full name / name of organization:
The 17th annual Midwest Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM)
will be held March 20-21, 2009 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb,
Since 9/11, there has been a call for authors to legitimately represent the
attack on New York City. Several texts, including but not limited to
William Gibsonâ€™s Pattern Recognition (2003) and Jess Walterâ€™s The Zero
(2006), utilize the 9/11 attacks as a psychological framework within genre
fiction to highlight the (in)stabilization, negotiation, and fragmentation
of individuals in society, while Don DeLilloâ€™s Falling Man (2007) offers a
more literary attempt at directly representing 9/11.
This panel asks not just whether genre novelists such as Gibson, Walter,
and others, deserve a wider consideration from academia given their themes
of representation, but also asks for a sustained analysis of what these
genre and otherwise marginalized authors are doing with 9/11 that is
different from the representations of 9/11 commonly found in â€œliteraryâ€
works by those like DeLilloâ€™s novel. In short, this panel asks for essays
that consider what forms of counter-narratives specific to 9/11 are offered
by authors commonly lumped into genre fiction, while also asking for essays
that assess literary texts such as DeLilloâ€™s Falling Man.
Deadline for submission: January 2, 2009.
Please include a cover page with your name, affiliation, mailing address,
and e-mail address.
Accepted contributions will be notified via e-mail by January 19, 2009.
Please submit your 250 word (one page) abstract as an attachment to
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Received on Thu Oct 30 2008 - 13:03:35 EST