Friends,

I’m hoping to follow in Scott Lucas’s footsteps to urge you to join us at the SCSC this fall, and in honor of the excess, energy and antics of The Big Easy, the topic for The Spenser Roundtable this year will be “Spenser’s Monstrous Passions.”

Please consider submitting a short abstract: as always, papers are usually 10 minutes long, and explore an idea in as inventive and wide-ranging a manner as possible. The preliminary deadline for submissions will be 20 March, since the SCSC's final deadline is 1 April 2014. Please note too, that as in previous years, I will do my best to organize follow-up panels out of the papers that don’t make it to the roundtable; if you’d like to propose a full length paper, feel free to send along an abstract. 

“Spenser’s Monstrous Passions”
Monstrosity and the passions have become strongly debated topics in Renaissance literature, and it is perhaps time to ask how these critical and philosophical frameworks can fruitfully illuminate Spenser’s
oeuvre. Filled with monstrous beings (in all senses and of all kinds) and big emotions, drives, affects and affectations, Spenserian texts interrogate the ontological, political and material dimensions of these subjects. This year’s Spenser Roundtable will examine monsters, passions and monstrous passions in
all their forms. 
Abstracts of 200-300 words on any aspect of this question are welcome! Please send them to [log in to unmask]  by 20 March 2013.

Do email me if you have questions or ideas!

all best,
Ayesha