Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable

Friday/Saturday, April 6-7 2018

The Faculty Club

University of California, Berkeley

Invited Speakers:

Tonya Dewey-Findell, University of Nottingham

Angelika Lutz, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg

John McWhorter, Columbia University

Theo Vennemann, University of Munich

Scholars (faculty and students) interested in Germanic Linguistics, its near and/or distant related languages, diverse approaches, synchrony and/or diachrony, historical and/or contemporary language are invited to submit a one-page abstract of a twenty minute paper by January 31, 2018  to the conference organizer:

The Subject of Women in Proust

On first reading, Proust's narrative in A la Recherche du temps perdu suggests that women are merely objects in Marcel's development. Despite extensive descriptions and metaphors, female characters seem to slip away from concrete definition, defying assured characterization. Moreover, most critical discussions of women in Proust compartmentalize female characters either as “Madonnas” (Marcel’s mother and grandmother) or “whores” (Odette, Gilberte, Albertine, Léa, Rachel). But how are women in Proust's fiction more than just objects? Given their centrality to the text, a reexamination of the ways in which Proust writes female characters is overdue.

The Contemporary Women’s Writing Essay Prize aims to encourage new scholarship in the field of contemporary women’s writing, recognise and reward outstanding achievement by new researchers and support the professional development of next generation scholars.

The prize is open to anyone currently registered for a PhD, or anyone who has completed one within three years of the submission deadline. The winner will receive: