Society for the Study of Southern Literature
Call for Papers
American Literature Association
19th Annual Conference
May 22-25, 2008
San Francisco, CA
SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN
LITERATURE
Call for papers for 2008 ALA Conference, San Francisco
Session
1: Expatriate Literature of the American South
Session 2:
Southern Poetry and the Narrative Impulse
Deadline: January 20,
2008
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature issues a call
for papers for two sessions at the 2008 American Literature
Association Conference in San Francisco. The conference will be held
May 22-25, 2008, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in Embarcadero
Center.
Proposed sessions are described below. Please email abstracts
and either a cover letter or 2-page CV by January 20, 2008, to Tara
Powell at tfpowell@gwm.sc.edu or send hard copies to Tara Powell at the
USC
Institute for Southern Studies; University of South Carolina
at Columbia, Gambrell Hall 107; Columbia, SC 29208. Emailed
submissions preferred. For further information about these sessions or
SSSL, contact Tara Powell, or for information about the conference,
please consult the ALA website at www.americanliterature.org.
Session
1: Expatriate Literature of the American South
The southerner who
leaves the South to pursue his or her literary
career is one of the major
tropes of southern writing, dating back to
slave narratives and Edgar Allan
Poe and continuing into the present
with the work of such writers as Percival
Everett, Gail Godwin, and
others--some of whom don't seem to look back to the
South at all for
their art. Well-established, too, is the tradition of
writers and
scholars from other places trying to "tell about the South"
after
their visits or relocations. What does it mean, then, for
literature
to be "southern," if it neither has to be written about the South
nor
in the South nor even necessarily by a southerner? Possible
paper
topics might include: studies of individual authors and
works,
thematic considerations of southerners writing in the North
or
northerners writing the South, expatriate southern writing
broadly
defined that does not engage the dichotomy of North and
South,
examinations of "regional" or "southern" as useful terms, or ways
that
films and the film industry complicate this question in
their
representations of southernness.
Session 2: Southern
Poetry and the Narrative Impulse
Dave Smith has asserted there is no
contemporary "southern poetry" as
such; Jim Applewhite argues southern poetry
is distinguished by a
paralyzing feeling of emotional submersion; Fred
Chappell suggests
southern poems exemplify the power inherent in the "lens of
particular
place." Though southern anthologies generally contain
substantially
less poetry than prose, the South abounds with literary
journals, is
home to several fine poetry series, and has produced many of
the
century's finest poetic voices. Storytelling, the oral tradition,
and
the narrative impulse are often described as hallmarks of
southern
fiction. Is this true of southern poetry as well? Recent
collections
by Fred Chappell, Andrew Hudgins, Sonia Sanchez, Natasha
Trethaway,
and others, suggest it might. Possible paper topics
include:
discussions of particular poetic talents, "southernness" in the
field
of poetry and poetry studies, narrative (or lack thereof) in
poets
associated with the South, and regional work in relation
to
undercurrents in twentieth-century American poetry
generally.