The Literary Animal

The Literary Animal

Romance Studies Graduate Student Conference
Cornell University; Feb. 8-9, 2008
Keynote Addresses: Peggy Kamuf (USC) on Hélène Cixous,
Eugenio Bolongaro (McGill) on Italo Calvino;
Richard Klein (Cornell) on Bullfights


Encounters between the human and animal have left their imprints upon stone, skin, and time, and through them we can track the question: if there is a difference between human and animal, how do we articulate it? Or does this question lead us astray – have we already marked the territory with too coarse a measuring stick? How alive are these categories, and how do they shape political, economic, social, and aesthetic orders? From the walls of Lascaux to Romulus and Remus and the spinning of the world wide web; from the angel's descent in the sacrifice of Isaac to Darwin's Descent of Man to “Wolf Man;” from Quetzalcoatl to “The Birds” and from the Gorgon to Ganesh, beastly and beastial encounters run from the utopian to the dystopian and manifest humankind's often narcissistic obsession with its relation to the animal. They also expose how homo theoreticus reflects upon itself, whether in a blissfully bare state of harmony or the laced accoutrements of a social contract, and lay bare conflicting desires to get back to nature and get beyond it. Literature, whether as civilizing institution or barbarous document, has supported the founding and defense of human and animal rights as well as their most grievous abuses. It can be an instrument of insurrection through which those “reduced to animals” make themselves heard or create alternatives to phallic, colonial, and epistemic codes of domination. We seek original work that explores the interface between the animal and the literary across disciplines and fields, which may address, but is not limited to:

‒ Classifying literature, classifying animals, naming, genres;
‒ Predators, prey, parasites. Literature as predator, prey, parasite;
‒ Fantastic animals, fantastic literature, occult sciences, occult literature;
‒ Incarnations of humans or gods as animals, metamorphoses, hybridity;
‒ Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphophobia;
‒ Human and animal consciousness, memory and forgetting;
‒ Music and performance, animal representation, imitation and use;
‒ Mimicry and imitation, “monkey see, monkey do,” Pavlov's dog;
‒ Filmic/cinematographic animal, documentaries, animated movies, snuff movies;
‒ Rituals, sacrifice, sacred animals/bodies, sacred text/literature;
‒ Gregarious and solitary humans/animals;
‒ The political animal, biopower, biopolitics, creaturely life, hawks and doves;
‒ Animal trade, human trade, slavery, exploitation;
‒ Branding, scaring, mutilation, circumcision;
‒ Taming, domesticating, disciplining, torturing, caging, and imprisoning;
‒ Unleashing, freeing, self-binding, bondage;
‒ Bread and circus, carnivalesque, bull-fighting, hunting, boxing, Survivor;
‒ Zoophilia, bestiality, incest;
‒ Nude/clothed/veiled humans and animals, fashion, cosmetics, exhibitionism and modesty;
‒ Parchment, writing on the body, pillow books;
‒ Burro y burrada, bête et bêtise, the animal and stupidity;
‒ Feasting, symposium, cannibalism, butchering;

Please submit an anonymous abstract of 250 words or less by December 1, 2007 to María Fernanda Negrete at mfn23@cornell.edu. Abstracts must include a cover letter indicating the title, author's name, affiliation, telephone number and e-mail address. Presentations are to last 20 minutes and must be in English. Submissions are accepted from graduate students only.