CFP: Place in Language and Literature Feb.2008

[Roxanne B Benoit]

Contact mbh1010 at louisiana.edu with any inquiries.




Call for Papers



7th Annual Louisiana Conference on Language and Literature

February 21-23, 2008

Hilton Garden Inn   Lafayette, Louisiana



Keynote Speakers:



Elizabeth Nuñez, Award-winning author of six novels, including Prospero's
Daughter (New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice), Discretion
(short-listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award), Bruised Hibiscus
(American Book Award), and Beyond the Limbo Silence (Independent Publishers
Book Award); and co-editor of the volumes Stories from Blue Latitudes:
Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad and Black Writers in the 90s.



Jeanne Moskal, Author of Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness; editor of Mary
Shelley's Travel Writings for the definitive scholarly edition of her work
(gen. ed. Nora Crook); co-editor of Teaching British Women Writers,
1750-1900; editor of Keats-Shelley Journal; Founding President of the
International Society for Travel Writing; and editor of the series Writing
Travel



http://english.louisiana.edu/laconference



The Louisiana Conference on Language and Literature is organized to meet
the needs of graduate students and new professionals in the first five
years of their academic careers.  It is a national event bringing together
scholars from across the Humanities and Social Sciences for an engaging and
collegial weekend of intellectual debate, cultural experiences, and
networking.



Conference includes an academic publishing workshop, a Louisiana literary
tour, a reading by UL Writer-in-Residence Rikki Ducornet, and a night of
authentic Louisiana music



Conference Theme: On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture



In recent years, the idea of place has emerged as a central concept in
literary and cultural discourse.  Always a powerful organizing idea in the
texts and other cultural artifacts born out of the American South, the
concept of place can now be seen to underlie a disparate set of topics at
work in the academy.  In the trend toward globalization, for instance, not
only are people and ideas brought closer together but so are the places
which they inhabit and under whose conditions those very ideas originate.
At the same time, the proven profitability of the "authentic" has led
businesses, governments, and communities to seek out what makes their
places unique – and therefore outside of such modernizing influences – in
order to brand them and market them to cultural tourists and other
consumers.



Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary
culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and
cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional
cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified
its own places through its literature.  Imagined places such as Faulker's
Yoknapatawpha become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors'
homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of
pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual
businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and
reality is increasingly blurred; the tension between "tourist" and
"traveler" is contested based largely on destination; and persisting
through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the
popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even
national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in
which they are created and set. The Louisiana Conference on Language and
Literature will provide a "place" in which these complex ideas may be
interrogated.



Submission of Abstracts



We welcome submissions of 500-word abstracts on topics in language and
literature.  Abstracts which deal in some way with the concept of place are
particularly welcome and will be given priority consideration, but papers
on any topic will be considered.  We welcome submissions in the following
areas:



Literary Studies

Travel Literature

Rhetoric and Composition

Creative writing (fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, drama, and travel
writing)

Folklore

Linguistics

Modern Languages

History

Cultural Studies

Gender Studies

Critical Theory



Abstracts for twenty-minute presentations should be sent to Matthew
Hackler, Conference Chair, at mbh1010 at louisiana.edu by October 31, 2007.
Abstracts should be sent as attachments in rich text (.rtf) format.  Do not
include your name on your abstract.  In the body of the email, please
include your name, affiliation, email address, phone number, and the title
of your paper, as well as a brief (three-sentence bio).  If you expect to
have A/V needs, please indicate these as well.



Creative Submissions



For creative works, please include "Creative Conference Submission" in the
subject line.  Creative submissions should include a short, descriptive
abstract as well as a sample of the work to be considered.



Panel Submissions



Panel submissions are encouraged. Panels should include 3-4 presenters.
One participant should submit all panel abstracts together along with a
panel proposal explaining the panel theme and the way in which each
abstract addresses this theme.



Notice of acceptance will be sent by November 30, 2007.



Darrell Bourque Award



Presenters may choose to have their papers considered for the Darrell
Bourque Award, a cash award given to the most outstanding conference paper.
For information on submission deadlines for the Darrell Bourque Award,
please visit our website: http://english.louisiana.edu/laconference












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