CFP: Variations 14
The Return / Die Rueckkehr / Le Retour

Number 14 of the journal Variations (Winter 2006) is seeking proposals for
papers that address the notion of return in literature. Inspired by
theoretical figurations of return in philosophy and psychoanalysis and by
representations of return in (postmodern and postcolonial) discourses of
nostalgia, exile, and memory, we would like to explore how the notion of
return gains currency in a wider variety of literary discourses and across
various historical periods and literary genres. We are especially interested
in contributions that focus on the specific ways (i.e. narration,
stylistics, characterization, etc.) in which the notion and trope of return
are invoked and engaged by works of fiction.

Questions, problems, and perspectives that might be considered include, but
are not limited to, the following:
- Figures / figurations of return in literature
- Cultural politics and the teleology of return
- Return as a tropic of movement in literature
- Melancholia and the suspension of return
- Return as a spatial articulation (e.g. of the relation between past
and future)
- Irreversibility and the futility of return
- Narratology and discourses of return
- The return to the past: contemporary cultural theory and revisionism
- Pop-culture and nostalgia
- The quest and return narrative in diverse traditions (modern,
pre-modern, post-modern)
- Diaspora and the disruption of return
- Sexuality and discourses of connection and return
- The meaning of return in narratives of trauma
- Recovering lost places: memory as a medium for return
- Returning home? Narratives of return migration
- Resisting Return

Proposals of 300-400 words should be submitted to the editors by email
(variations_at_rom.unizh.ch) before 15th January 2006. Contributions (28'000
characters maximum) can be written in English, French or German. Authors of
accepted papers will be notified in February 2006. The date set for the
final submission of articles is 15 June 2006. As with previous issues of
Variations, the submission of items of creative writing (poetry, short
stories, etc.) as well as of artistic contributions (drawings, photographs,
etc.) is strongly encouraged. These submissions do not necessarily have to
be linked to the specific topic of this issue.

Redaktion Variations
Literaturzeitschrift der Universitaet Zuerich
An: Tobias Weber
Englisches Seminar der Universitaet Zürich
Plattenstrasse 47
CH-8032 Zuerich
Switzerland
variations_at_rom.unizh.ch
For more information visit:
http://www.Culturactif.ch/revues/variations.htm

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Received on Mon Nov 21 2005 - 16:33:21 EST