CFP: The Mysterious Unknown: The Gothic and Its Human Others
ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others
Princeton University, March 23-26, 2006

The Mysterious Unknown: The Gothic and Its Human Others
Seminar Organizer: Ruth Bienstock Anolik, Villanova University

Conventionally, the Gothic narrative traces the encounter of the human
subject with the mysterious and horrifying supernatural, beyond human
experience. This seminar will address the tendency of the Gothic text
to replace the supernatural figure of horror with the human Other, the
person who is represented as being inhumanly horrifying. The seminar
will be divided into three sections (one for each day of the
conference):

The Racial/Cultural Other and Gothic Horror section will consider
moments in which Gothic horror is located onto the figure of the racial
or cultural Other, who is represented as monstrous by the dominant
culture; moments in which the marginalized figure "haunts back" by re-
presenting the dominant figure as monstrous will also be considered.

The Sexual Other and Gothic Horror section will consider moments in
which sexual difference results in horror: the unknowable monstrosity
of the male from the female perspective; the female from the male
perspective; the homosexual from the heterosexual perspective. Papers
might also consider moments in which the sexual "Other" resists this
representation and reverses the process of demonization.

The Ill or Disabled Other and Gothic Horror will detail moments in
which physical or mental difference is translated into inhuman
monstrosity that results in horror.

Papers should be 15-20 minutes long.
To submit a proposal, please go to the ACLA website: www.acla.org and
find the paper proposal form.
Deadline: November 30, 2005.

The ACLA's annual conferences have a distinctive structure in which
most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours
per day for the three days of the conference to foster extended
discussion. This structure allows each participant to be a full member
of one seminar, and to sample other seminars during the remaining time
blocks. The conference also includes plenary sessions, workshops and
roundtable discussions, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events.

Note: The concept of seminars ("streams") is intended to encourage
substantive discussion among members of a group of scholars, each of
whom presents his/her work and, in turn, comments on the work of others
in the group. If your paper is accepted, it is expected that you will
attend all two or three meetings of your seminar. This will occupy only
one time slot each day, or a total commitment of six hours (for three-
day seminars) or four hours (for two-day seminars). During the rest of
the conference, you are of course free to attend other seminars and
events.

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Received on Fri Nov 11 2005 - 08:47:10 EST