[Englecturers] FW: "Post"-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and Pop/ Literary Cultures (5/15/06; 10/20/06-10/21/06)

[Steven Axelrod]

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Subject: CFP: "Post"-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and Pop/ Literary
Cultures (5/15/06; 10/20/06-10/21/06)


The Peter Straub Symposium on Literature and Culture at the University 
of Wisconsin-Madison: "Post"-Literature: Literacy, Technology, and 
Culture

 

We are pleased to announce our annual symposium with keynote speaker

Carl Freedman.

 

We have been poststructuralist, postmodern, post-Petrarchan, and 
posthuman. Will we ever be post-literary?

 

The organizers of the 2006 Peter Straub Symposium on Literature and 
Popular Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invite papers 
making readings of (and theorizing approaches to) the relationships 
between literary and popular culture; our theme is "Post"-Literature: 
Literacy, Technology, and Culture.

 

The broad project of the conference, which is to be held on October 20- 21,
2006, is to draw attention to and put pressure on the limits and 
possibilities of the "literary" and "pop." What is the literary? What 
is popular? In what ways do literary and popular cultures flow in and 
out of each other? In what ways do they flow from one another? What 
are (or might be) the status and effects of the popular in traditional 
humanities departments, and, alternately, the status and effects of 
literary materials and approaches in popular cultures?

 

We are especially interested in work that reads or theorizes how these 
broader issues in the making of literary and popular cultures are 
complicated by form, media, technology, and the problem of 
becoming "post." How does the emergence of various technologies and 
media (across historical periods and moments) shape what and the ways 
people read? What have been the status, divisions, and relations of 
literary and popular cultures (at any and all historical moments and 
periods)? How does the recasting of early literary material into new 
or contemporary modes or scenarios complicate literacy and the 
relationship between literary and popular cultures? What relevance and 
bearing do literary theory and criticism have for popular culture? 
What relevance and bearing do popular cultures have for literary 
theory and criticism? What are the present, past, and future 
implications of calling anything "post?" Possible topics could include:

 

-Theorizing unconventional, emerging, or "non-literary" media

-Theoretical or literary approaches to graphic art, comic books, and 
video games

-Recognizing, transporting, or embedding the literary in popular

-Recognizing, transporting, or embedding popular in the literary

-The "new" in various social, historical, and cultural contexts

-The effects and affects of technologies, literacy, and literature

-The (non)senses of the prefix "post"

 

Carl Freedman is professor of English Literature at Louisiana State 
University.  His general areas of interests are in the fields of 
critical theory, modern literature, science fiction, film and 
television, and Twentieth-century American politics.  Some of his 
current projects include work on Nixon and cultural power, novels of 
Samuel Delany, and the film Double Indemnity.  Among his numerous 
articles, he has also published The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, 
Modernity, and the Politics of Culture (2002), Critical Theory and 
Science Fiction (2000), and George Orwell: A Study in Ideology and 
Literary Form (1988).

 

Panels will include two graduate students and one professor.  Travel 
assistance and lodging may be available for some students.  Please 
also specify if you require any A/V equipment. For more details and 
information, please visit our website: 
http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~straub.

 

Submission Guidelines:  Abstracts should be roughly 250 words and be 
submitted by May 15.  Papers should be 15-20 minutes in length.  
Please send abstracts to Emily Yu at eyu at wisc.edu with "Straub 
Symposium Abstract" as the subject line.
 
 

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