Call for Papers: Negative Traditions in Jewish America (10/25/05;
PCA/ACA, 4/12/06-4/16/06)

Submissions are sought for a panel on Negative Traditions in Jewish
America, one of the Jewish Studies Area's panels at the 2006 PCA/ACA
conference in Atlanta. Papers should address moments, phenomena, or
texts (all generously defined) in Jewish American cultural history in
which tradition and/or identity--I have in mind Jewish traditions, but I
suppose some American traditions might also be appropriate--is (or are),
if not necessarily debilitating, then certainly something that occasions
an intense and irresolvable ambivalence. Steering clear of sanguine and
reactionary platitudes about heritage, teleological struggle, socially
functional agency, and community, this panel aims to examine tradition
as a real problem. When is tradition incapacitating? In what contexts is
Jewish identity enervating? What are the cultural expressions of Jewish
ambivalence when that ambivalence is acknowledged to be dysfunctional?
These are some of the many questions that strike me as germane to this
panel.

Send abstracts (say, of 500 words or so) by 25 October 2005 to Ben
Schreier at schreibj_at_wfu.edu (feel free to send the abstract as an
attachment or in the body of the email; I'll let you know if I can't get
at it) or Department of English, P.O Box 7387, Wake Forest University,
Winston-Salem, NC 27109.

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Received on Mon Oct 17 2005 - 23:53:05 EDT