Call for Papers

The Australian Modernist Studies Network is pleased to invite proposals for its inaugural international symposium on the theme ‘Modernism, Intimacy and Emotion’. Since the special Critical Inquiry issue on ‘Intimacy’ edited by Lauren Berlant in 1998, there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between emotion and the aesthetic.  Recent volumes include Rei Terada’s Feeling in Theory (2001), Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual (2002), Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings (2005), Patricia Ticineto Clough’sThe Affective Turn (2007) and Jonathan Flatley’s Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (2008). The topic has attracted a diverse range of critical approaches from areas including cultural studies, historicism, psychoanalysis and neuroscience. This conference explores the role of intimacy and emotion in modernist studies and welcomes papers from a wide range of disciplinary (e.g. literature, visual cultures, art history, philosophy, music), interdisciplinary and critical perspectives. Possible topics include:

  • the representation of, and cultural values surrounding, emotion in modernism;
  • the relationship between the body, the social sphere and modernist aesthetics;
  • the critical and rhetorical registers of intimacy in modernist texts and practices;
  • modernism and structures of feeling;
  • the processes and aesthetics of attachment;
  • the role of, and effect on, audience.

Please submit proposals of 300 words for individual papers or panels (involving 3 speakers) as Word attachments to: [email protected] by 5 September 2011. As this is a blind submission process please do not include name(s) on the abstract. Please provide your name(s), paper/panel title, institutional affiliation(s), a brief bio, and email address(es) on a separate page of the document. Notification of acceptance: 15 September 2011.

Papers should be 20 minutes in length (followed by 10 minutes discussion time). All participants must be current members of the Australian Modernist Studies Network. Information on how to join the network can be found on the ‘Membership’ page of this website.

Download a PDF of the Call for Papers here: AMSN 2012 CFP