Graduate Humanities Forum
Call for Papers

Emergence, Rupture, Transformation
Deadline for Proposals: December 15, 2008

The Graduate Humanities Forum of the University of Pennsylvania invites submissions for its 9th annual conference: "Emergence, Rupture, Transformation." The one-day interdisciplinary conference will take place on Thursday, February 26th at Penn in conjunction with the Humanities Forum's 2008-09 topic: "Change". This year’s keynote speaker is Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of Humanities, Harvard University.

What are the conditions for the emergence of the modern subject? What relation does genre have to revolution, transgression, or change? What are the mechanisms of historical change? What besides expert opinion denominates something "evidence of change," and what defines an expert beyond the ability to make this case? Based on these questions, we are asking for papers that interrogate, historicize, or otherwise reflect on the issues listed below.

E-mail abstracts of no more than 300 words to Chris Hunter, Penn Humanities Form Research Assistant. The deadline for proposals is December 8, 2008; notification of acceptances will be e-mailed by December 15, 2008.

In your submissions, please apply to ONLY ONE of these rubrics:

1) Subjectivity
2) Genre
3) "Around 1800"
4) The Case

1) Subjectivity
The category of the subject is as tendentious as it is pervasive; in our interest in providing an adequate taxonomy for the human in relation to a larger political structure, we often fall back on this hotly-contested term. But what does it mean to be a subject, and who are we subject to? This panel solicits papers on the history of the subject; papers addressing the possibilities or impossibilities for subjectivity; what currency the subject bears in our discussions of culture, politics, etc; or how the form of these discussions have become contingent on a particular vision of the subject or subjectivity.

2) Genre
We speak of novels, film noir, De Stijl--is it possible to engage with material and not classify it? "Genre" is not simply a passive label; it plays a formative role in staking boundaries, evoking ideals and reinforcing politics. Think sonnets, sonatas, manifestos, and Cubism. One might say that the genre creates the work and dictates its reception. Yet what of works that converge forms, break with tradition, or undermine perception? This panel explores the interplay of establishment and deviation in genre. Submissions might investigate periodization, histories of convergence or transformation, originality, or aesthetic imperatives.

3) “Around 1800”
Scholars of diverse methodological and disciplinary backgrounds have located profound changes "around 1800," and have done extensive work on how knowledge, aesthetics, socio-economic structures, etc. differed before and after this approximate year. Yet, while generations of scholarship have challenged certain "revolutions" in politics, technology, industry, culture, the arts, as well as the very notion of historical rupture itself, relatively little attempt has been made to understand c. 1800 as other than a break or turning point. This panel aims to bring together graduate students from multiple disciplines to address the issue of "around 1800"; papers are sought that compliment, challenge, build upon, or otherwise respond to existing understandings of this rich historical moment, and/or historical change more generally, through an examination of discourses, institutions, materials and/or events “around 1800.”

4) Evidence
"A case," wrote Lauren Berlant recently, "is what an event can become." But not all events, texts, or objects, become cases. Most do not?-- expertise must elevate the event to the level of the case. The case lies at the heart of disciplines ranging from business to medicine to psychoanalysis to literary studies. In fact, one could argue that, in its demand for particular forms of expertise, the case structures disciplinarity. This panel seeks papers addressing the question of the case. What counts as evidence? Who has the authority to make a case? What is the function of the telling detail for literary and historical study? What does it feel like to be an example? How do we historicize the concept of the case? You may want to make an argument for the exemplarity of a particular case or to explore the problem of the case in general.