CFP for a proposed special session for the 2006 Midwest Modern Language
Association convention in Chicago, November 9-12, 2006:

A Popular Reconstruction: Imagining Reunion in Post-Civil War American
Literature

This panel will analyze the ways that American writers re-conceptualized
the Union in literary works and reconfigured notions of race, family,
citizenship, nationalism, perhaps even literature itself, following the
upheaval of the Civil War. Papers might consider questions such as the
following: How did texts shape or reflect the ways in which citizens
imagined themselves and the nation? How did public policy intersect
with reading and writing practices? How did the rise in national
magazine publications following the war affect perceptions of authorship
and audience? How did literary works recast the Civil War? This panel
may include works that explore any aspect of literature of the American
Reconstruction, broadly conceived, with special attention given to
popular works and genres and elements of “high and low culture.”

Please send proposals (200-250 words) by April 15th to Martin Buinicki,
English Department, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 46383;
martin.buinicki_at_valpo.edu.

All participants must be members of the M/MLA at the time of the
conference. http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla/

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Received on Sat Mar 18 2006 - 13:38:21 EST