CFP: Rethinking Reception (grad) (1/1/05; 5/05)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University will host the
conference:

RETHINKING RECEPTION
Duke University, Durham, NC March 2005

This conference both proposes, and interrogates the utility of the concept
of reception for understanding audience interaction with texts in all their
various forms-be it readers and novels, readers and critical theory,
viewers and films, viewers and television, web-users and the internet,
listeners and radio, consumers and products, and nations and the
trans-national flow of cultural objects. Thus the conference proposes to
bring together work on readership, spectatorship, and consumption under the
broader analytic of reception, and to initiate a dialogue between work in
film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, critical theory,
philosophy, and cognitive psychology. The conference aspires to shed light
on different aspects of reception and to develop and to refine
trans-disciplinary avenues of approach to questions of audience interaction
with texts.

Potential panels or areas of specification within the broader theme of
reception could include the following:

ONTOLOGY, AFFECT AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SUBJECT
What is the agency of receivers in relation to objects? To what extent are
subjects determined or even constituted in different ways by the objects
with which they interact?

PERCEPTION, RECEPTION AND TECHNOLOGIES
How do different technologies-media, transportation, medical, architectural
etc.-create different frames for reception, or practices of reception--if
these can still be thought of as discrete areas at all?

RECEPTION AND THE POLITICAL
How is the concept of reception useful for theorizing the constitution of
political discourses and hierarchies of power in a public sphere dominated
by the media--videos and photographs of violence committed in wartime,
beheadings broadcast on the internet, endless TV and internet replays of
spectacular events?

RECEPTION, THE NATION AND SOVEREIGNTY
What does reception as an analytic reveal about the concepts of the nation,
sovereignty, regionalism and trans-nationalism? What do reflections on
reception at a trans-national level reveal about the ontogenesis of forms
of political sovereignty in the 20th century?

Papers of 20 minutes might address any aspect of reception and proposals
for panels not listed above are also welcome. Submissions should ideally
address the specificities of the receivers in question, or the specific
circumstances or practices of reception, or, alternatively, justify why
such attention is not relevant in the case(s) considered. The organizers
also hope to initiate a fruitful dialogue among conference participants
through workshops for discussion of texts related to reception. Conference
participants are encouraged to propose specific articles, books, studies or
even works in progress that could be discussed.

The deadline for submission of 250-500 word paper abstracts is January 1,
2005. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address,
and phone number. Email abstracts to rethinkingreception_at_yahoo.com. Please
see http://www.duke.edu/literature/Reception/conference.html
for a more detailed call for papers and additional information. For general
questions about the conference, contact rethinkingreception_at_yahoo.com.

Abigail Salerno

Duke University
Graduate Program in Literature

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Received on Mon Oct 11 2004 - 10:58:23 EDT