FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures (May 9-11, 2008, Princeton). Deadline - February 1, 2008.

[Petre Petrov]

Call for Conference Papers:

THE PAIN OF WORDS:
Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures
May 9-11, 2008

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Princeton University
http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=1628

Recent studies of emotions have pointed to a particular role of pain
in shaping identities and narratives. Regardless of their disciplinary
affiliations, scholars seem to agree that verbal expressions of pain
first of all draw attention to the suffering individual instead of
describing the actual experience of pain. Narratives of suffering
provide the individual with a powerful symbolic presence. They create
emotionally charged communities. Such narratives also lay the
foundation for larger social, political or moral claims.
This link between pain, representation, and subjectivity is well
documented in Slavic cultures, where vivid depictions of suffering
saturate popular and elite cultures alike. As the young Mayakovski put
it, "I am with pain, everywhere." However, this conference wants to
move beyond the documenting of omnipresence of pain in Slavic
cultures. Instead, we want to explore how social, linguistic,
aesthetic, moral, gender, etc. conventions determine specific contents
of pain in different historical periods and different geographical
locations. What are the symbolic contexts in which experiences of pain
are recognized? To what extent do available cultural practices
constrain or encourage certain narrative versions of pain? What gets
lost in the process of translating traumatic experience into
narratives of suffering? How is the phenomenon of pain used to
galvanize individual and group identities, to justify social values,
to motivate artistic projects or, in some cases, to undermine (or
generate) political movements? In short, what are those discourses
through which Slavic cultures acquire and express their concepts of
pain?
We seek to address these problems by bringing together an
interdisciplinary and international group of people interested in
exploring the value of pain in such diverse fields as history,
literature, film, music, performing arts, everyday life, religion,
ideology, politics, law, psychology, and history of medicine. We
invite papers to reflect upon the diverse vocabulary of expressions of
pain that have been constructed across Slavic space and time. We are
also interested in comparative studies that could place Slavic
narratives of suffering in larger cultural, historical, or
geographical contexts.
We especially encourage submissions that approach concrete textual or
ethnographic materials in a theoretically informed way, without
reiterating the alleged masochistic fascination of Slavic cultures
with pain and suffering.

Please send your abstract (300 words) and CV to
<oushakin at princeton.edu> by February 1, 2008.
We might be able to offer a limited number of travel subsidies for
several foreign presenters.
Finalists will be contacted in the middle of February, 2008.

Program committee:
Serguei Oushakine (Princeton), Devin Fore (Princeton), Petre Petrov
(Princeton),
Alexander Etkind (Cambridge/Princeton), Nancy Ries (Institute for
Advanced Study).
http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=1628

-- 

PP

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