Romance Studies in Action: Performance, Visual Imagery, Orality
April 9—11, 2015 – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Accepting abstracts through December 10, 2015
Far from simply being fixed words on a page, literature is a living thing: mobile, migratory, and crossing both space and time. Whether envisioned solely in the mind of the reader, projected onto a screen, or taking the form of a public performance, literature engages the body and can create a visceral and sometimes physical experience. Its expression and impact is not limited to the abstract: by engaging the senses and the body as well as the mind, new layers of meaning are expressed and revealed. Performances engage the body through action, whether in front of an audience or camera, as well as the mind, through representing characters and inspiring audience interpretation. Visual imagery brings experience and imagination into dialogue with a text. Orality both reinforces the primordial connection between the spoken and written word and challenges contemporary beliefs concerning the nature of the composition of text itself.
Through their sensory effects, performances, visual imagery, and orality can create movement in literature. These responses help identify literature as a living and mobile force, active across space and time, rather than as a stagnated cultural artifact. Texts can be revisited and even reborn through the effects they have on our bodies, as well as our minds. These impressions may connect us to our surroundings or bring unsettling realities into focus: through them the effects of literature reach out from the aesthetic into other aspects of culture.
The 2015 Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures invites papers that treat literature from all time periods, culture, and film as sentient objects and explore their oral, visual, or performed afterlives. We welcome papers that seek to redefine or question traditional disciplinary categories, including but not limited to: performance studies, folklore, theater, poetry, narrative, and film. Submissions may examine current studies on performativity, philosophy or cultural studies, including but not limited to translation theory, film studies, sexuality studies, and indigenous studies. Feminist, Post-colonial, Decolonial, Subaltern, New Historicist or Queer approaches are also welcome.
Papers or panels on all aspects of literature and film in French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese literature will be considered. Proposals may address, but are not restricted to, the title theme. To submit an abstract of 250 words or less, please register at ccrl.unc.edu. For more information, visit the website or email the coordinators are ccrlregistrations@unc.edu.
*Note that pre-organized panel members must submit individual abstracts through the website in addition to submitting one panel proposal by email to ccrlregistrations@unc.edu or to the appropriate coordinator.