CFP: To Render Visible: Ekphrastic Mirrors in American Literature

In Ancient rhetorical theory, ekphrasis refers to the use of language to make an audience imagine a scene. However, the deeper function of ekphrasis, implicit in its descriptive use, is its rhetorical ability to call attention to features of a subject that may be invisible to the physical sense of sight—thus using the visible as a means of subtly exposing or revealing the invisible. The NeMLA session, “To Render Visible: Ekphrastic Mirrors in American Literature,” invites papers that explore how the chiasmic reflections of an ekphrasis reveal the interior subjectivity, ideology and the desire of its author.Please submit proposals to the official NeMLA website no later than 09/30/2018.