CFP: Poe Studies Sessions at ALA (11/4/03; ALA, 5/27/04-5/30/04)

>Submissions are invited for two sessions of the Poe Studies Association at
>the American Literature Association Conference, May 27-30, 2004, Hyatt
>Regency (Embarcadero Center) in San Francisco, California: "New Directions
>for Poe in the Classroom" and "Poe and Talk."
>
>Session I: New Directions for Poe in the Classroom
>"New Directions for Poe in the Classroom" will explore how teachers might
>engage new critical directions in Poe scholarship. Papers on all aspects of
>this topic are welcome, including comparisons with other figures. Papers
>might discuss, for example, approaches and challenges; case studies; syllabi
>and assignments, with overviews of how well they worked within a particular
>institutional setting; teaching beyond nationalism, regionalism,
>periodicity, and/or the "single author" model. Some of these directions
>might include (but are not limited to) teaching Poe in the context of:
>
>The documents and literatures of slavery and abolition
>The sciences and pseudosciences: astronomy, pre-Darwinian evolutionary
>theory, ethnology, electromagnetism, phrenology, mesmerism, etc.
>Travel narratives and imperialism
>"The culture of reprinting" and international copyright
>The economy, magazines, and audience
>Reframing the notions of authorship and plagiarism
>Transcontinental romanticism
>British and American periodical literature
>The domestic novel
>Ecology and the American landscape
>Queering Poe
>
>Session II: Poe and Talk
>"Poe and Talk" invites considerations of Poe in relation to talk, broadly
>construed. Immersed in print culture and a "culture of reprinting," Poe and
>his contemporaries also negotiated a "culture of conversation," Peter
>Gibian's term for antebellum America's fascination with the spoken word as
>orally performed and represented in print. All aspects of this topic are
>welcome, including comparisons with other figures; papers may address but
>are not limited to:
>
>FORMS OF TALK: conversation, casual or intellectual; reading aloud;
>lectures; political or personal protests and rallies; improvisation during
>performance; gossip, slander; letters, private and shared; printed editorial
>messages for contributors to periodicals.
>
>SETTINGS FOR TALK: drawing room, sickroom; salon, club; booksellers'
>dinners; book shop; athenaeum; tavern; hotel and boarding house; revival
>meeting and church service; society meetings; reading circles; theatre;
>political events; editorial office.
>
>PURPOSES OF TALK: to protest social, political, literary, or personal
>injustice; generate ideas for writing; form useful connections; position
>oneself in relation to cliques and literary cabals; earn a living (the
>lyceum and reformist circuits, the Conversation as led by Bronson Alcott and
>Margaret Fuller); gather information (for instance, John H. Ingram's
>biographical research on Poe, which entailed communication with many
>literary figures with conflicting interests, primarily women).
>
>REPRESENTATIONS AND ASSESSMENTS OF TALK: the literary dialogue (for
>instance, Poe's "The Power of Words," conversations within Fuller's Woman in
>the Nineteenth Century); characters' speech in short stories (dialect,
>narrators' voices); reviews of lectures, dramatic performances, or
>publications; Poe's comments on conversational skills in "The Literati of
>New York"; other writers' characterization of Poe's talk and letters.
>
>ADDITIONAL POSSIBILITIES: To what extent did Poe value a familiar,
>"conversational" style? Did he belong to a "speech community"? What were
>the consequences of performing effectively or ineffectively, in salons and
>on lecture platforms? How did gender, race, class, and region figure in
>specific forms of talk? How did Poe's epistolary exchanges reflect and
>affect his career? How should we compare Poe's forms of talk with those of
>reformers, escaped slaves, travel writers, scientists and pseudoscientists,
>Transcendentalists, domestic novelists, salon participants?
>
>Please send any inquiries for these two sessions and/or an e-mail (no
>attachments) containing a short bio and a 250-500 word abstract by November
>4 to:
>
>Noelle Baker (bakern_at_uwosh.edu)
>University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
>1638 White Swan Drive
>Oshkosh, WI 54901
>
>AND
>
>Mary De Jong (mld4_at_psu.edu)
>Penn State Altoona
    3000 Ivyside Park
    Altoona, PA 16601

>Altoona, PA 16601

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Received on Sun Sep 07 2003 - 22:17:36 EDT