Call for Essays on Melville and Disability
Guest Editors, Samuel Otter and David Mitchell
For a special issue of "Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies," critical essays, creative pieces, and notes are invited that deal with Melville and disability.
Among topics that might be considered: How does Melville's work provide a lens for examining nineteenth-century attitudes towards physical and cognitive differences? How might we understand the significance of disability within his landscapes of human diversity? What changes mark his thinking and techniques with respect to disabled people and subjectivities across his career? How is Melville's analysis of the emergent "American" citizen influenced by his understanding of key disability markers such as charity, human variation, medical ideology, class position, race relations, normalization, the rise of institutionalization, etc.? What are the
politics of appearance and function within his metaphysics?
Submissions are encouraged on the range of Melville's fiction and poetry and on adaptations of his works. Submissions on "Moby-Dick" are welcome, of course, but we also wish to encourage writing on other pertinent texts, such as "Typee," "Mardi," "Bartleby," "Pierre," "The Confidence-Man," "Battle-Pieces," "Clarel," and "Billy Budd." Send inquires, proposals, or manuscripts to Samuel Otter, English Department, 322 Wheeler Hall #1030, University of Calif., Berkeley, Calif. 94720-1030; sotter@socrates.berkeley.edu.
Manuscripts should be no longer than 30 typed pages, following the former MLA style (not the "works cited" model). Please submit three copies.
Deadline for completed manuscripts: 15 January 2002.