italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Dear colleagues,
the interdisciplinary conference "Gothic States" initially announced for 29-31 March 2018 has been postponed to 19-21 April 2019. The new deadline for submissions is 1 January 2019.
GOTHIC STATES: 19-21 April 2019
Since its inception, the Gothic has been a favorite aesthetic of artists exploring extreme states, whether psychological, political, or numinous, at times of imperial expansion, social protest, world war, global revolution, and government oppression. At the same time, its history dovetails with the emergence of new media from early modern tragedy to eighteenth-century travel writing and circulating library fiction, nineteenth-century melodrama, early photography and cinema, comics and graphic novels, popular music and television, and digital entertainment. Even today, the Gothic thrives as a viable, living language for those features of the psyche, the social order, or the cosmos that are least susceptible to representation and least liable to be controlled and assimilated.
Our chosen theme ("Gothic States") brings together these concerns by asking scholars to consider the Gothic's function across differing "states" as a language for addressing incipient nationalisms, whether to endorse or to critique them, as well as for representing divided consciousness, whether sexual, political, filial, or religious. The most powerful Gothic texts, in fact, place these concerns in dialogue with one another, depicting individuals and communities under duress in times of social and political upheaval. We therefore aim to galvanize our understanding of the Gothic as a single aesthetic tradition and invite scholars to create new perspectives on the Gothic in a transnational, trans-media, and comparative context. What role has the Gothic played in how we imagine the constitutions of both individuals and nations? How has the mode been visualized across different media and technologies of representation? Finally, what lends the Gothic its power? What produces the ruptures, fears, and anxieties we associate with it? What fuels its ability to cross media with such opportunistic ease?
Please send a 150-word vitas and 250-word abstracts (papers will be 15-20 minutes) by 1 January 2019 to Michael Gamer <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> and Marina Della Putta Johnston <[log in to unmask]>.
The conference's plenary speakers will be:
Maurizio Ascari, University of Bologna
Robin Furth, Marvel Comics, co-author of the Stephen King Dark Tower series
Diego Saglia, University of Parma
Angela Wright, University of Sheffield
The conference is sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies and the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania, with generous support provided by the School of Arts and Sciences, University Research Foundation, the Penn Humanities Forum, the Program in Comparative Literature, the Program in Cinema Studies, the Restoration-Victorian reading group, and the Gen-Sex Reading Group.
Marina Della Putta Johnston, PhD
Associate Director, Center for Italian Studies
550 Williams Hall
255 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215.898.6040
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe italian-studies YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe italian-studies
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/italian-studies
