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Intro/Welcome (James Davis, Hannah Cohen)
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2020
Keynote Speaker: TBD
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to bcgradconference@gmail.com by March 15, 2020.
The Batman villain “Two-Face” Harvey Dent famously said, “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” The distinction between hero and villain, however, is not always obvious, and becomes particularly unclear in the case of the anti-hero/ine––an unconventional protagonist who subverts the traits of a typical hero. As a complex protagonist, the anti-hero/ine often disregards morality for a larger narrative purpose. But who determines the moral values by which the protagonist is evaluated? The anti-hero/ine’s motivations––sometimes for the greater good, other times for selfish ends––are often complicated and arguably represent humanity in a more honest sense than an altruistic hero. Where then is the line between a hero and an anti-hero/ine?
Additionally, how and why have our notions of the anti-hero/ine changed over time? The anti-hero and the anti-heroine did not develop in tandem, or to equal extent. The term “anti-hero” was first used in 1712, but the term “anti-heroine” did not surface until 1907. What caused the rise of the anti-hero in the 1700s but deterred the anti-heroine until the 1900s? Before 1907, where were the anti-heroines? Did they not exist, or were they called by a different name? How do anti-heroes (e.g. Holden Caulfield, Bigger Thomas, Patrick Bateman, Jay Gatsby) compare against anti-heroines (e.g. Annie Allen, Emma Bovary, Hedda Gabler)?
This conference seeks to explore and interrogate the roles, contexts and experiences of the anti-hero/ine across fiction, poetry, film, and other adaptive creations of texts (e.g. video games, plays, etc.). We invite discussions from scholars specializing in any time period, genre, and theoretical approach. Writers are encouraged to analyze a single anti-hero/ine, compare and contrast multiple representations, or challenge the concept of an anti-hero/ine in its entirety.
Additional questions to explore:
Saturday, May 6, 2017 Penthouse, seventh floor, Student Center
Friday, May 6, 2016 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Student Center
Friday, May 8, 2015 Occidental and International lounges, Student Center
Keynote speaker Michelle Ann Stephens is associate professor of English and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. The author of Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914 to 1962, and Skin Acts: Race, Psychoanalysis, and the Black Male Performer (both published by Duke University Press), Stephens is also a member of the editorial collective of the Radical History Review.
April 25, 2014 State Lounge, fifth floor, Student Center
Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library Saturday, April 13, 2013
411 Brooklyn College Library
Wayne Koestenbaum, Distinguished Professor of English, CUNY Graduate Center
Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library April 28, 2012
2315 Boylan Hall
Discussion with audience to follow.
April 10, 2010 Brooklyn College
Keynote: Professor Steven Kruger, English and Medieval Studies, CUNY Graduate Center
If one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English studies in the later nineteenth century, one could do worse than reply, “the failure of religion.”—Terry Eagleton
Literature would begin wherever one no longer knows who writes and who signs the narrative of the call—and of the “Here I Am”—between the absolute Father and Son.—Jacques Derrida
The concept of “God,” in our increasingly pluralist postmodern environment, is protean and subject to vastly divergent individual definitions. Yet gods are often regarded as the most objective and stable nuclei of religious communities. Whereas gods may be imagined as idealized selves, and may epitomize correct morality for a believer, they may simultaneously be said to function as political and rhetorical devices—dangerously slippery proxies of both transcendent subjectivity and faith-based violence.
One of the more liberating tasks of literary criticism, especially since the latter half of the 20th century, has been its attempt to uncover traces of dominant structures that lie dormant in literary texts. Marxist criticism has brought an examination of economic structures in a text. Feminist criticism has brought a critique of patriarchal forces. Postcolonial thought has unfolded the effects of colonialism and imperialism. Where, one might ask, is the criticism of religious power, and how might it be foregrounded? Unlike other modes of thought, religious discourse is uniquely protected by a veneer of the sacred, which allows it to be self-censoring or, as Derrida said, auto-immunizing. Literary criticism operates as a sort of secular exegesis; it is perhaps for this reason, and because of the pseudo-religious assumptions of criticism, that religion is often elided from critical inquiry. What might a post-religious criticism reveal about the religious forces at work within texts and canons? Within criticism itself?
From the feudal warrior culture of Beowulf to the heretical Catholicisms of Ulysses, religious forces are active, whether as narrative fulcra or dynamic backdrops. Literary works such as The Song of Roland depict warring factions of religionists, each with a god-concept at the helm of their ideological battleship. Dissecting these gods with the tools of cultural criticism has the potential to bring new insight, and to uncover power structures previously unnoticed. How might we discover, for instance, textual evidence for ways in which religions have been used as a means of solidifying tribal identity, and for ways in which religions have been the ideological forces behind genocide? This conference seeks to explore the significance of the “post-religious” in all of its senses, both as an object of literary representation and as a condition of literary study.
Sample topics might include, but are by no means limited to:
Abstracts of no more than 300 words are due by January 31, 2010. Send them in the body of your e-mail.
April 18, 2009 Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
Buffet and “Meet our Doctoral Students” event involving Ryan Dobran, Melissa Sande, Osvaldo Oyola, Ryan Everitt, and others.
Simon Critchley, Chair of Philosophy, The New School, “Mystical Anarchism”
Panel Discussion:
Under the Influence was organized by: Steve D’Amato, Clare Callahan, James Davis, Mike Dell’Aquila, Michael DiBerardino, Ryan Dobran, Joseph Entin, Jarad Kriwicki, Nicola Masciandaro, Mark Patkowski, Risa Shoup, and Emily Workman.
May 3, 2008 Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
Session 1: Bodies
Lunch Break
Session 2: Places
Session 3: Selves
Break
Keynote Presentation
Michael Stone-Richards, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, “Un nouveau temps du verbe être [a new time/tense for the verb to be]: Surrealist nature and the time of the subject in Prynne”
Panel Discussion
Vernal Temporalities was organized by: Steve D’Amato, James Davis, Ryan Dobran, Timothy Holland, Nicola Masciandaro, Mark Patkowski, Deb Travis, and Sally White.
