Art and Life in Aestheticism: De-Humanizing and Re-Humanizing Art, the Artist,
and the Artistic Receptor (Edited Collection, under contract with Palgrave
Macmillan):

I am seeking 2-3 additional chapters (approximately 20 double-spaced pages
each) to fill some gaps in an edited collection that considers the extent to
which art for art's sake can be viewed as an attempt to re-humanize (rather
than merely de-humanize) art, the artist, and the artistic receptor.

Contributions are invited that consider the twentieth-century reception of
aestheticism by such figures as Sontag, Barthes, Dinesen, or Nabokov or in
such movements such as camp, deconstruction, or postmodernism. Be sure to
contact the editor if you're considering submitting something on additional
figures or movements, as most additional topics have already been covered.

Essays should address the central concerns of the volume, as outlined below:

The question as to how literature, along with other creative arts, both helps
to determine and is determined by the human is at the forefront of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century aestheticism throughout Europe and the Americas. Art for
art's sake–both as an approach toward art and as an attitude toward life–
promotes freedom and autonomy, aims for newness and originality, hails
pleasure over instruction, and prefers form and beauty to content and truth.
As such, aestheticism invites us to consider the relationship between art and
life, between the aesthetic and the social, especially in light of its
purported severance between these two spheres. By widening the distance
between art and life and separating the aesthetic from the social (i.e. from
the economic, scientific, pragmatic, political, etc.), l'art pour l'art
critiques the dominant values that made such a redefinition of art necessary
in the first place. One can easily locate at the center of aestheticism an
effort to de-humanize art, the critieria for judging art, and even the lives
of those devoted to art. This volume seeks to consider the counterclaim that
such de-humanization can also lead to re-humanization, to a reconsideration of
and deepened relationship between the aesthetic sphere and the world at large,
or more modestly, between the artistic receptor and his or her human
existence. Chapter proposals should thus discuss how the aestheticist view of
art and literature is either life-sustaining or life-evading. Both
theoretical and textual analyses are welcome.

Please feel free to contact the volume's editor, Kelly Comfort
(kcomfort_at_gatech.edu), with questions or to discuss your ideas for a
proposal. To be considered, complete chapter manuscripts must be received by
February 1, 2007, as the deadline for completion of the volume is in late
March.

--Kelly ComfortAssistant Professor of SpanishSchool of Modern LanguagesGeorgia Institute of Technology613 Cherry StreetAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0375Phone: 404-385-0198Fax: 404-894-0955kcomfort_at_gatech.eduwww.modlangs.gatech.edu ========================================================== 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 Fri Dec 15 2006 - 20:16:39 EST