CFP: 18th C.: The Politics of Identity on Grub Street (9/15/03; ASECS, 3/24/04-3/28/04)

ASECS (Grub Street, 9/15/03, reminder; 3/04)

A reminder of the 9/15 deadline for paper proposals on the following
panel. The conference is ASECS in Boston (March 2004).

--------------------------

"Hackney Hands and Gentlemen of Genius: The Politics of Identity on
Grub Street"

This panel is intended to complicate dominant narratives of Grub
Street as a site of bourgeois identification (particularly
broader-lens accounts of the period such as Habermas's public sphere
or Watt's triple-rise thesis) through close attention to the
vocabulary and concepts available to Augustan-era writers for
articulating their own social and economic position. Some useful
subsidiary questions to address might include: How dependent are
claims of inborn talent or genius on Gentlemanly credentials? How
directly are images of writers as "hacks" or "whores" meant to
suggest lowly origins? How far do conceptions of employment on Grub
Street range from Defoe's reduction (in The Great Law of
Subordination) of all economic roles to those of "master" and
"servant"? How directly do such models as factory discipline and
plantation slavery impinge on the conception of writing as a
profession?

Brief proposals, preferably via email, to:

Tilar Mazzeo
The Newberry Library
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324

mazzeo_at_uwosh.edu

         ===============================================
         From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                      CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                       Full Information at
                http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
          or write Erika Lin: elin_at_english.upenn.edu
         ===============================================
Received on Sun Sep 14 2003 - 17:04:31 EDT