CFP: "Post"-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and Pop/ Literary Cultures (5/15/06; 10/20/06-10/21/06)
The Peter Straub Symposium on Literature and Culture at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison: "Post"-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and
Culture
We are pleased to announce our annual symposium with keynote speaker
Carl Freedman.
We have been poststructuralist, postmodern, post-Petrarchan, and
posthuman. Will we ever be post-literary?
The organizers of the 2006 Peter Straub Symposium on Literature and
Popular Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invite papers
making readings of (and theorizing approaches to) the relationships
between literary and popular culture; our theme is "Post"-Literature:
Literacy, Technology, and Culture.
The broad project of the conference, which is to be held on October 20-
21, 2006, is to draw attention to and put pressure on the limits and
possibilities of the "literary" and "pop." What is the literary? What
is popular? In what ways do literary and popular cultures flow in and
out of each other? In what ways do they flow from one another? What
are (or might be) the status and effects of the popular in traditional
humanities departments, and, alternately, the status and effects of
literary materials and approaches in popular cultures?
We are especially interested in work that reads or theorizes how these
broader issues in the making of literary and popular cultures are
complicated by form, media, technology, and the problem of
becoming "post." How does the emergence of various technologies and
media (across historical periods and moments) shape what and the ways
people read? What have been the status, divisions, and relations of
literary and popular cultures (at any and all historical moments and
periods)? How does the recasting of early literary material into new
or contemporary modes or scenarios complicate literacy and the
relationship between literary and popular cultures? What relevance and
bearing do literary theory and criticism have for popular culture?
What relevance and bearing do popular cultures have for literary
theory and criticism? What are the present, past, and future
implications of calling anything "post?" Possible topics could include:
-Theorizing unconventional, emerging, or "non-literary" media
-Theoretical or literary approaches to graphic art, comic books, and
video games
-Recognizing, transporting, or embedding the literary in popular
-Recognizing, transporting, or embedding popular in the literary
-The "new" in various social, historical, and cultural contexts
-The effects and affects of technologies, literacy, and literature
-The (non)senses of the prefix "post"
Carl Freedman is professor of English Literature at Louisiana State
University. His general areas of interests are in the fields of
critical theory, modern literature, science fiction, film and
television, and Twentieth-century American politics. Some of his
current projects include work on Nixon and cultural power, novels of
Samuel Delany, and the film Double Indemnity. Among his numerous
articles, he has also published The Incomplete Projects: Marxism,
Modernity, and the Politics of Culture (2002), Critical Theory and
Science Fiction (2000), and George Orwell: A Study in Ideology and
Literary Form (1988).
Panels will include two graduate students and one professor. Travel
assistance and lodging may be available for some students. Please
also specify if you require any A/V equipment. For more details and
information, please visit our website:
http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~straub.
Submission Guidelines: Abstracts should be roughly 250 words and be
submitted by May 15. Papers should be 15-20 minutes in length.
Please send abstracts to Emily Yu at eyu_at_wisc.edu with "Straub
Symposium Abstract" as the subject line.
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Received on Tue Mar 07 2006 - 18:22:10 EST