"Reflections in the Mirror"
City University of New York-Graduate Center
The English Students' Association
7th Annual Graduate Conference
March 8, 2002
Mirrors, like creative works, produce a duplicate of the world that offers
viewers a new perspective on reality. However, the seemingly objective
mirror image is inevitably distorted. The image is not only reversed from
left to right, but subject to interpretation by the viewers, who may see
only what they expected to see in the first place.
This dichotomy of objectivity and distortion may explain the frequency with
which the mirror appears in text and theory. Narcissus, in what is probably
one of history's most (re)interpreted myths, dies while gazing into another
kind of mirror, the reflecting river. In the Faerie Queene, the magic mirror
of Merlin informs the king of secret plots and invasions. And while poet
John Ashbery cautions us not to live in our reflections because "the gray
gaze of the past attacks all know-how," reflection as a process of cognition
is an essential part of the creative process.
This conference attempts to bring together the many interpretations and uses
of reflective surfaces, whether the mirror, the pool of water, or the eye of
the beloved, and perhaps come to a better understanding of the role of
reflections and how a text can reflect itself or us.
Potential subjects for reflection:
As the process of cognition is sometimes called "reflection," it is not
surprising that artistic creations are often compared to mirrors. But what
does the creation reflect? Does a text mimic the physical world, other
texts, its own creation, or the beliefs and cognitive processes of the
writer or the reader?
Jacques Lacan suggested that infants' sense of self is formed by the
(mis)recognition of their image in the mirror. What do mirrors have to tell
us about the self or about self-image? What do literary characters see when
they look in the mirror?
Twins, doppelgangers, and cases of mistaken identity present double images.
Where are these identical, where are they yin and yang, and what do such
pairings signify?
Paper topics are not limited to the above suggestions, which do not exhaust
the various possibilities of the theme (chiasmus? vampires? smoke and
mirrors? mirror writing or dyslexia?). Proposals for panels are also
welcome.
Please send abstract of 400-600 words and CV by January 7, 2002, to
Graduate Conference Committee
Ph.D. Program in English
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY 10016
Notification of accepted papers: January 23, 2002
Questions and submissions in .rtf format may be sent via e-mail to Jaime
Cleland at jcleland@gc.cuny.edu or Mark McCullough at
mccullough@mindspring.com.
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