CFP: What Style Knows (grad) (7/1/05; 10/14/05)

17th Annual Tufts University English Graduate Conference
Friday, October 14, 2005

WHAT STYLE KNOWS

Keynote address: Professor D.A. Miller, University of California, Berkeley

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE:
Style seduces. By asserting itself in literary criticism, philosophical
discourse, and political inquiry, style destabilizes the structures of
knowledge production on which these disciplines rely. Uneasily mediating
between language and meaning, the spectacle of style fascinates even as it
constitutes the very material of the text itself. Always a textual
performance, style also *performs us.* This conference, then, will flirt with
the subversive potential that interrogations of style--cultural, racial,
generic, sexual, gendered, and historical--might produce. What can style tell
us about the social? Does style differ from the aesthetic, or the formal?
Might its very playfulness offer radical possibilities unafforded by the
systematized discourse of aesthetics? Can style ever be coherent? Does style
impose limits or boundaries? How do we know What Style Knows?

We encourage abstracts that explore and problematize the phrase “What Style
Knows” from a wide range of fields and disciplines.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

(Re)framing film
The rhetoricity of sexuality and/or gender
Queer style(s)
Fashion and fiction
“The Stylothete”
Sophistication and vulgarity
Rhetorics of resistance
Pleasure, power, and style
Racial, ethnic, and/or historical performativities
Pastiche, collage, and genre crossing
Ironizing identity
Authorial style
Imitation and citation
Per(form)ativity
Sprezzatura: the art of seeming artless
A politics of panache
The passé

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
We are very pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be D.A. Miller,
the John F. Hotchkis Professor of English at the University of California,
Berkeley. One of the most influential critics in literary and cultural
studies, Professor Miller has contributed significantly to the fields of queer
theory, nineteenth-century fiction, and film studies. His most recent book,
_Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style_, inquires into not only Jane Austen’s
corpus but also the ways in which style crucially informs the construction of
texts and subjectivity. In addition to numerous articles, Professor Miller has
published a number of books including _The Novel and the Police_ , and _Place
for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical_. At our conference, he will speak about
his current work, “The Social Logic of Style: Federico Fellini's _8 ½_.”

CONTACT:
Please send a 1-2 page, double-spaced abstract by July 1, 2005 outlining your
paper or presentation. Abstracts, including your name and email address,
should be sent to:
2005 Graduate Conference: “What Style Knows”
c/o Ashley Shelden
317 East Hall, Department of English
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
http://ase.tufts.edu/tego

Or, you may send your abstracts by email to:
Ashley Shelden (Ashley.Shelden_at_tufts.edu)or
Amy Woodbury (Amy.Woodbury_at_tufts.edu)

For further information please contact us at either of the email addresses
above.

Sponsored by:
Tufts English Graduate Organization
Tufts University English Department
Tufts Graduate Student Council
Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Tufts University LGBT Center

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Received on Thu Apr 14 2005 - 16:50:51 EDT