Dear colleagues,
The postgraduate researchers at the University of London Institute in
Paris are organising their third annual conference, due to take place
in June. The theme for this year is 'Intoxication' in all its forms.
Please find the CFP below and feel free to share with interested
contacts. The event is supported online by the conference blog:
http://intoxicationinparis.wordpress.com<http://intoxicationinparis.wordpress.com/>
Kind regards,
Russell Williams
/...
Call for papers
ULIP Postgraduate Conference Summer 2013 ? Intoxication
June 28th, 2013
Throughout literary history writers have consistently been drawn to
intoxication. They have used their work to ponder the temptation of
intoxicants, and the altered states of perception they produce.
Writers have also regularly intoxicated themselves to aid the creative
process, or to escape the pressure of artistic creation and the
monotony of humdrum reality.
The intoxicant of choice can take many forms. It can be legal highs:
cigarettes, strong coffee and alcohol favoured by the café-frequenting
auteur. It can be ?recreational?: cannabis and so-called club drugs
such as ecstasy and ketamine. It can also be more radical, pushing the
writer towards the edges of both legality and experience: heroin,
crack and cocaine.
Intoxication can also take a more mundane form: prescribed medication
and, in particular, antidepressants. It need not involve drugs at all:
adherents report that asceticism and religious fanaticism can create
equivalent states of intoxication. The very act of writing itself has
also been posited as exhilarating or intoxicating. In turn, the
process of reading has been celebrated for its capacity to produce a
similar effect.
French writing, and French writers, have been particularly fascinated
by intoxication, and have frequently been intoxicated. In the
nineteenth century, Rimbaud called for a ?dérèglement de tous les
sens?, Baudelaire, Gaultier and Flaubert were attendees at the Club
des Hashischins, whilst the shadow of Thomas de Quincey?s opium eating
has loomed large over the French creative imagination. In modern and
contemporary writing, Henri Michaux and Claro have explored LSD,
whilst Frédéric Beigbeder published his Nouvelles sous ecstasy.
Alcohol has also had a strong grip: Debord, Houellebecq and Duras all
drank heavily. Paris itself has been a frequent port of call for
foreign writers seeking intoxication: Miller, Burroughs and Hemmingway
all famously indulged decadently in the French capital.
This one-day conference at the University of London Institute in Paris
will consider the relationship of intoxication to writing produced
both in French and in France. It invites proposals for twenty-minute
research papers in English or French from postgraduate and early
career researchers as well as proposals for interventions around the
theme from writers working outside the university community.
Themes for exploration could include, but are by no means limited to,
the following:
- Ecstasy, raves and writing
- Uppers and downers
- Cigarettes and alcohol
- Writing and rock
- Hangovers and comedowns
- Parisian expatriate intoxication
- Writing and hedonism
- Alternative intoxications
Proposals (maximum 300 words), together with a short biography
indicating your academic background and research interests or short
CV, should be submitted via e-mail to
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by
April 5th 2013. Please include your name, academic affiliation (where
appropriate), and contact details.
This conference is organised by the ULIP Postgraduate Society: Russell
Williams, Eugene Brennan, Katie Tidmarsh and Alastair Hemmens.
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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