34th Annual French Literature Conference
March 24-25, 2006
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC (USA)
Queer Sexualities
in French & Francophone Literature & Film
Thus it is broadly useful to begin to think of the adjective “queer” in this way: it is to abrade the classifications, to sit athwart conventional categories or traverse several… While objectivity is often claimed—indeed, the credibility of the drive to classify often depends upon claims of objectivity—the impulse is invariably to distinguish the proper from the improper, to assign values to identities and activities. To be a woman is to be a lesser version of a man. To be “of color” is to be a lesser version of being “white.” To be an effeminate man is to be a lesser version of a masculine man. To be a homosexual is to be a lesser version of a heterosexual. One version of being “a queer” is simply to occupy the lower half of that last hierarchized binary.
--- Donald E. Hall, Queer Theories, 2003, p. 13
The French Literature Conference at the University of South Carolina invites papers treating notions of queer sexual desire, sexual subjectivity, and sexual identity in literary & cinematic works in French of all periods, particularly texts that resist traditional and binary notions of sexual normality.
Keynote speakers:
Leo Bersani, University of California at Berkeley
Lawrence Schehr, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Two anonymous copies of complete papers, in English or in French, must be submitted (hard copy, fax or e-mail attachment) to the conference organizer by November 4, 2005. Submissions should be prepared according to the MLA Handbook and should be held to a twenty-minute presentation time (no more than 10 double-spaced pages). Participants are encouraged to expand their presentations into essays of no more than 18 typed double-spaced pages for publication. Proceedings will be published as volume XXXIV of French Literature Series (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi).
For more information, please contact:
William F. Edmiston
Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Email: edmistonw@sc.edu
Tel: (803) 777-9734
Fax: (803) 777-0132