CALL FOR PAPERS for a proposed session at M/MLA (Minneapolis, Nov.4-6)
Witnessing Class: Passing and Class Boundaries in American Culture
"Passing" has received considerable attention from theorists of gender,
race, and sexuality, whose important work aims to unravel the threads of
identity, power, and privilege in American culture. This session will
redirect critical attention to questions of class. From the ubiquitous
scene in which the hero of the film evades capture by donning coveralls and
"disappearing" into a mass of workers, to the host of fiction writers and
sociologists who have gone undercover to "experience" poverty; from Bill
Gates's triumphal public performance of fabulous wealth to Sister Carrie's
ambivalent rise into the middle class, U.S. culture is rife with images of
permeable class boundaries and narratives fraught with class anxieties.
The theme for this year's M/MLA, "Witness," suggests an intriguing approach
to these narratives of passing across class lines. To "witness" class is
to see something that, according to a pervasive strain of American
ideology, is not really there, and then, in the evangelical tradition, to
share the "truth" of that experience with the uninitiated. Possible
topics/approaches include: assimilation as performance;
"slumming"; reportorial representations of the collective; narratives of
undercover investigations; the visibility of class; etc.
Please send abstract and short c.v. by April 2, 1999 to:
Cynthia Stretch
English Department
Southern Connecticut State Univ.
501 Crescent St.
New Haven, CT 06515
e-mail inquiries to: stretch@scsu.ctstateu.edu
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