AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: THE INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC

March 21st – 23rd, 2024

Salem, Massachusetts

Conference director: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University

With the kind support of the American Literature Association

Proposals for individual papers, 3- or 4-person paper sessions, and 5-person roundtable sessions are solicited for AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: the inaugural symposium of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic.

Gaston Bachelard asserts that "all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home." How does one define "home"? Is it a materially constructed shelter, or a psychological space that holds one's memories, imaginations, and, essentially, a space that "protects the daydreamer" (The Poetics of Space, 5)? Furthermore, what does it mean to exist in a "body"? And what does it feel like to be "at home" in a body? How does one traverse these inhabited spaces, both in public and in private? Or, how are spatial boundaries reinstated when the home and the body is misaligned?

Ambiguous and paradoxical, the concept of hospitality has been extensively explored in its social, political, and ethical dimensions. In his cycle of seminars on hospitality (1995-97), Jacques Derrida reconstructs hospitality’s conceptual history, highlights its complexities and contradictions, and underlines the imbrication between hospitality and hostility. Building on Derrida’s reflections, works such as Rosello’s Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (2001), McNulty’s The Hostess: Hospitality, Femininity, and the Expropriation of Identity (2006), and Baker’s Hospitality and World Politics (2013) have considered the global, transnational, and gender aspects of hospitality.

KIIT School of Language & Literature (KSLL) invites papers for the international conference on the topic of “Cross-Religious Exchanges in Eastern Indian Cultural and Literary Traditions” to be held on February 15-17, 2024 in the hybrid mode at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology-Deemed to be University. The conference aims to explore the interactions among religion, philosophy, and literary and cultural texts from the Eastern and North Eastern part of the Indian subcontinent.