CFP: [20th] MSA X Panel: Modernism's Solitary Pleasures

Call For Papers
Panel for MSA X: Modernism & Global Media

November 13-16, 2008; Nashville, TN

Modernism's Solitary Pleasures

The early twentieth century was a watershed in the history of masturbation. In medical science,
Havelock Ellis's essay, "Auto-erotism," recast masturbation, long considered an unhealthy and
antisocial habit, as a harmless and universal behavior, merely one of many types of sexual feeling
that occur in the absence of a physical object. Masturbation occupies a prominent place in the
literature of the modernist period, too. For Joyce's Leopold Bloom and for the young Marcel
of Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, for example, masturbation is a significant example, if not the
archetype, of their many solitary pleasures--including essential ones like reading, reverie, and
sensual vision. Yet neither in the medical discourse nor in the literary one has masturbation lost
its historical taint of shame and antisociality. Critics of modernism often associate the apparent
detachment of modernist art from social concerns with the masturbator's pursuit of solitary
pleasure. Indeed, for D.H. Lawrence, the deadening self-consciousness of modernist art was a
direct result of the prevalence of masturbation in modern society. This panel proposes to
explore the connections between the literary theme and the changing biological/medical
discourse, emphasizing both direct contacts between literature and the emerging field of
sexology and the wider cultural significance of the partial recuperation of solitary sexual
pleasure. We will rethink the connection between masturbation and artistic imagination made by
Ellis's essay, dwelling on literary masturbation as an ambivalent embodiment of personal, ethical,
and aesthetic autonomy.

Please send a 500-word abstract and a 100-word scholarly bio to colin.gillis_at_yale.edu by May 5.

===================================
 From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
            cfp_at_english.upenn.edu
             more information at
         http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
===================================
Received on Fri Apr 18 2008 - 12:15:14 EDT