CFP: Mary Shelley and her Contemporaries (9/1/06; NEMLA, 3/1/07-3/4/07)

full name / name of organization: 
Lamar Adam Mekler
contact email: 

NEMLA 2007 CONVENTION
Baltimore, Maryland
March 1-4, 2007.
Panel: Mary Shelley and her Contemporaries
CONTACT: lmekler_at_jewel.morgan.edu

In the roughly two decades following the publication of Mary Poovey's _The
Proper Lady and the Woman Writer_ (1984) and Anne Mellor's _Mary Shelley:
Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters_ (1988), consideration of the writings
of Mary Shelley have tended to place her within one of two categories:
Either she was indeed a woman struggling to maintain her position as a
"proper lady," a woman never quite comfortable putting herself forward in
print, as she herself suggests in her introduction to the 1831 edition of
_Frankenstein_; or she was indeed quite comfortable in her role as a woman
writer, confidently, if subtly, asserting herself and presenting a feminist
critique of her contemporary society through her writings.

This panel will focus on the works of Mary Shelley and encourage
participants to identify the ways in which Shelley makes evident her own
ideological position—as "proper lady" and/or confident woman writer—as she
engages with the writings of her contemporaries, hopefully discussing both
her better known and her lesser known works, and exploring the complex
relationship between her works and the writings of her contemporaries.
Papers examining her writings in modes other than the novel and short story
are particularly encouraged.

Please submit 250-word abstracts via e-mail attachment (MS Word, please) to
L. Adam Mekler, lmekler_at_jewel.morgan.edu, by September 1.

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Received on Wed Jun 07 2006 - 10:15:06 EDT

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