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>
>The following call for papers has a new proposal
>submission deadline and response address.
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>LITERATURE AND THE POST-SECULAR
>
>Proposed Seminar for the 2003 annual meeting of the
>American Comparative Literature Association
>Cal State San Marcos in North San Diego County
>April 4-6, 2003
>(Seminars include 10-12 speakers and run 2 hours per
>day for the three days of the conference.)
>
>
>Ethics, theology, and metaphysics have been addressed
>recently by radically diverse writers including
>Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Zizek, John D. Caputo, John
>Milbank and the Radical Orthodoxy Group, Gianni
>Vattimo, Emmanuel Levinas, Georges Bataille,
>and Paul Ricoeur. Meanwhile, a debate about the
>possibility of a truly postmodern theology is raging
>in religous studies. This post-secular turn, or
>return, to metaphysics, secular/negative theology,
>theology, and spirituality in numerous cultural arenas
>is having a direct influence on literary studies, as
>Ph.D. candidates in literature programs defend
>dissertations about literature and spirituality in
>increasing numbers. But how specifically do these
>debates about the post-secular cross over into
>literary studies? What are the borders and boundaries
>between literary study and post-secular philosophy?
>
>Questions this seminar will address include the
>following:
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>*  What is the relation between literature and
>theology, secular or sacred? How does a focus on
>theology, religious studies, and/or ethics open new
>territories for literary study, particularly in the
>contemporary period? What do we gain by returning to
>the sacred or secular sacred in literary study? What
>do we lose?
>
>* Is there a post-secular literature as well as a
>post-secular theory, and what would this literature
>look like? What do the writers say?  Was postmodernism
>theological without our realizing it?
>
>* How is current theory about the post-secular being
>imported into literary studies?
>
>* How are assertions of value in current discussions
>about literature and ethics/spirituality similar
>to and different from pre-formalist critical notions
>of value (and the political implications of such)
>embedded in concepts such as artistic vision, the
>visionary sublime, the truth of beauty, or the artist
>as shaman/oracle/priest?
>
>*  Why is theology surfacing in literary studies now,
>after more than fifty years of formalist, marxist,
>poststructuralist, and postmodern theory?  What
>cultural moment is precipitating the theoretical turn?
>
>*  Has the sacred already been caught in the secular
>theory machine?  Will 9/11 poison the post-secular
>well, particularly in terms of literary studies?
>
>*  How can a post-secular literary criticism
>accommodate a world literature radically diverse in
>terms of politics, cultural and social values, and
>understandings of the sacred? Will a post-secular
>theoretical view necessarily war with a historical
>study of literature?  What are the problemmatics
>raised in the relation between
>multicultural/pluralist/ethnic/race criticism and
>post-secular perspectives?  How might the
>post-secular be redefined in a global context?
>
>* How might gender theory intersect with post-secular
>philosophy in relation to literary studies?
>
>*  What are the possibilities of relation in literary
>criticism between humanism and the post-secular?
>Marxist theory and the post-secular? ethics and the
>post-secular?
>
>*  How theological is the literature classroom? How
>post-secular should it be?
>
>While seminar papers may reference literary texts,
>papers should not be readings of individual stories,
>novels, or poems but rather should address the larger
>idea of how borders and boundaries between literature
>and post-secular philosophies are being, or should be,
>crossed. Proposals should run no longer than 500 words
>and should include name and affiliation of applicant
>and a 1-paragraph professional bio.
>
>Extended deadline for proposals:  September 15, 2002
>
>EMAIL PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS (in-text, no attachments)
>PREFERRED: send to <[log in to unmask]>.
>
>Send proposals snailmail (to arrive by September 15)
>to:
>Amy J. Elias
>Department of English
>301 McClung Tower
>University of Tennessee
>Knoxville, TN 37996-0430
>
>Information about the ACLA conference can be found
>online at <http://www.acla.org>.
>