NYU Modernism Conference; March 8-9, 2002
Jonathan Culler Keynote Speaker
Conference:
This conference centers on ways of reading modernism. Each
panel focuses on a distinct methodology or approach to looking at
Modernist works. Not limited to graduate students.
Conference Format:
Papers will not be read in the panels but will be submitted at least
one month prior to the conference and posted on our website for reading
before arrival.
Panelists will bring 1-2 page handouts (which can be a
synopsis, a diagram, a list of bullet points, a series of important
quotations) to be distributed at panel discussions. Each participant
will have ten minutes to present his or her work, and panel leaders
will lead a discussion between members.
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PANEL:
The Fascination of What's Difficult
Modernism has been construed by some as the valorization of difficulty.
Richard Poirier, for example, locates literary modernism "not only as it
commonly is-in ideas about
cultural institutions or the structures of life -but also in two related
and verifiable developments: first, in the effort by a particular faction
of writers to promote the idea that in
twentieth-century literature, difficulty is particularly necessary and
virtuous, and second, in the complicit agreement, by a faction of
readers, that the act of reading ought to
entail an analogous degree of difficulty attributable, again, to cultural
dislocations peculiar to the century" (The Renewal of Literature 98). We
seek papers that use or
investigate the usefulness of difficulty (variously defined) as an
interpretive and/or evaluative lens.
Although we encourage contributors to anchor their papers on a reading of
one or more modernist texts, our goal in the panel conversation will be
to discover related
interpretive, theoretical, cultural, and aesthetic trends and biases.
Potential panel question include:
-- Can one reconcile the prestige accorded to modernist literary works
that resist understanding (another ill-defined term) with modernist
critical proscriptions against attending
to related readerly affects (like frustration)?
-- How does the literary value of difficulty relate to the social value
of labor?
-- Do modernist species of difficulty differ from those of other literary
periods?
-- Is "difficult" too vague an adjective to be useful as a critical term?
Or must we use it because it has become, despite or due to its vagueness,
a term of art?
-- How do less difficult writers of the modernist period respond to the
valorization of difficulty?
Please email 250-word abstracts by November 11, 2001, to:
Andrew Osborn and Paul Grimstad (osbornal@muohio.edu,
PaulGrimstad@aol.com)
No attachments, please; paste abstract into message.
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CFP@english.upenn.edu
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http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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