I am seeking submissions of stories and poems that raise issues of
"appropriation" by transgressing demographic boundaries in representing
characters' problems, pain and yearning for a creative writing session
entitled "The Art of Appropriation" to be held at the NEMLA conference
in Hartford March 30-31, 2001.
Stories and poems must be short (i.e., take 10 - 15 minutes to read) and
must center on the representation of the consciousness or experience of
a character from a demographic group other than the author's. After
reading, panelists will also engage with the audience members in
discussing the aesthetic and political issues involved in appropriation.
Submissions can be made by email to ladin@prodigy.net, or by sending
hard copy to Jay Ladin, 15 Gaylord Street, Amherst, MA 01002. The
deadline is September 15; no final decisions on the panelists will be
made before that date. Submissions should be accompanied by a cover
letter that includes a brief creative writing bio, and a paragraph or
two on the issue of appropriation in writing and reading literature.
PURPOSE OF SESSION:
"Appropriation" - literary representation of the consciousnesses and
experiences of characters who belong to demographic groups other than
the writer's - has become something of a taboo in academe. But for
writers, it is a taboo that is hard to avoid breaking. "Appropriation"
is central, for example, to Shakespeare's plays ("The Merchant of
Venice" leaps immediately to mind), Milton's Paradise Lost (Eve's
reflections on her spiritual status), George Eliot's Middlemarch,
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, Dreiser's
Sister Carrie, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (particularly Septimus
Smith) - to name only a few canonical examples.
The arguments against and for appropriation are well known and
frequently recycled. On the one hand, literature (including the works
listed above) is filled with examples of exploitative,
stereotype-reinforcing and otherwise offensive representations of those
who are "other" to the writer - offenses which are all the more
egregious when the writer is ventriloquizing the "other"'s
consciousness. On the other hand, as Woolf famously argued in "A Room
of One's Own," writers' imaginations and ambitions are not circumscribed
by their demographic circumstances; indeed, the exploration of
"others''' perspectives is, for many authors, a major motivation for
writing.
How do writers today balance the imperatives of imagination and empathy
against the awareness of the long history of misrepresentation of
"others" and the anguish those misrepresentations have caused? What is
at stake when we write about "others"? Are the potential benefits of
appropriation worth the risks? Is there an ethical or social imperative
for writers to restrict themselves to self-representation? And where
exactly does the writer's own experience end, and that of "others"
begin?
This panel will present poems and stories that face these questions
head-on, and will be followed by a discussion that uses these works to
anchor a general consideration of the issues involved in appropriation.
The goal of the panel will be to move beyond the rhetoric of political
correctness and artistic sovereignty to a thoughtful dialogue about the
roles of writers and the needs of readers in the new millenium.
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Full Information at
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or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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