Center for Literary and Comparative Studies

Conferences

Theme for 2012-2013: CIRCUITS AND CIRCULATION

Events organized under the auspices of the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies garner support from grants made available three times in the course of the year. For more information, see the call for projects available here. In addition, the Center, aided by the Graduate School and the College of Arts and Humanities, coordinated a conference scheduled for February 28-March 1, 2013, Complexities 2013.

Graduate students in the department and in the College of Arts and Humanities will also present two conferences:  (Dis)Realities and the Literary and Cultural Imagination, sponsored by the Graduate English Organization and scheduled for Friday, April 5, 2013; and Transformative LItearcies: A Medieval and Early Modern Interdisciplinary Conference, coordinated by the Graduate Field Committee in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and scheduled for Friday and Saturday, April 19-20, 2013.

ARCHIVE OF PAST CONFERENCES

Many of these conferences were designed to support the Center's theme in place from fall 2009 through spring 2012: "Reading: Histories, Practices, Futures." Events were coordinated in conjunction with a variety of partners, including the Center for Historical Studies, the Departments of Art History, Classics, and History, the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and the Graduate School, and the George Washington School of Law.

  • March 29-30, 2012: Race, Law, and American Literary Studies: An Interdisciplinary Conference
  • March 9, 2012: Perspectives on Writing and Rhetoric: A Symposium Honoring Jeanne Fahnestock
  • November 3-4, 2011: Rethinking World Literature/Other World Literatures helped participants redefine and rethink the ways they teach, research, discuss, and conceptualize categories surrounding "world literature."
  • May 6-7, 2011: Bloodwork: The Politics of the Body considered how conceptions of blood permeate discourses of human difference from 1500-1900. "Bloodwork" began with the assumption that the concept of "race" is still under construction and that scholarly understanding of the term would profit through an engagement with its long, evolving history. Ralph Bauer, Kim Coles, Zita Nunes, and Carla Peterson served as the planning committee for this event.
  • April 29, 2011: DC Queer Studies Symposium. Regina Kunzel, University of Minnesota, offered the keynote address. Visit the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Studies Program site to learn more.
  • April 15-17, 2011: Victorian Systems and Archives convened the Northeast Victorian Studies Association for its annual meeting.  How did Victorains organize information, knowledge, concepts, phenomena, and material? How did they classify, categorize, connect, synthesize, and unify? What sorts of technological, conceptual, and theoretical systems did they construct? How did they archive historical records and artifacts? Jason Rudy (jrrudy@umd.edu) was the local host.
  • April 1, 2011: Racial Consciousness in the Medieval & Early Modern Worlds supported the efforts of the Graduate Field Committee in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. It was one of the culminating events of the group's consideration of "A Semester on Race in the Medieval and Early Modern World," which also included a seminar series.
  • March 11-12, 2011: Borderlines, an interdisciplinary symposium coordinated by the Graduate English Organization, convened graduate students to consider the impact of borders "among time-periods, disciplines, critical approaches, and methodologies.
  • March 5, 2011: Modernism, Reading, and the Reader gathers the Washington Area Modernist Colloquium for a day of prepared lectures centered on the subject of interpretation in general and reading in particular. Brian Richardson (richb@umd.edu) is organizing this event.
  • November 4-5, 2010: "Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities" featured keynote addresses by Louis Menand, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard University; Zita Nunes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland; and Erik Zakim, Associate Professor of Hebrew at the University of Maryland. Faculty and graduate students will present recent research to explore the conference topic more fully. Contact Robert Levine (rlevine@umd.edu) for more information.
  • April 16-16, 2010: "Rereading Poets Reading"
    brought together poets, critics, and readers of all levels to interrogate and celebrate reading in the twenty-first century through a variety of interactive seminars, critical presentations, creative writing workshops, and poetry readings. Poet Joe Donahue and Professor of English Marth Nell Smith organized the event, with participation from Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alicia Ostriker, Lara Vetter, Janlori Goldman, and more.
  • October 29-30, 2009: "Stanley Plumley and Poetry" honored one of the foremost poets in the United States. Plumly, Distinguished University Professor of English, is the author of ten books, most recently Posthumous Keats (Norton, 2008) and Old Heart (Norton, 2007), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry and the Paterson Poetry Award for Best Book of 2007. David Baker, Poetry Editor of the Kenyon Review, and David Wyatt, University of Maryland, offered the keynote addresses for this event.