Tropes of Passing Time in the 19th-Century European Novel (MLA Graduate Student Caucus)

The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2013 MLA annual meeting (Boston, Jan. 3-6, 2013). Please send abstracts (ca. 250 words) on one of the following topics to Ervin Malakaj (emalakaj@wustl.edu) by March 10.

Tropes of Passing Time in the 19th-Century European Novel
We seek papers that investigate narrative strategies employed by authors that construct the passing of time in the 19th-century European novel. Aspects may include, but are not limited to, considerations of narrative versus narrated time, perceived temporality, prescribed temporality (work time, leisure time), and how narrative processes in individual novels construct tropes of temporality. We invite graduate students from various disciplines to submit proposals, and especially welcome comparative approaches that investigate questions of narrating the passing of time within multiple language contexts, and welcome papers that employ a variety of methodological approaches including, but not limited to, narratological lines of inquiry.