ACLA Undergraduate Seminar: “Representing Crisis”

Nicoletta Pireddu Announcement
Subject Fields
Cultural History / Studies, Humanities, Intellectual History, Languages, Literature

2022 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting National Taiwan Normal University, June 15-18, 2022
CALL FOR PAPERS  -- ACLA Undergraduate Seminar (online)
“Representing Crisis”

Since ancient times, literature and other aesthetic forms have engaged with various manifestations of crisis, from social revolutions and wars, personal and family struggles, economic recessions and political turmoil to natural disasters and disease outbreaks.
From the narrative point of view, crisis also defines the decisive turning point in a story, when emotions reach the peak of intensity and the protagonist finds the courage and strength to lead events toward the conclusion.
Crisis can bring about a change in the order of things, by exposing the faults in a society or community and allowing new political, ethical, philosophical, and artistic forms to emerge.
This seminar invites undergraduate students to explore the modalities with which literary works and/or productions from other expressive media have addressed crises and their literary and extra- literary implications.
We welcome comparative analyses that focus on representations of crises in various genres, time periods, and geographical settings, in connection with (but not exclusively):
Conflict between tradition and innovation Heroes and anti-heroes
Emotional and mental breakdowns Trauma
Grief and resilience
Community and ethical responsibility Political upheavals
Cultural and ideological clashes
Past and present pandemics Environmental and climate issues Racial justice
Globalization
Migration and refugees


The Undergraduate Seminar will take place entirely online.
Abstracts are accepted through October 31, 2021 and should be submitted at the following link:
https://www.acla.org/node/add/paper


For more information about the conference, visit the ACLA website at https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting-2022.

Contact Information

Nicoletta Pireddu, ACLA Program Committee Chair

Contact Email
pireddun@georgetown.edu