Call for Papers:
Captivating Voices: Prisoners, Slaves,
and Captives (1789-1845)
A proposed special session for the 1999 MLA
Convention.
We are looking for papers that deal with British and/or American
texts written by those
who were imprisoned, enslaved, transported, exiled, or otherwise
constrained through
state-sanctioned dictates. The time frame we have chosen, bounded
by the publication
years of Equiano's and Douglass' slave narratives, was a period
during which various
constraining practices figured prominently in the sociopolitical
and legal mechanisms of
the Western world. In examining what were usually suppressed and
silenced texts, we
hope the panel will analyze how the narratives both challenge
and/or internalize the
dominating social and discursive practices of their times. We are
especially interested in
analyses that engage and complicate contemporary theoretical
paradigms of "discipline
and punishment" and of subjectivity (e.g. in relation to
post-structuralist
understandings of race, nationality, gender, and class). Possible
topics for papers could
include, but are not limited to:
slave narratives
captivity narratives
United Irishmen narratives of imprisonment or
transportation
abolitionist prison narratives, and general relationships
between prison and
nascent sociopolitical organizations
narratives by the "common" prisoner
narratives by guards or other officials related to the
constraining institution
(prisons, slave ships, penal colonies, workhouses, etc.)
autobiographical poetry from prison
Please send 1-2 page abstracts by March 10th to one of the
addresses listed below.
Jason Haslam and Julia M. Wright
Department of English
University of Waterloo
200 University Ave. West
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
FAX: (519) 746-5788
E-mail: <[log in to unmask]> or
<[log in to unmask]>
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