Call for Papers
“The Global American West”
March 26-28, 2015
In conjunction with the 30th Annual Literature Lecture at the University of Texas at El Paso, featuring Dr. Neil Campbell of the University of Derby, the Graduate Student English Association (GradSEA) invites proposals for panels or individual papers for a graduate conference entitled “The Global American West” that will take place at UTEP on March 26-28, 2015. Author of The Rhizomatic West and PostWesterns, among other major works, Campbell is a leading theorist of critical regionalism whose work reads the American West not as a stratified or constrained space, but as a ruptured and fluid discursive system. This year our theme is inspired by what Campbell calls the “global dimension” of the West, making it a “geographical, cultural, and economic crossroads defined by connectivity, multidimensionality, and imagination”. This and other aspects looming behind the commonplace mythology and iconography of the West, form what Campbell terms elsewhere as its “phantom architecture”. Thus, potential topics may not necessarily focus on the American West itself, but also on Campbell’s larger idea of Westness. This may include anything dealing with “connectivity, multidimensionality, and imagination” across the fields of Literature, Rhetoric and Writing Studies, English Education, and Creative Writing. Proposals from across the humanities, particularly those focusing on various cultural studies, are also welcome.
Please send one-page paper and panel proposals to GradSEA President, Gus Cohen, at [email protected] by February 28, 2015.
Please send one-page paper and panel proposals to GradSEA President, Gus Cohen, at [email protected] by February 28, 2015.