CALL FOR PAPERS

for our collection of essays on

ORIENT AND ORIENTALISMS IN AMERICAN POETRY AND POETICS

We are looking for additional contributors to our book project "Orient and
Orientalisms in American Poetry and Poetics", to be published in the series
"Transcription: Cultures - Concepts - Controversies," general editor Sabine
Sielke (Frankfurt: Lang, 2007).

American poetry and poetics have repeatedly called upon or taken refuge in
so-called Oriental cultures, which include Asian cultures east of the
Mediterranean as well as African cultures, especially those of Morocco,
Algeria, and Egypt. In this way American poetic practice and theory have, on
the one hand, participated in creating dominant notions of 'the Orient.' We
should remember, on the other hand, that while our contemporary
understanding of the terms Orient and Orientalism capitalizes on Western
notions of cultural dominance over 'the East,' poetic references to and
adaptations from Asian cultures became most prominent at ('revolutionary')
times when the genre underwent fundamental transformations of its forms and
cultural functions, that is during Romanticism, modernism, and early
postmodernism. In the history of American poetry, Orientalism and modernity
thus seem inextricably linked and inseparable from processes of colonization
and modernization as well as decolonization.

This collection of essays seeks to explore the poetics and politics of
American poetry's multiple investments in Oriental cultures and their
particular aesthetics from Romanticism to contemporary poetics. By tracing
new crossroads of cultures and rediscovering places as foreign as Afroasia
this debate is likely to open up novel perspectives on central moments of
American literary and cultural history.

The book publication is well on its way, but we seek to enlarge its scope.
So far, we have assembled essays on the poetic Orientalisms of Emerson,
Melville, the Harlem Renaissance, Lowell, contemporary Chinese American
poets, and writers dealing with 9/11. We are looking for contributors who
are already working on a related subject and can submit an essay in short
time, and would contribute additional angles and perspectives. Essays may
take issue with Edward Said's work and can both support or reject its
theses.

For all inquiries, please contact Christian Kloeckner at c.kloeckner_at_gmx.de.

Abstracts of between 250 and 400 words, accompanied by a short CV, should be
sent to c.kloeckner_at_gmx.de by December 15, 2006.

Notification of acceptance will be sent out by Christmas, and completed
papers will then need to be submitted electronically before January 31st,

2007.

Papers should be submitted in MLA style, 1.5 spaced, 12 pt, Times New Roman,
and not exceed 25 pages, including a full bibliography.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Sielke & Christian Kloeckner, M.A.

North American Studies Program

Institute of English, American and Celtic Studies

University of Bonn

Regina-Pacis-Weg 5

53113 Bonn

GERMANY

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Received on Sat Dec 09 2006 - 17:46:47 EST