>
>
>Encountering Infancy:  The Infant Figure in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and
>Philosophy.
>Emory University, Atlanta, GA USA
>March 21-22, 2003
>
>Keynote Speakers:
>       Christopher Fynsk (SUNY-Binghamton)
>       TBA
>
>"Let's baptize it infantia"
>       - Jean-FranÁois Lyotard, Lectures d'enfance
>
>Infancy, as an object of knowledge, has been described by many disciplines as
>an enigma.  What always seems to be in dispute, according to Freud and others,
>is precisely the significance of the infantile.  Compounding the problem, the
>term 'infancy' has come to mean not only a biological stage of development
>before speech, but also, especially after Jean-FranÁois Lyotard,
>something that
>haunts all discourse regardless of age, a kind of silence that
>distends speech.
>  How then to speak about a figure that, etymologically speaking,
>does not speak
>(the in-fans)?  How to address infancy if infancy is always what resists any
>kind of address?
>
>The "Encountering Infancy" conference invites papers that seek to read the
>intractable figure of infancy, to 'hear' the enigmatic silence of the infant
>figure.  The papers may take any of several forms:  a close reading of a
>specific figure of the child (e.g., in Wordsworth or JosÈ MartÌ); an analysis
>of narratives of infancy (e.g., in Benjamin or Augustine); a more general
>approach to the problems associated with infancy (e.g., in Klein, Agamben, or
>Lyotard, in writings on education such as Rousseau's Emile).  We welcome
>abstracts that focus on any literary, psychoanalytic, or philosophical text
>from any historical period that deals with the figure of infancy or the infant
>figure.
>
>Possible topics include:
>
>- infancy and beginnings
>- figures of the infant in psychoanalytic theory; primary or primal structures
>- infancy and the in-fans (that which does not speak -- silence, 'chatter',
>stuttering)
>- stories of infancy in autobiographical or biographical writings
>- infancy and education; educating an infant; education as infancy
>- the event of infancy; infancy as an event or interruption that disrupts
>development
>- infancy and play, the infant at play
>- infancy and the (narrative of the) Enlightenment
>- what is children's literature?
>- infancy and creativity
>
>
>Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words.  Please send the proposal by
>Monday, January 27, 2003, to the contact person, David Kelman, by email
>[log in to unmask] (no attachments please) or by post to
>the following
>address.
>
>
>David Kelman
>Program in Comparative Literature
>Emory University
>N101 Callaway Center
>Atlanta, Georgia 30322
>
>
--
Stefani Engelstein
Assistant Professor of German
Department of German and Russian Studies
University of Missouri
454 GCB
Columbia, MO  65211
Telephone: (573) 882-9450
Fax: (573) 884-8456
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