MCLC: Poetics of Transparency-cfp

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Mavis Tseng <maviszizek at gmail.com>
Subject: Poetics of Transparency--cfp
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Dear Colleagues,

Below find a CFP for the ACLA conference at New York University on March
20-24, 2014. The submission deadline is November 15, 2013.

Mavis Tseng, Ph.D.
Comparative Literature
Rutgers University

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CFP: ACLA 2014 Seminar
The Poetics of Transparency / Translucency / Reflection:
Glass, Capital, and Urban Narratives

Location: New York University
Time: March 20-23, 2014
Abstract Submission Deadline: November 15
Contact: Dr. Mavis Tseng, Rutgers University
maviszizek at gmail.com

 
Since the mid nineteenth century, glass buildings have featured capitals
such as London (The Crystal Palace) and Paris (the Arcades). Nowadays
almost every capital is a “city of glass,” with skyscrapers, shop windows
in department stores, and ceiling-to-floor windows in high-end
restaurants, etc. Glass alters the urban fabric, unsettles existing
conceptions regarding domestic and public spaces, and redefines urban
dwellers’ identities, affects, and desires. Glass is also a rich source of
metaphors that refract the complexities of modern urban life. As both a
medium and barrier, glass facilitates our exploration of how a capital
“reflects” itself on the relations between subjects and objects, urbanites
and urban space, consumers and commodities, the visible and the invisible,
representation and the represented. Glass also influences how certain
narratives are structured in relation to reality, with mirrors and windows
serving as mediums between perceivers and perceived objects. In literary
and film studies, for example, glass is used as a privileged trope to
reflexively examine the genres themselves, which are argued to function
like a mirror or a window to the world it represents.

This seminar aims to examine the multiple functions and representations of
glass in art, film, and literature: as an object of critique, a literary
or visual device, and a trope for examining urban genres themselves.
Potential topics include (but are not limited to): glass and urban
modernity; transparency, translucency, opaqueness,
visibility/invisibility, reflection, looking through/looking at, window
display, window shopping, commodities, framing, screen, mirrors/windows as
metaphors, materiality/immateriality of glass, cultures of glass in a
digital age, etc.

 
Seminar Keywords: urban modernity, glass, windows, mirrors, display,
window shopping, framing, commodities, skyscrapers, reflection,
transparency, visibility/invisibility

 
Submission: If interested, please submit your paper abstract at
www.acla.org <http://www.acla.org/>, and select “The Poetics of
Transparency/Translucency/Reflection: Glass, Capital, and Urban
Narratives” in the Seminar drop box. The extended deadline for submissions
is November 15. If you have any questions about this seminar, please feel
free to contact Dr. Tseng at maviszizek at gmail.com.