Call for papers addressing any aspect of blasphemy and the literary arts:
NEMLA in Buffalo, April 7-8, 2000.
Sacred Transgressions: Literature and the Art of Blasphemy
The furor over Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses shocked the
West, but the charge of blasphemy against literary productions has ample
precedent. This session proposes to explore the ways in which writers from
Chaucer, Milton and Swift to Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin have chosen
blasphemy as a mode of transgression in their attempts to bring beauty
and/or "newness" into the world. The session seeks papers that explore 1)
the ways in which such transgressions are meaningful and/or enable an
ongoing debate over the religious and cultural norms, 2) how literary
blasphemies can be read with Sara Suleri "as a gesture of reconciliation
toward the idea of belief rather than as the insult", or 3) the extent to
which the aesthetic and the sacred are complementary or antithetical
concepts.
Send abstract or completed paper by September 15, 1999 to:
Richard Henry
Department of English and Communication
120 Morey Hall
SUNY Potsdam
Potsdam, NY 13676
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
===============================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 09 2000 - 13:50:38 EST