DESIRING THE TEXT, TOUCHING THE PAST: TOWARDS AN EROTICS OF RECEPTION
A one-day conference co-organized by
The Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition &
the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
University of Bristol, 10 July 2010
Keynote Speaker: Professor Carolyn Dinshaw, NYU
CALL FOR PAPERS
In reading Cicero's letters I felt charmed and offended in equal
measure. Indeed, beside myself, in a fit of anger I wrote to him as
if he were a friend and contemporary of mine, forgetting, as it
were, the gap of time, with a familiarity appropriate to my intimate
acquaintance with his thought; and I pointed out those things he had
written that had offended me. (Petrarch, Rerum Familiarum Liber I.1.42)
Love, desire, fannish obsession and emotional identification as
modes of engaging with texts, characters and authors are often
framed as illegitimate and transgressive: excessive, subjective,
lacking in scholarly rigour. Yet such modes of relating to texts and
pasts persist, across widely different historical periods and
cultural contexts. Many classical and medieval authors recount
embodied and highly emotional encounters with religious, fictional
or historical characters, while modern and postmodern practices of
reception and reading - from high art to the subcultural practices
of media fandom - are characterized by desire in all its ambivalent
complexity. Theories of readership and reception, however, sometimes
seem unable to move beyond an antagonistic model: cultural studies
sees resistant audiences struggling to gain control of or to
overwrite an ideologically loaded text, while literary models of
reception have young poets fighting to assert their poetic autonomy
vis-a-vis the paternal authority of their literary ancestors.
This conference aims, by contrast, to begin to elaborate a theory of
the erotics of reception. It will bring together scholars working in
and across various disciplines to share research into reading,
writing and viewing practices characterized by love, identification,
and desire: we hope that it will lead to the establishment of an
international research network and the formulation of some long-term
research projects. In order to facilitate discussion at the
conference, we will ask participants to circulate full papers
(around 5,000 words) in May 2010.
We now invite abstracts of 300 words, to be submitted by email by 30
November 2009. Abstracts will be assessed on the basis of their
theoretical and interdisciplinary interest. We particularly welcome
contributions from scholars working on literary, visual and
performance texts in the fields of: history, reception studies,
mediaeval studies, fan studies, cultural studies, theology, and
literary/critical theory.
Some ideas which might be addressed include, but are not limited to:
* Writing oneself into the text: self-insertion and empathetic identification
* Historical desire: does the historian desire the past?
* Hermeneutics and erotics
* Pleasures of the text, pleasures of the body: (how) are embodied
responses to the text gendered?
* Anachronistic reading: does desire disturb chronology?
* Erotics and/or eristics: love-hate relationships with texts
This conference is part of the 'Thinking Reciprocity' series and
will follow directly from the conference 'Reception and the Gift of
Beauty' (Bristol, 8-9 July 2010). Reduced fees will be offered to
people attending both conferences.
If you have any queries, or to submit an abstract, please contact
one of the conference organizers:
Dr Ika Willis ((Ika.Willis /at/ bristol.ac.uk))
Anna Wilson ((anna.wilson /at/ utoronto.ca))
