Short Fiction in the Late 19th Century
NEMLA
Hartford, CT.
March 30-31, 2001
This panel will examine the changing face of short fiction at the turn of the century, and attempt to understand the different sorts of cultural work that short fiction was doing at the time. With the large increase of both periodicals and print fiction, the genre of short fiction was undergoing some fundamental transformations, both in who was publishing short fiction as a form, and what that genre was representing in the social realm as art. Some possible ways to think about this would be: collections of short fiction published as books (what were the problems of mixing these two forms), the confrontations between short fiction and realism or romance, how particular authors attempted to use short fiction to their own ends, both within and outside of the conventions of the time, how short fiction offered possible literary access to traditionally disenfranchised groups (or did it?), how particular stories offered critiques of the social realm (as opposed to just replicating the social realm), and/or how we are to understand short fiction as a form at the time. By re-examining the structure of short fiction itself, I hope to push at the boundaries of genre at the time, to gain a better understanding of not only short fiction's role in relation to literary production, but how it was influencing other facets of literary production as well.
Presentations will be 15-20 minutes, and all accepted panelists must be members of NEMLA by Nov. 1, 2000. Information on NEMLA is available at their website: http://www.anna-maria.edu/nemla
Please send 1-2 page abstracts (250-500 words) by Sept. 15, 2000 to:
tlmorgan@acsu.buffalo.edu
or to:
Tom Morgan
176 St. James Pl.
Buffalo, NY 14222
(716) 886-6234
RA (source: CFP)