UPenn Graduate Student Conference CFP: Carnival

[Kevin M. F. Platt]

Please Post:

'Round and ‘Round We Go: The Endless Carnival
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University  
of Pennsylvania
Friday, February 25, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Katrin Sieg, Associate Professor of German at  
Georgetown University's BMW Center for German & European Studies

“The feast is a primary, indestructible ingredient of human  
civilization; it may become sterile and even degenerate, but it cannot  
vanish.”
~Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

The festival of Carnival is perhaps most exciting for its paradoxical  
nature.  The unallowable is, for a time, allowed; the status quo  
tossed aside so that it may endure more stably during the rest of the  
year. Yet, perhaps inevitably, Carnival oversteps its temporal  
restrictions and becomes timeless. From the disorder central to the  
Fastnachtspiele of the 15th and 16th centuries to the subversive  
pageantry of present-day drag balls such as those featured in Jennie  
Livingston’s film Paris is Burning (1990), the topsy-turvy world knows  
no chronological or geographic limits.

By putting the “-esque” in Carnival and asserting that the feast  
“cannot vanish,” Mikhail Bakhtin significantly calls our attention to  
the ways in which Carnival slips its leash.  His vital “-esque”  
indicates that there are many manners in which the Carnival persists  
long after its season is over.  Is it more accurate to say that  
Carnival is endlessly recurring, or that it never truly ends in the  
first place? What are the ways and manners in which Carnival continues?

It is the longevity of the Carnival paradox that is at the heart of  
this conference. We are devoted to exploring the enduring ethos of the  
topsy-turvy. Possible themes for papers include (but are not limited  
to) the concept of the carnivalesque and its:

•    Ambivalent figures, such as the jester, the holy fool, and the  
devil
•    Possible afterlife and continuation
•    Closure and/or limitations
•    Links to religious or antique feasts
•    Humorous and/or violent expressions
•    Regional, national, or transnational incarnations
•    Possible utilization for political and social change
•    Portrayals across various media (paintings, novels, film, graphic  
novels, etc.)
•    Performance/Performativity
•    Expression in contemporary LGBTQ culture(s)
•    Post-Bakhtinian theorization

Deadline for Abstracts: December 22, 2010.

Please send an anonymous abstract (max. 500 words) with a separate  
cover sheet indicating the author’s name, affiliation, address, and e- 
mail address to penncarnival at gmail.com.













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