CFP: IGA-ACCUTE JOINT SESSION: ACCUTE Conference, York University
(27/04/06-30/04/06): The Gothic and Addiction

The International Gothic Association, in conjunction with the
Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English,
is presenting a joint session on the subject of Gothic Addiction/
Obsessions.

 From Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1795) and Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya,
or The Moor (1806), to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or The Modern
Prometheus (1818), Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English
Opium-Eater (1821), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Marie Corelli's Wormwood: A Drama of
Paris (1890), the Gothic has been fascinated with the theme of
addiction/obsession as it is variously manifested. Proposals for
individual or collaborative papers are invited on the idea of the
Gothic and addiction/obsession. Possible topics might include (but
are not limited to):

• strategies and structure in the Gothic "pharmography": i.e.
narratives chronicling the process of drug/alcohol seduction and
addiction

• addiction and the Faustian intertext

• obsessive science/scientists; science and drugs/alcohol (i.e. the
elixir vitae)

• the tension between rational will/liberty/control and irrational
enslavement/excessive passion

• drugs and Orientalism, racial contagion, imperial geography

• drugs/alcohol and individual/national degeneration

• "love is a drug" addiction

• drugs/alcohol as symbolic scapegoat onto which are displaced such
"secret vices" as homosexuality (see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between
Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, 1985)

• Gothic literature as an "addictive," socially dangerous form

Please send electronic copies of proposals of approximately 500 words
and a 100-word bio by Monday, December 5th, 2005, to Carol Margaret
Davison (cdavison_at_uwindsor.ca). Follow this with hard copy, mailed to:

Dr. Carol Margaret Davison
Department of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing
University of Windsor
401 Sunset Avenue
Windsor, Ontario
N9B 3P4

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Received on Wed Sep 21 2005 - 11:41:18 EDT