CFP: The Sensibilities of Susan Sontag, 1933-2004 (11/1/06; ACLA, 4/19/07-4/22/07)
The Sensibilities of Susan Sontag, 1933-2004=20
=20
Two years after her death, Susan Sontag remains a prominent public
intellectual in the United States. For example, in 2005, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art organized an exhibit to pay tribute to her
contribution to the understanding of photography. On September 10,
2006, The New York Times Sunday Magazine published extensive excerpts
from her journals. Projected to be published in full in 2008-09, they
will undoubtedly enlarge our knowledge of Sontag's life and working
methods. But since Sontag's interests were never bound within easy
categories, whether political, intellectual, aesthetic, or sexual-her
work poses a range of interesting questions to literary scholars. In
this seminar, we will seek to explore Sontag as a humanist whose work
was largely inspired by a need to put cultures in contact-for ethical as
well as aesthetic purposes. As she concluded in her "Literature as
Freedom" (an acceptance speech for the 2003 Peace Prize awarded to her
by the German book trade), literature offers a "passport to enter a
larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.''
=20
Some of the topics this seminar might explore are:
=20
Sontag as "cultural translator" bridging American and European cultures
and thought
Sontag as comparatist/traveler
Originality and Intertextuality in Sontag
Methodology(-ies) of her essays, fiction
The autobiographical in Sontag
Sontag as Woman Writer
Sontag as a creative collaborator
Sontag's theatricality: operas, divas, actresses, and plays
Sontag's "Evolution from aesthetics to ethics"=20
The visual and the verbal in Sontag
Sontag and cultural hierarchies
Contributions to America public intellectual life=20
Sontag and the political: activism. terrorism, the utopian and the
apocalyptic
Historicizing Sontag; Sontag and history
Sontag and the body
=20
You may submit abstracts for 20-minutes papers at
http://dev.cdh.ucla.edu/acla2007/?p=3D54
<http://dev.cdh.ucla.edu/acla2007/?p=3D54> by November 1, 2006. =20
Seminar organizers: Dr. Barbara Ching and Dr. Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor
(University of Memphis)
==========================================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
==========================================================
Received on Thu Oct 05 2006 - 01:55:15 EDT