Redrawing Forms: Energy, Media, Science, and Life

deadline for submissions: 
December 16, 2016
full name / name of organization: 
Rice University

Redrawing Forms: Energy, Media, Science, and Life

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Barri Gold

Symposium Dates/ Location: Feb. 17-18, 2017 in Houston, Texas

Submission Deadline Extended to Dec. 16, 2016

formsconference.wordpress.com

 

The ambiguity and flexibility of the term “form” allows critics to construct an argument around strange shapes, or hints of shapes, in texts. This conference invites papers that rethink “forms,” and thus anticipates readings that reimagine forms of life and lives of forms. Acting as a touchstone to this discussion is Caroline Levine’s Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (2015), in which she defines “form” as “all shapes and configurations, all ordering principles, [and] all patterns of repetition and differences” (3). While Levine’s text attends to four primary concerns of whole, rhythm, hierarchy, and network, we aim to reorganize notions of form by redirecting attention to energy, life, science, and media. Additionally, Levine's text challenges scholars to better account for how forms cross literary periods, which encourages us to see literary forms as an organizing structure for criticism.

 We open this conference to all literary periods and methodologies that grapple with forms. Topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

  • Energy in Narratives
  • Life Forms
  • Human Forms
  • Poetic Forms
  • Scientific Frameworks and Literature
  • How Political and Biological Forms Frame Life
  • Navigating Digital Forms
  • How Attention to Form Disrupts and/or Mutates Literary Methodologies
  • Disruption and/or Continuation of Form across Historical Periods
  • Form in Gender Studies
  • Form in Posthumanism
  • Geometrical Shapes in Literature

Email proposals for 15 minute presentations to: ricesymposium2017@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions has been extended to December 16, 2016.

 

For individual submissions, please email (1) an abstract (200–250 words) without identification, and (2) a cover sheet including presenter name, email, paper title, academic affiliation, and a brief biography (100-150 words).

 

For panels, please email (1) three to four abstracts, (2) a panel rationale (200-250 words), (3) panel organizer’s name, email, paper title, and academic affiliation, (4) one cover sheet including names, emails, paper titles, academic affiliations, and biographies of presenters (100–150 words).