2010 QAE CONFERENCE

DEFINING THE NEW: EXPERIMENTS AND INNOVATIONS IN ENGLISH STUDIES

Guest Reader: Imad Rahman

Keynote Speaker: Anne Francis Wysocki
October 22 - 23 / Ohio University / Athens, Ohio

"Literature is news that stays news." -Ezra Pound

It was Alexander Pope who remarked “the sound must seem an echo to the sense,” while Ezra Pound admonished writers to “make it new.” This conference seeks to explore how theorists, critics, compositionists, essayists, fictionists, poets, and other writers have defined or used different critical paradigms, as well as experimented with different forms to make their writing new or to more perfectly echo their sense.

This conference will dovetail with a feature of critical essays on the history and future of experimental writing in Quarter After Eight, a literary journal focused on innovative writing. All conference papers will be considered for publication in this feature.

We are looking for work from the fields of Comparative Literature, Composition Studies, Creative Writing, Critical Theory, Folklore, Linguistics, Literary History, Rhetoric, and other disciplines related to literary study.

Possible Topics:
-New definitions of the term "experimental"
-The future of experimental writing
-Re-examining early literary experiments, e.g. the work of Alexander Pope, William Blake, Laurence Sterne, the Romantics, the Modernists, Magic Realists, etc.
-Pushing the boundaries of rhetorical traditions and/or pedagogies
-Pushing the boundaries of academic discourse
-Bridging or transgressing genres
-Post-colonial innovations in form
-The influence of critical theory on literary experiments
-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E or post-avant poetry
-Lyric Essays
-Prose poetry and flash fiction
-Technology's influence on form

Details:
Please submit a 1-2 page abstract or a 5-10 page representative sample of your creative work by September 26, 2010 to:

Defining the New: Experiments and Innovations in English Studies
Ohio University Department of English
360 Ellis Hall
Athens, OH 45701