Call for papers, volunteered session, 2010 AAA meetings New Orleans

[Elizabeth Anne Falconi]

AAA Meetings, New Orleans, 2010
Panel Proposal, Call for Papers
Panel Organizers: Kate Graber and Elizabeth Falconi, U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Panel Title:  The Tales We (and They) Tell: Stories in Circulation and  
the Regimentation of Genre

If you are interested in participating in this panel please send paper  
proposals to Elizabeth Falconi <elifalco at umich.edu>, or Kate Graber at  
<kegraber at umich.edu>, by March 25th, 2010.

In this panel we will consider the practice of storytelling and  
generic regimentation, within the context of this year?s AAA  
conference theme of circulation. Stories, and the way they are told,  
enacted, or written, are a means of linguistic possibility and of  
linguistic constraint. They may illustrate through allegory some kind  
of moral ideal, but they also show what should not be done. Genres of  
storytelling emerge out of the repeated production and reproduction of  
narrative forms, which show some accretion of linguistic and social  
authority.  Recent research has brought our attention to how stories  
and storytelling become the focus of larger ideological struggles in  
terms of ?generic regimentation,? (Bauman 2004, Kroskrity 2009a,  
2009b). In the context of language shift and revitalization projects,  
which foreground the acquisition of traditional stories and myths,  
conceived as potent cultural repositories, such contestations are  
bound up with larger debates about the relationship between linguistic  
capacity, and belonging/community membership.  The regimentation of  
stories, i.e. who can use them, how, and in what social contexts  
illuminates the contradictions between idealized models of cultural  
authenticity and the exigencies of lived social realities shaped by  
histories of structural discrimination, linguistic and cultural  
oppression.  The study of stories in such communities can enhance our  
understanding about the things that cannot or should not be said in  
languages identified as endangered, what is valorized as sayable, and  
by whom. (Meek 2007, Muehlmann 2008).

We invite panel papers which explore the following questions: As  
different linguistic resources and repertoires circulate among  
speakers of a language (or languages), how do the intertextual  
relations between those resources and repertoires constrain, direct,  
or regiment their further use? How do diverse, seemingly disparate  
resources become the features of a genre? If circulations create the  
conditions of possibility for a genre?s emergence, how might they also  
be controlled and constrained by the genre and its users? And what are  
the social consequences of such possibility and constraint? What is at  
stake in a story?

We have in mind different kinds of storytelling and narrative  
practices, from the telling of traditional Zapotec stories in Mexico  
to the production and broadcast of a television news story in  
Buryatia, Russia. In these cases, multiple languages and linguistic  
repertoires are available, but only certain of them are believed to  
?fit? the genre and narrative format. Other kinds of storytelling to  
think about might include gossiping, telling jokes, or writing  
histories. How are different social spaces for storytelling  
demarcated? How do such spaces channel further circulations? Where is  
the ?author? of a culturally valorized text, and how does her/his  
authority become instantiated in?or come from?that text? How are  
authors found, made, and treated differently in different narrative  
genres? These are some of the issues we invite panel participants to  
explore.




Works cited

Bauman, Richard
2004	A World of Others? Words: Cross-cultural Perspectives on  
Intertextuality. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Kroskrity, Paul
2009a	Narrative Reproductions: Ideologies of Storytelling,  
Authoritative Words, and Generic Regimentation in the Village of Tewa.  
In Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 19, Iss. 1, pp 40-56.
2009b	Language Renewal as Sites of Language Ideological Struggle: the  
Need for ?Ideological Clarification.? In Indigenous Language  
Revitalization: Encouragement, Guidance & Lessons Learned. J. Reyhner  
and L. Lockard, eds. Pp. 71?83. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University.

Meek, Barbra
2007	Respecting the Language of Elders: Ideological Shift and  
Linguistic Discontinuity in a Northern Athapascan Community. In  
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 17, Iss. 1, pp. 23-43.

Shaylih, Muehlmann
2008	?Spread your ass cheeks?: And other things that should not be  
said in indigenous languages.  In American Ethnologist