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From: On all aspects of Russia and the FSU
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Hudspith
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 11:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: Family Sagas in World Literatures and Audio-Visual Cultures
(Leeds, Weds-Thurs 28-29 June 2017)
Call for Papers
Family Sagas in World Literatures and Audio-Visual Cultures Reimagining
Nations Across the Globe
Centre for World Literatures – Centre for World Cinemas and Digital
Cultures, University of Leeds, 28-29 June 2017, 9am-5pm
The family saga is a constitutively transnational and multi-media genre,
bridging highbrow and popular cultures. The genre counts some of the
bestsellers of world literature, including not just novels, but also serial
narratives (trilogies, cycles), and comics, ranging from the late nineteenth
century up to the present day. Being serial narratives that appeal to
audiences, family sagas have also been adapted to or produced for cinema,
radio and TV series. Examples of family sagas include: Zola’s Les
Rougon-Macquart, Eça de Queirós’s Os Maias, Mann’s Buddenbrooks, Woolf’s The
Years, Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Haley’s Roots, Cunningham’s
Flesh and Blood, Spiegelman’s Maus, Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips,
Ferrante’s Neapolitan Cycle, Reitz’s Heimat, Giordana’s La meglio gioventù,
Fellowes’ Downton Abbey.
These family stories represent metonymically and metaphorically the life of
nations as subject to the vagaries of local and world history. Family sagas
respond to the need to reimagine nations at times of crisis spurred by
economic, social, and political change; gender, ethnic, religious, and class
conflicts; demographic transitions; and migration. Family sagas question
pre-existing normative ideals of the nation, giving voice to silenced
minorities, functioning as a cultural tool for the immanent critique of the
national imagery and identity. The family saga as a cultural genre is
instrumental to a ‘politics of aesthetics’, since it challenges and
redefines the ‘partition of the sensible’ that frames the nation as an
‘imagined community’.
This interdisciplinary conference, jointly organized by the University of
Leeds Centre for World Literatures and Centre for World Cinemas and Digital
Cultures, will bring together researchers who are specialized in different
linguistic and cultural areas and working on different media. The objective
is to examine circulation, forms, themes, and cultural functions of family
sagas in world literatures and audio-visual cultures from a variety of
perspectives.
Topics for papers may include, but are not limited to, the following:
• family sagas in world literatures, including comics and graphic
novels
• family sagas in film, radio and TV series
• family sagas and cross-media (adaptations) or trans-media
storytelling
• family sagas and translation
• family sagas and seriality
• family sagas and/as family memoirs (fiction and autobiography)
• family sagas and gender (gender identity and relations)
• family sagas and the nation (national heritage and identity)
• family sagas and ethnicity (post-colonial and ethnic identities)
• family sagas and new family structures/new forms of parenting
• family sagas, migration, and transnational identities
• family sagas, normativity, and the law
•
There are two confirmed keynote speakers:
• Dr Nicholas White, Reader in Modern French Literature (University of
Cambridge)
• Dr Rachel Palfreyman, Associate Professor in German Studies
(University of Nottingham)
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Paper proposals should include a title, a 500 word abstract, a short
biographical note, contact details and institutional affiliation (where
appropriate).
Selected conference papers will be submitted as an edited volume to an
established academic press or journal.
Submit to: [log in to unmask]
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 30 January 2017
NOTIFICATION: 15 February 2017
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