Romance studies Colloquium Gregynog 2001
New textual sexual perceptions: the portrayal of gender at the dawn of the third millennium
Call for papers
The next University of Wales Romance Studies Colloquium, this year organized by Catherine Rodgers, will be held at Gregynog Hall, the Universitys Conference Centre near Newtown, Powys, 10-12 September 2001.
The Colloquium theme
The second half of the twentieth century has seen many changes at least in the Western World in the legal appreciation of sexual equality, in the involvement of women in the public sphere, in the definition of gender roles in private relationships and the family, and in the self-disclosure of sexual minorities.
To what degree have the changes been reflected in texts of the 1990s (that is, in written texts, films, pictorial representations, and other media)? What images of gender roles are presented in utopic or dystopic narratives? Are erotic relations redefined by the apparent shifts in power-relations between the sexes? Is the sex of a writer a relevant parameter in these sexual textual representations? How are questions such as these explored in contemporary texts, and to what extent have there been changes in generic forms, style, images and such like? The Colloquium will explore these and related issues.
Submission of proposals
Proposals should be about 400 words long, written in English, and sent to Catherine Rodgers (see below). The deadline for submission is the end of March 2001.
Papers should be in English, and (provisionally) intended to last between 20 and 25 minutes (the exact recommended length will be specified later to presenters).
Texts discussed should have originally been created in a Romance language. Comparative approaches are welcome.
Publication
A selection of papers given at the Colloquium (and other accepted articles on the Colloquium theme) will be published in two issues of Romance Studies to appear in 2002. Published papers may be written in English, French, Italian or Spanish.
For further details please contact:
Dr Catherine Rodgers
Department of French
University of Wales Swansea
Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
Tel: +44 1792 295973
Fax: +44 1792 295978
e-mail: c.rodgers@swansea.ac.uk