Bodies in Flux: Between Articulation and Inscription
Seminar Organizers: Sheila Sheereen Akbar, Margot B. Valles, and Holly Schreiber, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University
This panel welcomes papers that theorize the body as a point of articulation for considering world literatures in comparison and/or the concept of World Literature writ large.
In this manner the body, as a universal particular, can be seen as the wellspring of artistic expression without being confined to national, cultural, or linguistic boundaries. Yet, among other ways that it is in flux, the body is host to a tension arising from its dual role as a marker of individual and community identity. As such, the body also serves as a site where national, cultural, and linguistic violence is meted out.
Thus, a central focus of this panel will be a consideration of the myriad and often contradictory ways that the body both engenders the power to represent and also bears the scars of representation. We hope to more broadly discuss this intersection of articulation and inscription in the context of world/comparative literature.
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:
- dominant metaphors and narratives of the body in Western and non-Western thought
- the evolution of privacy and its impact on attitudes toward the body
- the impact of photography and film on the body
- trauma, memory, and pain
- the limits of language and communication
- violence, wounds, and healing
- revolution and war
- diasporic and post-colonial expressions
- the monstrous body, voluntary and involuntary bodily mutilations
- feminist texts and practices
- gender studies and the body
Abstracts are due by Nov. 12, 2010 and must be submitted through the ACLA website.
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