“Reading for Wellness”

Taking inspiration from the in/of that joins Health and Humanities in this year’s conference theme, this panel seeks papers that broadly consider the relationship between the short story form and wellbeing.   

Individual and Collective Wellbeing

Claims made for the humanness of the short story form – its capacity to capture, condense, and convey essential elements if not the Truth of human experience – take on added urgency in an age increasingly characterized as inhuman.   

Submissions to this panel, then, might

• interrogate the form’s ability to register and respond to individual, social, political, and cultural change and/or upheaval and to offer its writers and/or readers recognition and/or reassurance, consolation and/or compassion, cathartic confrontation and/or restful retreat

• consider the extent to which the form’s appeal rests in its connective force – its ability to connect quickly, to connect widely, to connect the apparently disconnected

• address the affective qualities of the form and/or its place within affect studies

• examine the form’s capacity for restoration and/or renewal

The Wellbeing of the Discipline

Alternatively, panelists might address the interpretive demands works of short prose fiction make and their implications for the health of the humanities moving forward.   Papers might explore the extent to which the form  

• models adaptability and/or ensures the survival and/or development of narrative modes of understanding the world and the critical frameworks that accompany them

• invites cross-disciplinary practice and analysis

• challenges readers to hone skills critical to navigating a storified age

Abstracts of 250 words with a short bio should be sent by email to Dr. Heather Joyce at hjoyce@nwpolytech.ca no later than April 15, 2024.