CALL FOR PAPERS
Literature and its others
An international interdisciplinary conference
University of Turku, Finland, 8-10 May, 2003
Keynote speakers
Hayden White is Professor Emeritus of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is known for his studies on narrative patterns in history and literature, and his widely influential works include Metahistory, Tropics of Discourse, The Content of the Form and Figural Realism.
Karlheinz Stierle is Professor of Romance literatures at the University of Konstanz. He has published numerous works on literature, theory, and arts, including Text als Handlung, Der Mythos von Paris, Dimensionen des Verstehens and Ästhetische Rationalität.
Organizers
The Finnish Graduate School of Literary Studies and The Graduate School on Cultural Interaction and Integration.
Aim
This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the limits, borderlines and interaction between literary and non-literary textualities.
We hope to begin to answer questions such as: How do we recognize what is fiction and what is not? How do literary and narrative patterns organize our sense of time and history? And how do we distinguish between literature and history? For instance, can we read postcolonial literature without postcolonial history, or postcolonial history without postcolonial literature? Is there perhaps overlap between literary (fictional and non-fictional) and non-literary representation (different arts and media) and between the two cultures of the natural and the human sciences? How does essayistic writing blur the line between different textual categories?
None of these questions can be answered without an interdisciplinary approach of some kind. We therefore call for proposals from both established and junior scholars working in different areas of the humanities and the social sciences, especially in literary studies and art history, history and philosophy. We welcome theoretical, practical, even polemic approaches, ranging from surveys to case studies.
At the moment, we have planned at least the following sessions: (1) Hayden White and the Philosophy of History, (2) Narratives of Fiction and Non-Fiction, (3) Narratives of Cultural Interaction, (4) Beyond the Two Cultures: Literature and the Natural and the Human Sciences, (5) Literature and Art, and (6) Essayistic Textualities.
Contact Information
Please send proposals (max. 300 words) to Kuisma Korhonen (University of Helsinki), either by e-mail (kuisma.korhonen@helsinki.fi) or by ordinary mail (Kuisma Korhonen, Kuikkarinne 7 B 30, 00200 Helsinki, FINLAND). In your proposal please indicate the session in which you would like to give your paper, as well as your institution, position, and full contact information (e-mail, address, phone, fax, etc.). More information will soon be available at www.utu.fi/hum/kirjatutkija/literatureanditsothers.htm
Deadline for proposals: 1 November, 2002.