call for papers: Nostos: War, The Odyssey, and Narratives of Return conference, U of SC March 2011

[KALB, JUDITH]

Dear colleagues,
 
I am putting together a panel for the University of South Carolina's annual Comparative Literature conference.  This year's theme is Nostos, or homecoming, centered on Homer's Odyssey and its resonances in literature and culture.  My panel is devoted to Russian literature and this theme.  I would like to find an additional paper and a discussant.  Papers thus far are on Brodsky and Ulitskaya.  The conference description follows.
 
Please reply to me __off-list__ at jkalb at sc.edu.  I will need all proposals by September 27.
 
Thank you!
 
 
Dr. Judith E. Kalb
Associate Professor of Russian
Dept. of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
email: jkalb at sc.edu
fax (departmental): (803) 777-0454
 

 

	

	CFP

	Nostos: War, the Odyssey, and Narratives of Return

	
	 

	March 23-27, 2011

	University of South Carolina, Columbia

	
	 

	And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

	Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

	you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

	(Cavafy, "Ithaca")

	
	 

	Carol Dougherty, Classics and Comparative Literature, Wellesley

	Sheila Murnaghan, Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

	René Nünlist, Classics, University of Cologne

	Jonathan Shay, Psychiatry Department of Veterans Affairs, Naval War College

	James Tatum, Classics, Dartmouth

	
	 

	A soldier comes home from war.  What does he find?  How does he adapt?  He's been away a long time.  He's had a long journey filled with wonderful and traumatic experiences.  Now, there are strange people in his house doing strange things.  What should he do?

	
	 

	For almost three thousand years in the west, the archetype of this narrative has been Homer's Odyssey. The poem has fostered many successors from the Nostoi to the Aeneid, to Ulysses, March, and O Brother, Where Art Thou.  The narrative remains as present to our society as it was in archaic society. Soldiers today, both men and women, are still coming home, making that fraught passage. And in the largest sense, we too, both soldiers and civilians, are always coming home, always returning to where we've never really been before to confront the different in ourselves and others.

	
	 

	We invite a broad range of interdisciplinary papers to explore historically, philosophically, politically, and psychologically topics including but not limited to the following.  What is the significance of the Odyssey today?  What did it mean in archaic Greece?  What does the tradition surrounding it say about the changing meaning of the concepts and practices of war, of the journey, of return, and of home?  Do we ever really come home?  How does homecoming have the potential to both harm and heal?  What is the place of the unheimlich in the all too familiar?

	
	 

	Abstracts for twenty minute papers should be sent to frankj at mailbox.sc.edu by October 1, 2010.  Abstracts should be no more than 250 words long.  Panel proposals of 750 words are due by the same date.  Panels should include three papers and a respondent.

	
	 

	This conference is sponsored by the Thirteenth Annual University of South Carolina Comparative Literature Conference, the Classics in Contemporary Perspectives Initiative, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Department of Political Science, and associated Departments and Programs.





	 


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