Topics of Recent NYCEA Conferences

Spring 2008 Conference
Topic: Reconcilliation: Word over all, beautiful as the sky
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY
A conference exploring reconciliation in the literature of all periods, authors, genres, and countries.  Papers examined a range of topics including the process toward reconciliation, reconciliation as a temporary measure, reconciliation and denouement, reconciliation and myth, reconciliation and conflict, the narrative of reconciliation, forgiveness, truth and reconciliation, and alienation/discomfiture, disclosure and reconciliation.

Fall 2007 Conference
Topic: The Thread of Narrative:  Directions and Digressions in the Storytelling Process
Daemen College, Amherst, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of storytelling from traditional plot development, experimental prose or poetry, and the internal logic of the text to the effect of chaos or quantum theory on narrative process, rising and falling action, and Freitag’s triangle.

Spring 2007 Conference
Topic: Literature and Evolution/ Literature and Revolution
SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, NY
A conference exploring all aspects of literature and literary studies concerned with “Literature and Evolution / Literature and Revolution,” exploring all facets of the reading experience, the many relationships between literature and allied disciplines, and a wide range of biographical, aesthetic, social, and political possibilities, including literature and political revolution, authorial or stylistic “evolution,” “progress” as a literary trope, and teaching revolutionary literature.

Fall 2006 Conference
Topic: Ethnicity, Literature and Language
Utica College, Utica, NY
How does ethnicity impact the teaching, and study of language and literature?  How is ethnic history, identity, and regional or local color captured in language and literature?  Possible topics include:  ethnicity and gender, teaching ethnic studies, ethnic memoir, ethnic politics, immigration, New York history/literature, and ethnicity and disability.

Spring 2006 Conference
Topic: Resistance to Tyranny — Representing the Struggle for Human Rights in Literature
Marymount College of Fordham University, Tarrytown, NY
In an interview with Amnesty International, Chilean writer and activist Ariel Dorfman explains that, despite efforts to silence survivors of human rights violations, “Somehow the stories do come out, those voices do come out.  I am not their voice:  I make a space for those voices, a bridge.”  Dorfman’s insights raise questions about the role of literature in the struggle for human rights.  How do writers represent often unspeakable crimes against humanity and create a cultural memory that recognizes the forgotten or marginalized voices from the past?  What does it mean to bear witness through literature?  How has the struggle for human rights, for various forms of freedom, found representation and support in different ways throughout history?  These questions can apply to human rights issues across cultures, and continents as well as centuries.

Fall 2005 Conference
Topic: Crepuscular Consciousness — Literature and the Obscure
Nazareth College, Rochester, NY
The function of obscurity in literature greatly exceeds the mere refusal to “be clear.”  Ambiguity, liminality and shadowy reality engage readers in a relationship with texts that demands imagination, interpretation, and, often, a suspension of the urge to simplify and hurtle forward toward the end (of a text, of a class, of a thought).  These elements create atmosphere, challenge the process of meaning making and make us work.

Spring 2005 Conference
Topic: Cartographies
Siena College, Loudonville, NY
Literature and maps might be said to share the same enterprise. As Paul Theroux wrote, in "a sense, the world was once blank...and...cartography made it visible and glowing with detail." Like maps, literature plots paths through uncharted territories, trying to make visible what before sat unnoticed. It shapes and transforms experiences into a new kind of knowledge, a new way of seeing with what Margaret Atwood terms our "third eye," the eye that shows us that "this truth is not the only truth."

Fall 2004 Conference
Topic: Crossing Borders
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
Challenging boundaries and interweaving texts, the current focus on interdisciplinary studies has enlivened our critical and conceptual environment.  What is the role of writing and literature in relation to such fields as philosophy, history, drama, cultural studies, science, linguistics, math, and communications? 


Spring 2004 Conference
Topic:  The Doors of Perception: Vision, Imagination & Reaction In/To Literature
SUNY Albany, Albany, NY
Imagination allows us to see what does not physically exist; it shapes our thoughts and, as Shakespeare said, gives to airy nothingness a local habitation and a name.  Perception organizes our reality, particularizes our responses and provides for different visions of the same event.  Literary characters, literary critics, teachers and students of literature and writing open doors of perception with every act of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Fall 2003 Conference
Topic:  The "I" of the Beholder: Narrative Voice and Imagined Reality
St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY
What are the sources of authority and conviction in literature? What makes an imagined reality seem "real"? How do issues of gender, culture, and history inform the creation and reception of a narrative voice? NYCEA invites proposals for papers by any author, from any time period, about (or in) any genre.