<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]-->
</head>
<body lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear all,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m forwarding the following CFP on behalf of a colleague for an MSA Panel on modernist knowledge and (un)certainty. I thought it might be of interest to those focusing on Woolf’s (or other modernist authors’) complicated epistemology.
Please forward to anyone you think might be interested!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks so much,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sarah Garrigan<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">MSA 17 Boston, November 19-22, 2015: Modes of Relative Certainty<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This panel will explore areas of "relative certainty" in modernism, where the supposed impossibility of knowing anything for certain meets the practical reality that things can be known well enough that readers and citizens can make use
of them. In the wake of postmodernist criticism's essential disdain for certain knowledge and a general acceptance of modernists as ambiguous, ironic, enigmatical, interested in differance and lack, textual density and obscure allusions, we bring attention
to the ways modernist texts celebrate positive knowledge--as contingent as that knowledge may be.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Although uncertainty will undoubtedly remain an important mode of reading modernist texts, and it may produce vital inquiry into the ways narrative meaning constructs our lives, we question the ways modernists actually worked to produce
epistemological change. Could attention to relative certainty--quasi-, partial, functional, or temporary certainty--lead to more nuanced understandings of modernist texts? How might critical conversations benefit from a return to some sense of the value of
certainty, a position that could serve as the basis for ethical, political, and social consensus? Is some certainty necessary for the construction of reading communities?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Areas of discussion might include scientific and cultural relativity; pragmatic and phenomenological perspectives on truth and reality; the persistence of mimetic representation; cultural, national, or racial relative certainty; gender
categories and readability; anthropology; ethics; the relative certainty of modernist "grammars;" reading practices that lead to or presuppose common ground; and affect transmission.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Submit 300 word proposals with a one-page CV to luke.mueller@tufts.edu by April 5, 2015.<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>