Metaphors of Space in American Culture

Call for Papers

The English Department of the Institut supérieur des études

appliquées en humanités de Gafsa

is pleased to announce AMERICANA's 9^th Conference on:

METAPHORS OF SPACE IN AMERICAN CULTURE

Venue: Institut supérieur des études appliquées en humanités de Gafsa

Date: April 17^th- 18^th, 2009

         When Emerson said in “Self Reliance” that “our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places”, he did not claim the neutrality of space, but he rather posited a bond, a form of “complicity” between “America-ness” and the spatial trope: “…the American artist” he writes, “…will create a house in which…the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people…will find themselves fitted.”

         The conceptions of the American space have undergone continuous mutations that ranged from the mythical openness of the Frontier, to the gradual emergence of a sense of closure. In this sense, J. R. Lowell's description of America, is suggestive of these various mutations: “We had been a desert, we became a museum”

         Indeed, it can reasonably be argued that both metaphors of space and spatial metaphors have contributed to the articulation of “America-ness”, a cherishing of the value of the homeland and an idealization of the “spiritual”, as D.H Lawrence puts it: “America has never been a blood home-land. Only an ideal home-land. The homeland of the ideal, of the spirit.”

       AMERICANA's 9^th Conference on METAPHORS OF SPACE IN AMERICAN CULTURE invites papers from a range of disciplines, including literature, history, and culture studies, to discuss the different metaphors of space and spatial metaphors that helped shape the formation of the American cultural and aesthetic discourses. It also invites papers concerned with the linguistic strategies used to define the relationship between space and culture.

Papers may deal with (however, not exclusively) the following issues:

• Borders and boundaries
• Nature/ History/ Space
• Heritage/ Traditions/ Identity and the reproduction of place and locality.
• Space and culture
• The elasticity of the concept of space and the American cultural and physical expansion
• USA Manifest Destiny and its limitations
• The Frontier myth and its re-inventions
• Frederick Jackson Turner and his "Frontier Thesis”
• The world as an American “ New Frontier”
• The metaphorical representations of “the American global space”
• The spatial trope in the discourse of  mass media
• The spatial trope in the American literary discourse
• The authority of space in narrative accounts
• The notion of “Cognitive Mapping” developed by Fredrick Jameson
• The fictive constructions of urban space
• Urban utopianism
• Science fiction as the new “American Frontier”
• Southern narrative and cultural reproduction
• The American “South” as a territory and a battle slogan.
• Reproducing/ naturalizing the American south as a place
• Space and the claiming of a public identity
• American women writers and the representations of space
• Women's position in the social/ cultural/ ethnic maps
• The notion of space and its significance in the politics of ethnicity and/or gender

The deadline for abstract submission is January 30^th, 2009. The proposal (a maximum 300 words) should include: name of the author, affiliation, email address, title of submission.

The allocated time for the delivery is 25 minutes.

Please send your proposals to the following e-mail address: americanidentity@lycos.com

The conference steering committee will notify acceptance by e-mail by February 20^th, 2009.

For details about accommodation please contact: hzitouni@lycos.com                    

      Founder                                                                                            Coodinator

Mr Abdelmajid Ayadi                                                                        Mr Hatem Zitouni