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TOUCH : 19th Annual UCLA French & Francophone Studies Graduate Student Conference

TOUCH : 19th Annual UCLA French & Francophone Studies Graduate Student Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

T       O       U       C      H

19th Annual UCLA French & Francophone Studies Graduate Student Conference

October 9-10, 2014

Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Professor Carla Freccero (University of California, Santa Cruz)

From the Latin tangō, tangere, meaning “to make contact, to border on, to influence, to mention”, the diverse manifestations of touch reveal the variety of ways in which we transmit, receive, and process information.  As physical contact, it extends from intimate to international contexts, from the body and its sensual experiences to world travel, immigration, and transnational or cross-cultural interactions.  In such contexts, touch raises questions of personal and national boundaries, of contact and interaction between distinct entities and disparate groups, and of literal and figurative borders at play in our notions of sameness and otherness.  It is in the act of transcending these borders that touch also appears as influence, as a means to affect the Other and incite physical, emotional or intellectual change.

Further exploration of these various interpretations and manifestations of touch raises a multitude of questions regarding its individual and social implications.  To begin, how do literary and artistic representations of touch reflect the norms, morals, desires, concerns, or even fears of society?  How is touch manifested and interpreted according to specific cultural, social, and historical contexts?  In what ways can literary and visual culture serve as a means to touch its public?  In an increasingly diverse and globalized society, how is contact promoted and prevented, and what are its perceived effects or consequences?  How are identities defined and subverted through touch?  For individuals and institutions that attempt to limit or prevent touch, what larger issues can this reveal about their belief system?  

To further examine touch, we invite submissions on French and Francophone topics from a variety of disciplines such as literature, world arts & cultures, gender studies, history, sociology, anthropology, art, film and postcolonial studies.  Possible topics might include but are not limited to:

Touch as contact

  • (in)tangibility
  • the (im)materiality of language ; the physicality of the book
  • information acquired through touch
  • embodied awareness or experience ; the body
  • sensuality, pleasure, and erotic representation
  • displays of affection - public or private
  • touch as taboo
  • performative touch – rituals of touch, dance
  • gendered touch
  • consent for touch
  • the powerplay of touch / touch and power
  • violence and physical aggression


Touch as (dis)connection

  • platonic love, courtly love, love at a distance
  • reader response theory
  • emotions and sentiments
  • intersectionality
  • (post-)colonialism, immigration, diaspora, and globalization
  • multiculturalism, hybridity, la créolité
  • public spaces - sites of mixing and interaction


Touch as influence

  • littérature engagée, engagement
  • rhetoric, emotive writing
  • intertextuality
  • translatio studii, the dissemination of knowledge and ideas
  • royal, divine, or healing touch
  • pedagogical and/or subversive intent
  • artistic manifestos and movements
  • propaganda


Touch as threat

  • haphephobia - fear of touch
  • purity and mixing
  • representations of disease, epidemics, contagion
  • literature and the arts as moral corruption; censure
  • purity of genres ; purity of language
  • isolation, segregation, and ostracization
  • boundaries and frontiers - real or imagined
  • perceiving Otherness as harmful or contagious
  • untouchables


Please email a 300-word abstract in English or French along with your paper title, affiliation and contact information touclaffsconference2014@gmail.com. Presentations should be no more than 20 minutes in length. Our extended deadline for submission is June 15, 2014.