CALL FOR PAPERS
16th Annual CLIFF
(Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum)
March 16-17, 2012
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Revolutions, Post-Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions
Over the past two years, political uprisings and revolts have proliferated throughout the Arab world; more recently, protesters in New York have taken to the streets with calls for revolution. It is with these current events in mind that we propose an inter-disciplinary discussion of the diverse histories and instances of revolution—political, literary or social—and their aftermath.
In the spirit of the Department of Comparative Literature’s “Year of Anachronism,” we propose to engage with the historical contingency of the terms and concepts suggested by revolutions, post-revolutions and counter-revolutions. We maintain that experimentation and innovation in the arts—as well as the articulation and advancement of social and political revolutions—may be seen as a plurality of expressions, contingent on distinct historical contexts and cultural traditions, the movement and appropriation of intellectual and artistic ideas, asymmetrical power relations, and varying levels of tolerance for change.
In the context of literature, we would particularly like to examine how Western/ European categories and periodizations of “revolutionary” literary movements such as realism, avant-gardism, modernism and post-modernism have remained dominant, in spite of alternative avant-gardes, modernisms and realisms in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Similarly, we might ask whether theoretical models of revolution are also dominated by Western/European categories in spite of the abundance of revolutions in the non-Western world.
Abstracts of approximately 300 words for 15-minute presentations due: December 9, 2011.
All submissions and questions should be addressed to: cliff.umich@gmail.com