From:   Stefani Engelstein <[log in to unmask]>

***CALL FOR PAPERS***

VOX POP: Locating and Constructing the "Voice of the People"

6th Annual University of South Carolina Comparative Literature
Conference
26-28 February, 2004 Columbia, SC, U.S.A.

Building from a millennia-old maxim--the voice of the people is the
voice of God--the desire to locate, fabricate, and appropriate the vox
populi has been especially pervasive for at least the last two
centuries.  What defines this voice of the people?  Is it a voice
charged with lore from the ancient past or one as new as today's poll
numbers?  How is it mediated: who speaks on behalf of the "grass
roots," "the American people," the "Arab street"?  The
concept can
challenge authority, promoting populist subversions of hierarchy
(carnival, protest, revolution), yet it also feeds an age-old
temptation to construct a monologic Voice of a monolithic People,
silencing heterogeneous, dialogic voices.  Whether sought in man-on-the-
street interviews, the "voices of the People in song" (for Herder
these
included everyone from Homer, to Shakespeare, to Ossian), or
contemporary advertising trends, the consensus of popular sentiment
remains as elusive (and deceptive) an ideal as ever.

The VOX POP conference will consider the multitudes of peoples and
voices that have come under the heading of vox populi, from the ancient
populus or hoi polloi to the various "Peoples" of modern nationalism
(das Volk, le peuple, narod), and from folksong to political discourse
to "the writing on the wall."  The conference invites a wide-ranging
interrogation of the idea of the voice of the people by scholars from a
range of fields.

A few possible points of orientation and approaches:
* populisms: literary, political, religious, etc.
* lines of transmission: "through the grapevine," via writers,
politicians, and prophets, or--if the voice is
silent/silenced--through transformations into other forms of
expression (literature "written for the drawer," graffiti, visual
arts, etc.)
* national and ethnic identity; heritage as tradition or invention
* issues of (dis)enfranchisement, literature and democracy,
representation in government
* questions of power and authority: what gives the vox pop legitimacy?
* information technologies and the ways they have inflected ideas of
popular expression
* relations between ideas of "gender" and "the people"
* "pop," folk, and country music, jazz and blues, "world"
music, etc.
* modalities/tone/intonation of the vox pop: appealing, commanding,
mythopoetic, imperative
* orality/literacy, national epics (authentic or fabricated)

Keynote Speaker: Russell A. Berman is Walter A. Haas Professor in the
Humanities at Stanford University (German Studies and Comparative
Literature).  He specializes in the study of German literary history
and cultural politics and is the author of numerous articles and award-
winning books, including Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in
German Culture, The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and
Charisma, and Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History,
Representation and Nationhood.

Plenary Speaker: Morag Shiach is Professor of Cultural History in the
School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. Her
research is interdisciplinary, drawing on theoretical approaches and
research methodologies from literary studies, cultural studies,
history, and political theory.  Her publications include Modern Labour:
Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890-
1930; Hélène Cixous: A Politics of Writing; Discourse on Popular
Culture: Class, Gender and History in Cultural Analysis 1730 to the
Present; several edited volumes; and numerous articles.

Affiliated Round-Table: "The Voice of the People in the 2004
Primaries," moderated by Charles Bierbauer, Dean of the College of Mass
Communications and Information Studies at the University of South
Carolina.  A distinguished broadcast journalist, Bierbauer was for
twenty years a correspondent for CNN in Washington, where he covered
the Supreme Court, the Bush and Reagan administrations and the
presidential campaigns from 1984-96.  From 1977-81, he was an overseas
correspondent for ABC News, first as Moscow Bureau Chief and later as
the Bonn Bureau chief.

Abstracts: Please send one-page abstracts for twenty-minute papers to
the conference organizers, Judith Kalb and Alexander Ogden, Comparative
Literature Program, Humanities Building, Columbia, SC 29208, or e-mail
them to [log in to unmask]  Broadly interdisciplinary presentations are
encouraged.  We plan to publish a volume of selected papers from the
conference.  Updated conference information will be available on the
web at http://www.cla.sc.edu/CPLT/activities/index.html.

Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2003

--------------------------------
Dr. J. Alexander Ogden
Assistant Professor of Russian
Graduate Advisor, Program in Comparative Literature
Dept of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803) 777-9573; fax: (803) 777-0454