The theory of Imitation was a central topic of discussion in the ‘Republic of Letters’. The European community of humanists, philosophers, poets and artists was engaged in the dispute over the models to refer to during the creative process. How to develop a normative canon as a reference point for artists and writers in the practice of Imitation? Which poets and artists to select as the examples of ‘bello stile’?

While the authority of ancient models was universally acknowledged, the building of a canon of modern masters was under discussion. One of the typical environments of this discussion were the Academies, where writers, artists, philosophers, antiquarians gathered around learned patrons.  

50th NeMLA Anniversary Convention Washington, DC | March 21-24, 2019

Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: Expanding the Borders of Dysfluency Studies (Humanities Institute, University College Dublin, 12 October, 2018)

 Keynote speaker: Chris Eagle, Emory University, Centre for the Study of Human Health (Dysfluencies: On Speech Disorders in Modern Literature, 2014; Talking Normal: Literature, Speech Disorders, and Disability, ed. 2013)

NeMLA Annual Convention - Washington D.C. - 21-24 March, 2019

In “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism”, Kodwo Eshun argued that the impact of the Middle Passage and slavery could still be felt in African American authorship today. The erasure of their African past, culture and heritage leaving them disconnected and made strangers, black writers look to the future as a way of dealing and engaging with the present. The term counterfutures is thus used to describe those writings that explore the potentiality of a dissonant life that emerges from these traumas, ones which reimagine the futures that the current path of human experience seems to lead to, as well as the pasts that have or might catalyze real or imagined futures.

STILL ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS

While periods of classicism, neo-classicism, modernism, and pre/post-modernism are certainly noteworthy “isms” in literature, so, also, are other concepts of “isms,” such as, heroism, supernaturalism, imagism, afro-futurism, feminism, activism, colorism, existentialism, symbolism, witticism, dualism, utopianism, et al.  The objective of this session is to examine thoughtfully how these and other pertinent “isms” have and continue to influence literature socially and culturally, realistically and idealistically, literally and figuratively, nationally and internationally.  In so doing, the researcher should think critically, insightfully, and provocatively about the importance of various “isms” in literature for their purpose, politics, pragmatics, and prof