Call for Proposals for a Session at the NARRATIVE conference to be held
in Atlanta, GA, April 6-9
Animal Magnetism: The Bestial Point of View
For the Narrative Conference, Atlanta, GA, April 2000
Why do so many readers find fictions narrated by animals or from an
animal's point of view compelling? The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals cannily launched its nineteenth-century campaigns with
novels like the ironically titled <italic>Beautiful Joe </italic>and the
still popular <italic>Black Beauty</italic>. Children's literature
abounds in such fiction, and young girls, in particular, have long been
voracious readers of animal narratives. Walt Disney and others have
capitalized on the formula in innumerable movies. Nature documentaries
and television series frequently use "animal" voice-overs or ascribe
motives or emotions to animals. Recently, the animal point of view has
been wittily deployed, as in Will Self's <italic>Great Apes </italic>and
Vikram Chandra's <italic>Red Earth and Pouring Rain</italic>, or
poignantly explored, as in Barbara Gowdy's <italic>The White
Bone</italic>. For this panel, I invite proposals that seek to explain
how and why the animal narrator or the animal point of view
works-particularly for adult readers. Are animals subjects in possession
of subjectivity? What would an "animal narratology" look like? When,
why, and how are human concerns projected onto or through animals?=20
Glorious disasters might be as revealing as successes. Please email,
fax, or mail one-page proposals by September 25. =20
<center><bold>Teresa Mangum =09
</bold></center>English Department, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
Phone:319-335-0323 Fax:319-335-2535=20
===============================================
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 - 13:50:40 EST