CFP - Disability in Anglophone Literature
CFP: Panel on "Disability in Anglophone Literature"
48th Annual NeMLA Convention
Baltimore, Maryland
March 23 - 26, 2017
Institutional host: Johns Hopkins University
This panel examines the significance and the depiction of disability in Anglophone literature (i.e. works written by authors from South African, Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Examples of such works include: Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, J. M. Coetzee's Foe and Waiting for the Barbarians, Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India, Darren Groth's Are You Seeing Me?, Rachna Gilmore's A Screaming Kind of Day, Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day, Cyril Axelrod's And the Journey Begins, Chenjerai Hove's Ancestors, Ngugi wa Thiong’o's A Grain of Wheat, Ben Okri's The Famished Road and Songs of Enchantment, Florence Serwaa Oteng's Give Them A Name, and Keri Hulme's The Bone People.
Some of the themes that can be examined are: the implications of depicting disabled bodies or impaired characters in Anglophone literature; the difference between depicting disabled children, as in young adult novels, and disabled adult characters; the difference gender makes; and the role genre plays (autobiographies versus fiction). Papers that analyze immobility and amputations; blindness, deafness, and muteness; autism and cognitive disability; and exceptional, deformed, or monstrous bodies, among many others, in Anglophone and Commonwealth literature are welcome. Priority will be given to proposals that examine recently published works. Please submit a 300-350 word proposal.
NeMLA formatting standards: Paper Title: 100 characters (including spaces); paper Abstract: 300 words
Starting June 15, please submit abstracts for this panel here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16542
Important: all abstracts must be submitted through the above link.
Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2016
Decision e-mails will be sent by October 15.
Please note that NEMLA asks that accepted and confirmed panelists pay their membership/registration fees no later than December 1, 2016 in order to present at the 2017 convention. Current registration and membership fees for full-time faculty members are $170; contingent/two-year faculty: $140; and graduate students/independent scholars: $110.