NeMLA Annual Convention – Baltimore, MD 23-26 March 2017
Depression-era literature is often regarded in stark contrast to the periods that frame it—the 1920s and the postwar—which have been deemed altogether more compatible with each other both thematically and stylistically. American writers of the Thirties, as the story goes, tended to immerse themselves in the political culture of the period, eschewing modernist concerns in favor of deterministic narratives that offered scathing social criticism and echoed a leftist agenda. Indeed, the period has been critically defined by the work of writers like John Steinbeck, Jack Conroy, James Agee, Michael Gold, and Richard Wright and more generally by the mode of the proletarian genre.
Critics such as Michael Denning and Michael Szalay have in recent years done much to showcase the Thirties as a dynamic period of literary invention that would anticipate the personal, surreal, and darkly comic narratives of the postwar writers. Yet more work can be done to challenge the literary-historical paradigm of Depression-era literature as deeply and necessarily entwined with political discourse and the proletarian genre.
Proposals are invited that address the other side of writers and writing from the 1930s.
Themes to consider include but are not limited to:
Humorous and satirical fiction and poetry of the 1930s
Fantasy and horror texts from the 1930s
Harlem Renaissance writers of the 1930s
Work from the 1930s of notable postwar writers (eg: Ralph Ellison and John Cheever)
Modernist writing in the 1930s
Lesser known or forgotten Thirties writers
Expatriate writers (eg: Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller)
The Detective form
Autobiography
Please submit 300 word abstracts alongside a short bio before September 30th (confirmation will be sent by October 15th) through the NeMLA submission page: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16138
Applicants are not required to be NeMLA members at the time of submission but accepted speakers will have to become members by December 1st, 2016.
For further information contact Sara Rutkowski at sararutkowski@gmail.com or consult http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html
Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2016