Latest Calls for Papers

Below is the call for papers for NYCEA’s Fall 2008 conference hosted at the St. Bonaventure University on October 24-25.

1. Download in MS Word Format.
   

2. Download in PDF Format.
   

                            Close Reading:

October 24-25, 2008

St. Bonaventure University

The Fall 2008 NYCEA conference will be held October 24-25, 2008, at St. Bonaventure University, south of Buffalo, NY.  

The keynote speaker, Dr. John J. Mulryan, Trustees Professor of English at St. Bonaventure, will present “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Hermeneutics, Explication de Texte, and Other Early Forms of Close Reading.”

Call for Papers

Abstracts of 250 words are requested by September 15, 2008, on topics related to the conference theme of CLOSE READING.  Please send abstracts electronically to Dr. Lauren P. De La Vars, Chair, English Dept., St. Bonaventure University, ldelavar@sbu.edu.

The term close reading generally means a painstaking examination of the details of language, imagery, figures of speech, and structure in a literary passage with an eye to extrapolating meaning for the broader text.  The practice of close reading is fundamental to New Criticism, formalism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics.  It raises questions and poses special challenges for other critical approaches.

Papers for this conference might conduct a close reading of a literary passage.  Or they might consider any of a wide range of other possibilities:

1. •Is close reading outmoded?
   

2. •What are the benefits of close reading for different genres: fiction, poetry, drama, graphic novels, film, sacred texts?
   

3. •Can digital media be closely read?
   

4. •Is close reading the same as discourse analysis?
   

5. •Do all readers perform close reading the same way?
   

6. •Can close reading yield the truth about a text?
   

7. •Can the subaltern perform a close reading?
   

8. •Is close reading a cultural product?
   

9. •Does close reading always privilege aesthetics and disregard cultural context?
   

10. •What lies beyond close reading?
    

11. •Close reading and the idea of authority
    

12. •Close reading and the English curriculum
    

13. •Close reading and the composition classroom
    

14. •Close reading and interpretive communities
    

15. •Close reading and the male gaze
    

16. •Close reading and postcolonialism/feminism/Marxism/formalism/new historicism
    

250-word abstracts are due by September 15, 2008, to Lauren De La Vars at ldelavar@sbu.edu.