CFP: Navigating Interdisciplinarity, Cultivating New Spaces of Comparison (1/20/07; 3/16/07-3/17/07)

[Joe Culpepper]

"Navigating Interdisciplinarity, Cultivating New Spaces of Comparison"

  Date: March 16th-17, 2007

  Submission Deadline: January 20, 2007

  Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  Keynote Speaker:  Haun Saussy, Professor of Comparative Literature
at Yale University

  Recently, the field of Comparative Literature has been experiencing
a period of self-reflection. "Trans, Pan, Intra: Cultures in Contact"
is the title for the American Comparative Literature Association's
2007 conference. Comparative Literature in the Age of Globalism is the
title of the most recent publication of scholarly critiques of a
discipline dedicated to methods of comparison. As a contribution to
the current discussion of global intellectual exchange, the Northrop
Frye Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto is
requesting papers which engage questions of interdisciplinary
approaches to literature and culture.

  The Centre's 18th annual international colloquium will focus on the
ways approaches and methodologies from the Humanities, the Social and
the Natural Sciences can be brought to bear on the study of literature
or culture, thus redefining its object and scope. Papers may address
the following questions directly or may use literary critique to
reflect on one or more of the given issues:

  What new methods of critical analysis are developed when two
distinct disciplinary approaches are combined?

What can be gained by uniting normally separate fields of study? How
does one decide which points of disciplinary intersection will yield
the richest, most creative results?

What are the dangers of too much interdisciplinarity? At what point do
comparative
projects attempt to pull in so many theories, fields, languages, or
literatures that they sacrifice intellectual focus or cohesion?

  How have discipline-specific terminologies been applied to other,
usually unrelated fields of study?

What discipline-specific methodologies (scientific, mathematical,
linguistic, economic, philosophical, legal, etc.) have been borrowed
from one field and applied to another to reach new analytical
conclusions?

Are there rules for interdisciplinary approaches? What should the
guidelines and basic requirements be to ensure that projects which
draw upon multiple disciplines do so in an academically rigorous
manner?

  Does "Comparative Literature" need to involve literature at all? Can
pieces of music, paintings, films, etc. serve as 'texts'? Does
replacing a language requirement with "fluency" in another discipline
bring about a crisis that has the potential to redefine Comparative
Literature?

If decentralisation, decolonisation, and globalisation have brought
about a change in the Eurocentric territorialisation of knowledge,
does Comparative Literature need to renegotiate a space for itself?

Would sedentarization betray and compromise Comparative Literature?
Are "disciplinary" nomadism and sedentarization false alternatives?

Comparative Literature students are often told that they need a
"dominant" literature in their work that would strengthen their
application for a position in a specialized department. Does this
practical concern undermine the philosophy of this field or
subordinate Comparative Literature in relation to other disciplines?

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent to
ronald.ng at utoronto.ca by January 20th, 2006.

Graduate students from various disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Please observe the following procedures to enable blind peer review:
1) attach a short biographical note on a separate page, 2) do not
include your name on the same page as your abstract, and 3) type
"abstract" in the subject line of your email. Also, please indicate at
the end of your abstract if you will require any special resources for
your presentation.