CALL FOR PAPERS: NYU French Graduate Conference

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NYU French department
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The Department of French at New York University
announces its annual Graduate Conference:
La Bête Noire : Loving to hate
March 25th & 26th, 2011

The Department of French at New York University is pleased to announce an interdisciplinary conference that explores the compulsive hatreds and obsessions that are indelibly part of the creative process. The term bête noire denotes the dialectic of repulsion and fascination that a particular object triggers within the subject. A bête noire irritates, disturbs, maddens –- it is not only what we love to hate, but what we are compelled to hate, what we could not conceive of not hating. Whether one addresses it directly, denies it, disguises it, or circumvents it, the bête noire is an ever-present subtext of literary creation.

In this conference, we seek to explore in particular how bêtes noires -- whether those of authors, characters, or societies –- are readable in French and Francophone texts within a multi-disciplinary context.

Possible themes for submissions include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Monsters, mythical beasts, "big bad wolves," genies, poltergeists.
* Children's literature, fairy tale creatures, the fantastic.
* Obsessions, monomanias, repulsions, the unconscious, fear, avoidance.
* The anxiety of the blank page: hatred and love of writing itself.
* Fear of and fascination with the Other:
-cultural outsiders: fear of integration, exotism.
-gender: hermaphrodites, le continent noir.
-distortions of the self, the dismembered self.
* The Uncanny: doppelgangers, rivals, nemeses, antitheses.
* Sexuality, pornography, eroticism, fetishes.
* Scapegoats, pariahs, martyrs, victims.
* The unrepresentable, the unnameable, the unsayable, the formless.

Graduate students from all disciplines are invited to present 15- to 20-minute papers or projects addressing the topic of La bête noire within the context of French and Francophone literary and cultural studies. Papers and presentations may be in either French or English. Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to labetenoirenyu@gmail.com by January 17th, 2011. Please make your name and paper title the subject of the email.

Keynote speaker TBA.

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