7th Annual Louisiana Conference on Language and Literature

Conference Theme: "On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture"

Hilton Garden Inn, Lafayette, Louisiana

Thursday, February 21 - Saturday, February 23, 2008

Call for Papers

Deadline for Proposals is October 31, 2007

Keynote Speakers:

Elizabeth Nuñez, Award-winning author of six novels, including Prospero's Daughter (New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice), Discretion (short-listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award), Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award), and Beyond the Limbo Silence (Independent Publishers Book Award); and co-editor of the volumes Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad and Black Writers in the 90s.

 
Jeanne Moskal, Author of Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness; editor of Mary Shelley's Travel Writings for the definitive scholarly edition of her work (gen. ed. Nora Crook); co-editor of Teaching British Women Writers, 1750-1900; editor of Keats-Shelley Journal; Founding President of the International Society for Travel Writing; and editor of the series Writing Travel.

http://english.louisiana.edu/laconference

The Louisiana Conference on Language and Literature is organized to meet the needs of graduate students and new professionals in the first five years of their academic careers.  It is a national event bringing together scholars from across the Humanities and Social Sciences for an engaging and collegial weekend of intellectual debate, cultural experiences, and networking.

Conference includes an academic publishing workshop, a Louisiana literary tour, a reading by UL Writer-in-Residence Rikki Ducornet, and a night of authentic Louisiana music.

Conference Theme: On and Off the Page: Mapping Place in Text and Culture

In recent years, the idea of place has emerged as a central concept in literary and cultural discourse.  Always a powerful organizing idea in the texts and other cultural artifacts born out of the American South, the concept of place can now be seen to underlie a disparate set of topics at work in the academy.  In the trend toward globalization, for instance, not only are people and ideas brought closer together but so are the places which they inhabit and under whose conditions those very ideas originate.  At the same time, the proven profitability of the “authentic” has led businesses, governments, and communities to seek out what makes their places unique – and therefore outside of such modernizing influences – in order to brand them and market them to cultural tourists and other consumers.

Investigations into the function of place as a force in contemporary culture inevitably reveal a long history of the interplay between place and cultural product, between 'context' and 'text'. Just as traditional cultures mythologize sacred spaces, so too has Western culture sanctified its own places through its literature.  Imagined places such as Faulker’s Yoknapatawpha become the focus of conferences and festivals; authors’ homes, birthplaces, and gravesites are transformed into sites of pilgrimage; locales created for television shows and movies become actual businesses catering to a public for whom the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred; the tension between “tourist” and “traveler” is contested based largely on destination; and persisting through the great cultural shifts of the past two hundred years is the popular and romantic notion that words, performances, narratives, and even national identities are always in some way an expression of the places in which they are created and set. The Louisiana Conference on Language and Literature will provide a “place” in which these complex ideas may be interrogated.

Submission of Abstracts

We welcome submissions of 500-word abstracts on topics in language and literature.  Abstracts which deal in some way with the concept of place are particularly welcome and will be given priority consideration, but papers on any topic will be considered.  We welcome submissions in the following areas:

Literary Studies

Travel Literature

Rhetoric and Composition

Creative writing (fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, drama, and travel

writing)

Folklore

Linguistics

Modern Languages

History

Cultural Studies

Gender Studies

Critical Theory

 

Abstracts for twenty-minute presentations should be sent to Matthew Hackler, Conference Chair, at mbh1010@louisiana.edu by October 31, 2007. Abstracts should be sent as attachments in rich text (.rtf) format.  Do not include your name on your abstract.  In the body of the email, please include your name, affiliation, email address, phone number, and the title of your paper, as well as a brief (three-sentence bio).  If you expect to have A/V needs, please indicate these as well.

 
Creative Submissions

For creative works, please include “Creative Conference Submission” in the subject line.  Creative submissions should include a short, descriptive abstract as well as a sample of the work to be considered.

 

Panel Submissions

Panel submissions are encouraged. Panels should include 3-4 presenters.  One participant should submit all panel abstracts together along with a panel proposal explaining the panel theme and the way in which each abstract addresses this theme.

Notice of acceptance will be sent by November 30, 2007.

Darrell Bourque Award

Presenters may choose to have their papers considered for the Darrell Bourque Award, a cash award given to the most outstanding conference paper. For information on submission deadlines for the Darrell Bourque Award, please visit our website: http://english.louisiana.edu/laconference

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