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Welcome Message
You are invited to participate in the 2005 conference of the American Comparative
Literature Association (ACLA), to be hosted by the Department of Comparative
Literature at The Pennsylvania State University on March 11-13 (Friday through
Sunday), 2005. Sessions and papers on many topics within the broad range
of comparative literary studies will be presented, in addition to presentations
on the conference theme.
The ACLA's annual conferences have a distinctive structure in which most
papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day
for the three days of the conference to foster extended discussion. Some
eight-person (or smaller) seminars meet just the first two days of the conference.
This structure allows each participant to be a full member of one seminar,
and to sample other seminars during the remaining time blocks. Previous
conference programs that show this pattern are available online at http://www.acla.org.
The conference also includes plenary sessions, workshops or roundtable discussions,
a business meeting, a banquet, and other events.
The deadline for Seminar Proposals (September 10, 2004) has now passed,
and we are not inviting further proposals to organize seminars. However,
it is possible that some existing seminars may later be combined or that
other adjustments will make space for a few new seminars. To inquire about
the possibility of proposing an additional seminar, contact Sara Armengot,
conference assistant, at acla-complit@psu.edu
with a brief indication of the seminar you'd like to offer.
The deadline for Individual Papers (November 1, 2004) has also passed.
More than 700 papers were submitted, and while it is not possible to accommodate
them all,
we hope that the full range of comparative literature as praxis
will be evident at this conference.
About the Theme
"Imperialisms" in relation to literature can be understood both literally
and metaphorically, referring not only to the effect of political and cultural
empires upon textual production, but also to the reign of favored paradigms
and intellectual fashions in theory or criticism, the consequences of literary
canons, or the predominance of particular genres and styles in specific
places and periods.
Since ancient times there have been empires, and it could be argued that
all human cultures can be considered imperial cultures, either as agents
or as objects of imperial endeavors. Comparatists deal, in many different
ways, with encounters between individual writers and texts that are positioned
across demarcations, as well as with encounters among the human collectives
brought into contact by imperial outreach at historical and spatial junctures
(Bakhtin's "zones of contact"). Further, comparatists continue to explore
the manifestations of the historical unfolding of imperialisms, whose ambivalences
at the start of the twenty-first century may be starker than ever.
Conference
Program
The full conference program is posted here.
Check back for the latest version, as updates will be posted periodically.
My colleagues and I look forward to welcoming you to Penn State in March.
Caroline D. Eckhardt
ACLA 2005 Conference Chair
an outreach program of Penn State's
Department of Comparative Literature
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