[Discussion] (Dis)Locating Identity in the 20th Century

[Gonul]

 CALL FOR PAPERS

(Dis)Locating Identity in the 20th Century:
An International Conference
http://www.usc-conference.mtvcc.us/
Saturday, April 3 - Sunday, April 4, 2004
University of South Carolina-Columbia
Department of English

The diverse intersections of location and identity entail a necessary
debate about the ways cultural, social, historical, political,
environmental, and religious forces shape identity in the twentieth
century. The arts provide a forum in which the complex relationship
between location and identity can be explored and questioned. Is it
possible to map identity? Is the question of culture equivalent to the
question of identity? Is identity a project or an object? Does the
permeability of physical boundaries affect the definitiveness of
identity?
Is the term identity obsolete? How do gender, sexuality, class, race,
ethnicity, and nationality play into this conversation? We seek papers
that not only reflect and build upon these issues, but encourage the
analysis and exploration of multiple types of literature such as
hypertext, film, art, and music in addition to poetry and prose. We
strongly encourage cross-genre discussions.

Topics may include, but certainly are not limited to:

*       the woman warrior
*       culture versus counterculture
*       mental illness
*       issues in virtual space
*       rural versus urban life
*       the metropolis
*       the flâneur and mapping the city
*       identity and a life on the road
*       (de)constructing gender and race
*       struggles in Modernism
*       fragmentation and construction
*       feminist writing/theory/practice
*       social and natural environments
*       masculinity and femininity
*       religion and spirituality
*       post-colonial experience
*       war culture
*       activism and the arts

The deadline for submission is Monday, November 3, 2003.
Please submit an abstract at http://www.usc-conference.mtvcc.us/.

Information on our Keynote Addresses:


Professor David Cowart:

David Cowart, Louise Fry Scudder Professor at the University of
SouthCarolina (Columbia), has won major awards for teaching and
research.
A consulting editor for the journal Critique, Professor Cowart has been
an
NEH fellow and held Fulbright chairs at the University of Helsinki and
at
Odense University in Denmark.  In addition to over ninety articles,
notes,
and reviews, he has written five books: Thomas Pynchon: The Art of
Allusion (1980), Arches and Light: The Fiction of John Gardner (1983),
History and the Contemporary Novel (1989), Literary Symbiosis: The
Reconfigured Text in Twentieth-Century Writing (1993), and Don DeLillo:
The Physics of Language (2002). He is at present finishing a new book on

recent American immigrant writing.


Professor Janette Turner Hospital:

Janette Turner Hospital is Carolina Distinguished Professor of English
at
the University of South Carolina.  She has formerly been
Writer-in-Residence at Boston University, M.I.T., Colgate University,
and
at universities in Australia, Canada, England, and France. Her novels
have
been translated into many languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian,
Dutch, Czech and Hindi among others) and have received prestigious
literary awards. Among her internationally acclaimed novels are: The
Ivory
Swing (1982), winner of Canada's Seal Award, Borderline (1985), Charades

(1988), The Last Magician (1992) and Oyster (1996). Dislocations (1987),
a
collection of short stories, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers
Fiction Award in 1988. Her works deal with a sense of displacement and
search for identity. She herself has led a nomadic life, and the
constant
dislocation became one of the main themes in her writing. Her latest
novel, Due Preparations for the Plague, was published in May 2003, and
has
already received major critical acclaim in Australia, Canada, and the
USA.