CFP: Modernist Sovereignties (3/15/07; MLA '07)

full name / name of organization: 
Mia L. McIver
contact email: 

Call For Papers for Special Session on Sovereignty in Anglo-Irish and=20
Continental Modernism: Modern Language Association, Chicago, 12/07

Submissions are invited for a proposed panel addressing formations,=20
representations, and/or theorizations of sovereign subjects in the=20
first half of the twentieth century, especially in British, Irish, and=20=

European literature. =93Sovereign subject=94 here refers to any of the=20=

multiple horizons of power: individuals, leaders, groups (i.e., armies=20=

or populations), nations, empires. Giorgio Agamben tells us that World=20=

War I was the occasion for the general formalization of the state of=20
exception in western legal codes: how does this installation=20
reverberate in later literary and philosophical conceptualizations of=20
sovereignty?

Considerations of the relationship between sovereignty and war,=20
religion, democracies, fascisms, gender/class/race identities, and=20
universalisms welcome. Other questions that might be addressed include=20=

(but are not limited to):
How are the aesthetics of sovereignty distinguishable from imperial or=20=

postcolonial aesthetics?
How do sovereignties and modernist forms impact each other?
What are the narrative dimensions of sovereignty, and the sovereign=20
dimensions of narrative?
Are there distinctively modernist political theologies?

Please send 500-word abstract and short CV to mmciver_at_uci.edu by=20
March 15, 2007. (Note that this deadline is later than the one given in=20=

the MLA newsletter.) MLA deadline for Special Session submissions is=20
April 1, 2007.

Mia L. McIver
Department of English
University of California, Irvine=

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Received on Sun Feb 04 2007 - 13:29:43 EST