Equinoxes 2012, Brown University French Studies Graduate Conference

EQUINOXES 2012 Call For Conference Papers Transgression(s)

April 20-21, 2012 | Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island Keynote speaker: Sylvaine Guyot
Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Harvard University

The notion of transgression is a ubiquitous theme of humankind’s history. The word in itself evokes the act of overstepping a defining boundary between what is lawful from criminal; what is permitted from forbidden; what is good from evil. To transgress is to bend a norm, to infringe upon a law, to violate a proscription, to go beyond what society deems a prescribed limit. Transgression, therefore, raises the question of the norms and values on which a group or community is founded, along with the question of the conditions under which one will or will not be considered as a member of the group. The various effects that are expected from the transgressive act or behaviour - effects of emancipation, salvation, or inversely of destruction, regression - and the various modes of social regulation of transgression - punishment, absolution - are some other aspects of the question from which it is possible to deeply explore the representations of the norm and anti-norm in French and Francophone literature.

In the aim of investigating the various stakes pertaining to the notion of transgression, we invite submissions in literary, cultural, and media studies dealing with all periods and genres of cultural production from all areas of the French-speaking world.

Potential avenues of exploration may include but are not limited to:

aesthetics of transgression
logics and/or aesthetics of the scandal, the shock sacrality, aura
passion, excess, violence, irrationality representations of the body, erotics, pleasures notion of the Other
power, domination, emancipation
breaking knowledge barriers
temporality, spatiality, universality of transgression taboos, prohibitions
judgement, punishment, redemption, catharsis activism, radicalism
performance, "actionism"
knowledge, initiation, truth

Graduate students who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of roughly 250 words. The presentations, in French or English, should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts with name, institutional affiliation and address to brown.equinoxes@gmail.com before January 15, 2012.

The conference proceedings will be published in the Equinoxes electronic journal (http:// www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes).