Cultural Studies Association (U.S.) 
8th Annual Meeting
University of California, Berkeley
March 18-20, 2010 

	
Division on Cultural Studies and Literature

"Cultural Studies and Literariness-Literature, Medium, Cultural Form"

Deadline for Abstracts (300 words): September 1, 2009 (submission guidelines
below).

There are two stereotypical, yet prevalent, versions of articulating the
relationship between literary and cultural studies that mobilize the concept
of interdisciplinarity. The first  position (mainly surrounding early U.S.
and Australian Cultural Studies) argues for the need to open up lines of
inquiry that have traditionally been barred by the boundaries of
disciplinarity (advertising interdisciplinarity as a liberation struggle of
sorts). The second position considers the growing popularity of
interdisciplinary cultural study a problem and laments the loss of
traditional disciplinary skills as a result of a widespread commitment to
the blurring of disciplinary boundaries that obfuscates vital distinctions
between cultural forms and media. Clearly, neither position is critically
very rigorous, nor can or should such overly simplistic approaches to the
relationship between literary and cultural studies inform critical praxis or
academic policy-making.

This panel intends to recast this discussion in a manner that may yield more
productive answers. To be sure, interdisciplinarity should not come at the
cost of a waning commitment to the study of cultural form and medium. There
is, after all, a difference between film, photography, the novel, music
etc., and there is a difference between a novel, a poem and a play-and these
distinctions matter. Especially, in the context of, for example,
contemporary discussions surrounding the need for more meticulous analyses
of "literariness" in a global/local context or the frequently proclaimed
death of literature, pragmatic, cynical or defeatist announcements of
victories of one cultural form or medium over another appear less useful
than a renewed commitment to the study of the relationship between
literature and other cultural forms and media as it presents itself in the
current context. Therefore, instead of focusing on the ways in which
cultural studies may or may not have contributed to a lacking commitment to
the study of cultural forms and media in the contemporary sociohistorical
conjuncture, this panel invites papers that explore the question of "how to
do both cultural and literary studies" from a different angle. More
specifically, this panel intends to take the rampant proliferation of "new"
media in our historical moment as the occasion to arrive at a better
understanding of medium and form by studying their dialectical
interconnection. 

Questions that should stand at the center of such an inquiry include: 
*	What is this medium called literature and how can cultural studies
as a discipline contribute to our understanding of literature and aspects of
literariness? 
*	What is the difference between literature and other media such as
painting, music, photography, film and TV as it presents itself today, and
how can contemporary literary criticism benefit from an engagement with the
disciplinary tools of cultural studies? 
*	How do form and genre factor into our analysis of cultural media and
how can a dialogue between cultural studies and literary studies provide us
with the basis for more rigorous analyses thereof?
*	How do other contemporary media function within the medium
literature? When and to what end do contemporary authors feel compelled to
mobilize other media within literature to represent our sociopolitical
environment? 
*	Is the function of cultural media altered when inserted into another
medium (here, we could think, for example, of the use of various forms of
music in literature) and what do these changing functions tell us about both
our definitions of media and forms as well as our analytical method?

Submit paper abstracts (300 words), A/V equipment requests (if needed) and a
brief CV by September 1, 2009 to:

[log in to unmask]

Mathias Nilges, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of English
PO BOX 5000
St. Francis Xavier University
Antigonish, Nova Scotia
Canada, B2G 2W5