Rutgers University’s Program in Comparative Literature is pleased to announce its 2014 graduate student conference:
GLOBAL CONTAGIONS: NARRATIVE, ETHICS & ILLNESS
Thursday, April 10th, 2014
Keynote Speaker: PRISCILLA WALD, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, Duke University
While most often thought of in connection with communicable diseases, the word “contagion” literally means “to touch together,” for etymologically, “contagion” is composed from the union of the Latin roots con- (together with) and tangere (to touch). Indeed, the earliest usages of the word “contagion,” which date back to the fourteenth century, refer not to illness but, rather, to the circulation of ideas and attitudes.
Taking as its point of departure the multiple meanings of the term “contagion,” this one-day graduate student conference seeks to examine moments of contact and communication that result in the spread of disease and the stories that we subsequently tell about thesetouching instances. As Priscilla Wald argues in Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Duke University Press, 2008), outbreak narratives bring together, “the transformative force of myth with the authority of science,” they “map the spaces of global modernity,” and expose the contradictions we live by, such as “the obsolescence and tenacity of borders.” How, then, are the breached boundaries and hyper-connectivity at the heart of this paradox made visible in literature and in film?
This conference will facilitate the critical interrogation of how “contagion”—when understood in the broadest sense possible, and perhaps even in ways yet to be explored—informs our thinking about threats, both internal and external, and in particular those that defy traditional forms of classification and explanation. What kinds of individual or collective responses do threats of contagion mobilize? How do the stories that we tell in relation to such cultural and biological incursions circulate, and how do our assessments of the risk and danger change depending on the accounts we share?
Even more, what happens when we lose control of the outbreak narratives we construct, as so often seems to be the case? What then are we to do, when our own narratives of contagion begin to spread uncontrollably like the very threats they seek to address and contain? In short, what is the relationship between narrative and contagion, and to what extent does the study of this relationship in the world today demand a global and interdisciplinary scope of analysis?
Graduate students interested in presenting their research at Global Contagions: Narrative, Ethics and Illness at Rutgers University are asked to submit an abstract of 300 words or less addressing the conference theme.
- Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Contagion and medical discourse with regard to nation-building and/or national identity formation, particularly in the historical use of eugenics
- Contagion and medical discourse, as the two are related to the history and theory of translation
- Ways of feeling ill and the affective implications of contagion and illness
- The “contaminating” power of art: the unsavory influence of text and film upon readers and spectators, and vice versa
- Contagion as community: the socio-political and cultural structures of contagion and efforts to contain it
- Infectious laughter: “humour/us” politics and viral online video culture in the globalized world
- Enabling illness(es): the intersections of illness narratives and disability studies
The deadline for graduate paper presentation proposals is 11:59 PM on Friday, January 3rd, 2014. Please e-mail all presentation proposals and any questions that you may have about the conference either to Conference Chair, Carolyn Ureña (Carolyn.Urena@Rutgers.edu) or Conference Co-Chair, Enmanuel Martínez (Enmanuel.Martinez@Rutgers.edu). We very much look forward to reviewing your paper proposals. Thank you!
