplus memory becomes an “agent of disorder” that overwhelms the present.

L'oeuvre de Julien Gracq et le cinéma : quelques possibilités de partenariat.

Toxic Ecologies of the Global South: Panel, NeMLA 2024

Boston, MA, March 7-10, 2024, https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

Shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (less developed countries)? … I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that… I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted. (Lawrence Summers, chief economic advisor to the IMF, 1991).

Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies (published online by the Open Library of Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London) seeks reviews of recent publications, including autobiographies, memoirs, letters, and so on. Word length: 1000-1500 words. Citation style: Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (author/date). Once accepted, you will be asked to register on our website, which will also give you access to our house style sheet. Expected online publication of volume 6 is December 2023. Please get in touch with short proposals and questions. Robert_P_Ward@brown.edu.

Calling all Paul Auster fans to propose presentations for a roundtable discussion on all things Auster.

Do you want to do a scholarly reading of one or more of his novels? Would you like to do an analysis of any of his films? Are you thinking of doing a close reading of one of his poems? Do you just want to tell us why you love Auster’s work? We’d love to hear it!

Would you like to talk about…

Old stuff? (The New York Trilogy, The Music of Chance, Mr. Vertigo)?

New stuff? (4 3 2 1, Burning Boy)?

Borrowed stuff? (Squeeze Play…his early novel in which he borrowed a style/genre  that didn’t quite work out for him)?

Blue stuff? (Blue in the Face)?

Syndemic Motherhood: Exploring American Epidemics through Engaged and Applied Arts, a case study anthology, explores how various artistic practices and processes have been instrumental in processing, sharing, and learning about the intersectional epidemics unique to US-Americans and their experiences in motherhood. Issues related to social inequity such as gun violence, healthcare access, the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, and childcare converge to create challenging circumstances for women and mothers in the United States. The arts provide a malleable yet rigorous framework to unpack these issues publicly.

Trauma is typically considered ‘responsive to and constitutive of “modernity”’ (Micale and Lerner 2001). Certainly, as argued by Mark Seltzer, ‘modernity has come to be understood under the sign of the wound’: ‘the modern subject has become inseparable from the categories of shock and trauma.’ 

The “Romance of the Road” had its run in 20th-century literature and culture, and we must now consider what will follow on its heels as it fades into the gloom of an anthropogenically tarnished future.

Car culture has radically renegotiated the individual’s place within human-constructed spaces, and the end of car culture will demand even further revisions to planning codes and architecture. This panel invites participants to discuss a century of car dependency and how literary and cultural discourses can contribute to management of the after-effects, especially in urban environments that have grown steadily clogged with traffic.

Imprisoned in 1642, Richard Lovelace penned the words that became his best-known: “Stone walls do not a prison make,/Nor iron walls a cage:/Minds innocent and quiet take/That for a hermitage” (“To Althea, From Prison”).

Lovelace’s poem points to the duality of the prison as both a physical structure and a mental and spiritual condition. Moreover, the poem submits that the mind can remain free even while the body is confined. For Lovelace, the only true prison is the prison of the mind and soul.

This panel will explore the topics of the prisoner and of the prison as a physical and/or psychological element in novels, stories, poems, films, television, and other genres and media.

Literary Druid is a journal that destinies to foster research and creative writing in English. It welcomes all nationals to contribute for learning and research purposes. The perspective of Literary Druid is to create a niche platform for academicians and patrons to share their intellect to enrich the English language and Literature. I welcome all to learn and share.