[Discussion] CFP: Art for Art's Sake!?: The Political Currencey of Lit, Crit, and Media Culture (grad) (4/15/05; 11/4/05-11/5/05)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Art for Art's Sake!?: The Political Currency of Literature,
Criticism, and Media Culture

The Second Annual Graduate Student Conference hosted by the students of
the graduate English program at the University of Cincinnati

Keynote Address: "The Humanities and the War on Terror": Marc Redfield,
Claremont Graduate University.

Date: Nov 4 & 5 2005

At the start of the twentieth century, modernity believed in the
possibility of cultural revolution through artistic creation. Over the
course of the century, this notion and the zeal driving it all but
disappeared. As we graduate students stand here at the start of a new
century--and likely nearing the start of careers in the academy--we
must, once again, begin to consider the political import of our future
professions and the aesthetic products at their foundations.

This conference is designed to investigate some of the following
questions in light of our increasingly fluxed role as literary,
historical, and cultural academics: What is the role of aesthetic
creation and criticism in an age self-proclaimed as "post-everything"?
What can literature, art, and cultural media actually do in society?
How can art promote or enact political change? What is the worth of art
in a socio-political climate that fails to recognize its efficacy? How
has technological progress altered the terms of the debate between
aesthetics and politics? Do multi-media forms enable or disable a 21st
century turn to "art for art's sake?  And finally, is a return to an
"art for art's sake" mentality useful, necessary, inevitable, or even
possible?

In response to these and like questions, this conference invites
critical readings of literary, artistic, and cultural texts which
examine the changing relationship between aesthetics and politics from a
variety of interdisciplinary approaches.

We invite papers and panels that are related to but not limited to the
following possible topics and themes:
The post 9/11 world?
Responding to global catastrophe
The disappearance of the avant-garde
Historical fiction and retellings
Social realism redux?
Classic texts in contemporary contexts
=E2=80=9CWe other Victorians=E2=80=9D
The Patriot Act as the new Red Scare
Against or after theory?
The politics of performance
Postmodern echoes of modernism
Imperialism and the novel
The Ivory Tower in ruins
Gender aesthetics
Suburbia and mass culture
The aesthetics of late capitalism
Beyond postmodernism
Green literature and criticism
Political perspectives on the aesthetic
Globalization and postcolonialism
Art as religion?

Presentations should be 15-20 minutes in length. Abstracts should be no
longer than 250 words. Please include with your abstract your name,
program and university affiliation, mailing address, email address, and
phone number. Please send abstracts (via email or snail mail) to the
address below by April 15.

Steve Criniti
University of Cincinnati
PO Box 210627
Cincinnati, OH  45221-0627
crinitsf@email.uc.edu




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