MCLC: Cultural Capital in the Era of Paradigm Shift--cfp

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Valerie Levan <vlevan at uchicago.edu>
Subject: Cultural Capital in the Era of Paradigm Shift--cfp
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Dear Colleagues,

Please see below for a call for papers for the annual American Comparative
Literature Association (ACLA) conference, held this year at New York
University from March 20-23. The deadline for paper submissions has been
extended to 11/15/2013. Those interested in presenting should submit their
paper abstracts via the conference website at http://www.acla.org/ and
select "Cultural Capital in an Era of Paradigm Shift" in the seminar drop
box.

Valerie Levan, Ph.D.
Comparative Literature
The University of Chicago

CFP: ACLA 2014 Seminar
Cultural Capital in an Era of Paradigm Shift: East Asian Literature in the
Early Twentieth Century

Location: New York University
Time: March 20-23, 2014
Abstract Submission Deadline: November 15
Contact: Valerie Levan, The University of Chicago
vlevan at uchicago.edu

Throughout East Asia, the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the
twentieth century saw an attempt to counter imperialist encroachment by
mastering  “Western” knowledge.  This conscious attempt on the part of
intellectuals, politicians, and cultural workers to remake their cultures
led to an era of paradigm shift in which different groups vied with each
other for control of both imported and nascent domestic cultural capital.
In addition to their creative work, authors engaged in a relentless
activity of essay writing, reviewing, criticism, translation and personal
correspondence with foreign authors, for the express purpose of expanding
the limits of their national literary fields. This seminar will examine
the cultural marketplace of East Asia in the early twentieth century and
interrogate the processes by which various forms of cultural capital
accrued their value.  Questions to be considered include: how did
individual authors reevaluate their own cultural practice in light of
foreign models? How did new notions of gender and sexuality shape modern
romantic imaginaries? To what degree did modern notions of nationhood and
selfhood remain linked?  What role did other forms of capital (social,
political, economic) play in designating arbiters of taste? We invite
papers that critically investigate the situation of the artist and
intellectual in this transitional period. Possible topics might include
but are not limited to: the role of foreign text in East Asian writing,
comparative anthropological linguistics, theories of translation, and the
resonance of early twentieth-century cultural capital for later artistic
developments.

 
Key words: transnational, translation, East Asia, 20th century, gender,
sexuality, cultural imperialism, Modernism.