Replacement panelist needed for the panel proposed below. Please send
1-page abstracts as soon as possible.
Thank you
Ethnicities, Regions, and Nature Writing: Complicating the Landscapes of
American Realism, 1860-1920
I propose a session that can connect and expand on significant
issues and themes in American literary studies (all reflected in recent
NEMLA conference offerings) pertaining to the relationship of literature
and place in regionalism, realism, and the genre loosely termed nature
writing. Although there is a long tradition of studying the literature of
place in American Studies and considerable current emphasis on
environmental literature and writing nature, substantial work remains to
be done in examining the signifying fields and formal interrelations of
these categories and genres. Recent critical efforts such as Donna
Campbell's Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American
Fiction 1885-1915 (1997) suggest key combinations of minority and feminist
theory may be necessary to illumination of the "regionalism" phenomenon
and its representational and formal landscapes. In addition, there is a
pressing need to integrate minority perspectives on place further into the
representational field of American realism. The proliferation of studies
of place and environmental literature also suggest a beneficial focus on
questions of form and genre as well as the need to relate nature writing
to other literary categories. Thus this session would invite: papers
focusing on authors of the realist period and their conceptualization of
region, landscape, and place; papers illuminating aspects of such
categories as regionalism, naturalism,, realism, and nature writing;
papers attempting to articulate the formal structures inherent to some of
these categories and genres; and papers articulating formal relations of
category and genre within and/or between realist works. Questions the
panel hopes to address include: What is the relationship between
ethnicity and regionalism in the realist period? What kinds of landscapes
are associated with certain ethnicities and regions, and how do fictional
works critique or expand these representations? How does nature writing
interact with regionalism and what is the nature
What elements signal the presence or manifestation of regionalism,
realism, or nature writing and how do these elements interact? The panel
should offer a wide range of theoretical and thematic approaches which
will intersect in novel ways to enhance understanding of American
realism's literary landscapes.
Karen E. Waldron
College of the Atlantic
Karen E. Waldron
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Faculty, Literature & Writing
College of the Atantic
105 Eden Street
Bar Harbor, ME 04609
(207) 288-5015
waldron@ecology.coa.edu
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