CFP: "Themes of Boundaries, Rules, Limits, and Cultural Regulations in the Works of Miguel de Cervantes" - SAMLA Virtual Conference 2020

Call for Papers. Cervantes Society of America Panel:

"Themes of Boundaries, Rules, Limits, and Cultural Regulations in the Works of Miguel de Cervantes."

SAMLA Virtual Conference, "Scandal! Literature and Provocation: Breaking Rules, Making Texts."

November 13-15, 2020. Extended submission deadline: July 15, 2020

Cervantes lived within a cultural environment characterized by social, political, and religious norms that were regularly respected, challenged, or transgressed throughout Spanish early modernity. His works often represented a commentary on the motivations, enforcement, and consequences of these societal rules and have inspired a wide variety of research on his approximations to themes like power, identity, culture, class, race, and other elements regulated in Golden Age Spain. Thanks to his writing about these boundaries during his lifetime, Cervantes’s works present themes that transcend chronologies and are as resonant today as they were at their conception.

In the face of regulatory authorities such as the Inquisition, societal rules governed by the code of honor, and a class hierarchy that rigidly demarcated nobility from the rest of the population, how did Cervantes engage with the religious, social, and political boundaries of seventeenth-century Spanish society? How did he utilize, manipulate, hide, or define societal rules to acknowledge, respect, and/or test the resilience of these limits? How do his works represent a commentary, defense, or critique as a recognition of, compliance with, or as a provocation of seventeenth-century Spain’s regulatory frameworks?

The Cervantes Society of America at SAMLA 92 welcomes papers that examine ways in which Miguel de Cervantes’s works engage with the religious, social, and political boundaries of seventeenth-century Spanish society by pushing cultural norms to their limits. Please submit by e-mail a 200-word abstract, brief bio, one-page CV, and A/V requirements by July 15 to the chair, Daniel Holcombe (daniel.holcombe@gcsu.edu) and to the secretary, Xabier Granja (xgranja@ua.edu).