Period Shapers in Literary History
ICLA-CHLEL Conference 2018
Period Shapers in Literary History
Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series (CHLEL)
24 May 2018, University of Antwerp
Hof van Liere – Prentenkabinet
Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen
Program
- 9.30 – 10.15 How, Why, Watt: Conrad, Beckett and the Witnesses of Modernism
Yael Levin (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chair: Vivian Liska - 10.15 – 11.00 Beyond the Continuous and the Discrete. Metamorphosis as a Critical Pattern
Massimo Fusillo (University of L’Aquila)
Chair: Vivian Liska - 11.00 – 11.15 Coffee break
- 11.15 – 12.15 Keynote lecture
Towards a Resarch Agenda for Data-driven Approaches to Literary Periods
Christof Schöch (University of Trier)
Chair: Dirk Van Hulle - 12.15 – 13.30 Lunch
- 13.30 – 14.15 The Posthuman Moment in Modernism
Ruben Borg (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chair: Vivian Liska - 14.15 – 15.00 Slavery as a Period Shaper: On the Way a Topic and a Book can change Periodization or the Understanding of Historicity
Karen-Margrethe Simonsen (Aarhus University)
Chair: Vivian Liska - 15.00 – 15.15 Coffee break
- 15.15 – 16.00 Post-Romanticism, Or is There a Period in This (Hi)Story?
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London)
Chair: Karen-Margrethe Simonsen - 16.00 – 16.45 (Post)Modernism with Kafka
Vivian Liska (University of Antwerp)
Chair: Karen-Margrethe Simonsen - 18.00 Dinner
Call for papers
ICLA-CHLEL Conference 2018
Period Shapers in Literary History
Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series (CHLEL)
24-25 May 2018, University of Antwerp
Keynote speaker: Christof Schöch
Periods in literary history are often rather arbitrary and debatable constructions, usually created in hindsight. Thus, for instance, modernism as a literary period was shaped and reshaped in different ways throughout the past hundred years by various literary critics and thinkers (from Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno to Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou), by individual studies (i.e. Edmund Wilson’s Axel’s Castle) and by subsequent developments in literary history: In the last decades of the previous century modernist texts were customarily read through a postmodernist lens, which was itself shaped by some famous critics (Lyotard) and some nearly forgotten ones (Ihab Hassan). The subsequent demise of the term ‘postmodernism’ has, in turn, given rise to numerous concepts and approaches that claim to supersede this late-twentieth-century paradigm: these include altermodernism, hypermodernism, metamodernism, neomodernism, remodernism, transmodernism and post-postmodernism. Behind these (arguably suspect) terminological constructions lies the quest not just for reassessing the present state of literary approaches to modernism, but also for understanding the traces that postmodernism has left on our understanding of the modernist canon.
Obviously, this phenomenon applies not only to literary modernism. Every literary period is shaped and labeled to a large extent by a subsequent movement, sometimes almost single-handedly by one particular thinker or critic or even a single study. The impact of such developments, figures or studies on the construction of literary periods is the focus of this conference. Questions that could serve as a starting point are, for instance: What has been the influence of a critic like Ernst Robert Curtius on Latin medieval studies? What has been the impact of Walter Benjamin on a particular concept of Modernism? How did George Lukacs or Erich Auerbach shape the period of Realism? How can new methods (e.g. in digital humanities) help us understand the dynamics of period shaping and the potentially misleading impact of imposing a periodization on literary processes? These are the kinds of questions that are central to this conference, focusing on period shapers, period-shaping movements or publications, and their impact on literary history.
This conference, organized by the University of Antwerp’s Department of Literature, will take place at the University of Antwerp on 24 May 2018.
The extended deadline for abstracts (400 words with a short bio of the author(s)) is 15 February 2018, to be sent to vivian.liska@uantwerpen.be and dirk.vanhulle@uantwerpen.be.