The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2014 MLA annual meeting (Chicago, Jan. 9-12, 2014). Please send abstracts (ca. 300 words) on one of the following topics to Loïc Bourdeau (lbourdeau@ucdavis.edu) by March 10.
Website: http://graduatestudentcaucus.weebly.com/
Twitter: @GradCaucus
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Exile, Death, Sacrifice: The Poetics of Suffering in Francophone Literature
We seek papers that investigate the topics of exile, death, and sacrifice in Francophone literature (19th to 21st century) with a focus on the writing of “souffrance” (suffering) and its implications. These themes are in line with current issues of mobility, otherness, identity and loss thereof, as well as sexuality and violence and emotions. We invite graduate students from various disciplines to submit proposals that may either focus on one of the topics or their interrelationship. We welcome and strongly encourage a variety of methodological approaches and comparative analyses, along the following themes (list not exhaustive): cinematographic adaptation of suffering; writing exile; death, and/or sacrifice; sexuality and otherness as pain; performativity of suffering; exile, identity and roots; suffering and being; Orientalism and pain; reading suffering; (im)migration; writing/ reading violence; etc.