"Drama and Psyche: stage expressions of the mind" , A study day organised by The Research Seminar on Early Modern and Contemporary Drama, Laboratoire Cultures Anglo-Saxonnes, EA180, 7th May 2009

In his analysis of the history of mathematics, Gaston Bachelard calls for a reversal of perspectives on the complexity of reasoning: "[…] the simple is in fact always simplified: it can only be thought of correctly when appearing to be the product of a process of simplification." (L'Épistémologie non cartésienne.) Likewise, in literature and in the visual arts, the particularity of authors, what one has come to call their "little music", what makes them irreducible to others, is not only the fruit of their genius, but also a meticulous construction, the product of a particularising process, constructions based on what Claude Lévi-Strauss designates as signifying structural choices (La Voie des masques). The particular is thus actually particularised.

For this M/MLA Permanent Panel, we invite papers that respond to the general conference theme of "Migration," especially papers that focus on topics such as immigrant literature, transnational studies, diasporas, bildungsroman/quests/odysseys, racial/ethnic "passing," travel literature, or pedagogical theory and praxis related to these topics. We invite papers that explore these or other "migration" topics through an analysis of issues of navigation/negotiation of the sociocultural borders and barriers in American society as represented in several genres of American Literature before 1870 – novels, short stories, poems, non-fiction prose, slave narratives, essays, speeches, sermons, and letters.

Early Modern England was a benchmark for literary and political activity by women, from Anne Askew's Examinations in the first half of the sixteenth century to Anna Trapnel's political prophecies in the final decades of the seventeenth. While the lengthy reign and potency of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) certainly set a precedent for early modern women's writing, texts by women played a significant political role well before and after her rule, and arguably found their apogee in the ideological fervor that surrounded the reigns of her Stuart successors. More importantly, women authors actively participated in the early modern public sphere at a time when magistrates and divines were striving to situate women within the realm of the household.

International Conference on Humanities in the 21st Century
"Rethinking Humanities"
June 27 & 28, 2009
C PRACSIS, Thrissur, Kerala, India 680001
Keynote: Gayathri Chakrvorthy Spivak