>
>Subject: CFP: Art Objects and Woman's Words: Women's Ekphrastic 
>Writing (3/1/06; MLA '06)
>From: "Jill R Ehnenn" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>CFP: Art Objects and Women's Words: Women's Ekphrastic Writing 
>(3/1/06; MLA '06, 12/27/06-12/30/06)
>
>
>Call For Papers for a proposed Special Session
>
>Modern Language Association (MLA)
>
>Annual meeting December 27-30, 2006, in Philadelphia
>
>
>
>Art Objects and Women's Words: Women's Ekphrastic Writing
>
>
>
>This goal of this panel is to explore how female authors have 
>produced verbal representations of visual representations.
>
>
>
>Language. Gaze. Space.  Time.  These concepts invariably come to 
>mind in academic considerations of ekphrasis, as do
>difference, desire, otherness, mimesis, muteness, blindness, power, 
>perception, narrative, fragment, (re)production,
>consumption, and commodity.  Notably, these concepts are also 
>inextricably linked to the gendered particularities of the
>historical moment(s) that produced the author/spectator, the 
>represented subject and its ekphrastic mirror.  Nevertheless,
>while literary critics of the past few decades have observed that 
>ekphrasis engages various gendered dynamics, still,
>scholarship tends to focus solely upon texts (and the function of 
>gender within texts) authored by men.
>
>
>
>What might characterize ekphrastic texts by women?  Ekphrasis that 
>is feminist and/or queer?  What considerations--formal,
>historical, material, phenomenological, and philosophical--would be 
>involved in conceiving of such projects?   For instance,
>if temporality and spatiality are both to be considered in relation 
>to ekphrastic writing, what happens when we consider
>gendered spaces--or how the sex/gender system affects the 
>signification of particular bodies, objects or iconographies in
>space, over time?  What happens, as Judith Halberstam and Lee 
>Edelman have each recently considered, when we eschew
>"reproductive futurism" and reflect upon the possibilities and 
>implications of queer time?  How are accounts of the varied
>desires and pleasures associated with verbal and visual arts 
>inflected by positing a female reader/spectator?  How are
>ekphrastic texts considered through the lenses of gender and 
>sexuality different from other kinds of literary appropriations
>and revisions?
>
>
>
>In light of and in addition to the above questions, possible topics 
>might include:
>
>
>
>Feminist, anti-feminist, queer ekphrasis
>
>Narrative transvestism, linguistic mastery
>
>  "Fine" and "domestic" arts
>
>Ekphrastic poetry vs. fiction, art criticism or texts of mixed genres
>
>Beauty, ugliness, disgust
>
>Silence, violence, envoicing
>
>Landscapes, interiors, museums, academies
>
>Spectators, connoisseurs, professionals, amateurs
>
>Referents, re-visions; the model, role models
>
>Satire, irony, style
>
>Performance, performativity, citationality, disidentification
>
>Production, consumption, reception
>
>Desires, pleasures, perversions, subversions
>
>
>
>Authors, texts and topics related to women's ekphrastic texts from 
>any time period are welcome, as are interdisciplinary and
>cross-period approaches.
>
>
>
>Of note: A major university press has expressed serious interest in 
>an edited collection of scholarly essays on this topic.
>Although I will issue a separate CFP for the essay collection in a 
>few months, I hope to generate a preliminary pool of
>potential contributors from among these MLA proposals.  Inquiries are welcome.
>
>
>
>Please submit proposals consisting of paper title, 1-2 page abstract 
>and a brief CV to [log in to unmask]  by March 1,
>2006.
>
>
>
>Jill R. Ehnenn
>
>Department of English
>
>Appalachian State University
>
>Boone, NC 28607
>

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