Topic: The Cultural Contexts of American Metafiction
This session invites papers that explore the cultural contexts of American metafiction: i.e. how American texts use metafictional strategies to resist and/or expose the ideological/cultural implications of novelistic conventions. Because the genre of the novel shapes and embodies issues of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or identity (to name only a few obvious elements), the self-reflexive turn of metafiction can provide a means of interrogating the manner in which the conventions of the novel circumscribe these and other important cultural elements. The relationships between the conventions of the novel, the ideological content inherent within novelistic conventions, and the elements of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or identity which are bounded by these conventions are what I mean to suggest under the rubric the "cultural contexts" of American metafiction.
Prospective panelists need not be members of the NEMLA to submit a proposal; but selected panelists must be members of the NEMLA by November 1, 1996 in order to have their names included in the convention program.
Send two page abstracts of your proposal, postmarked no later than September 15, 1996, to any of the following address/e-mail/fax. Selected panelists will be notified no later than October 15, 1996.
snail mail: Grant Stirling
Dept. of English
York University
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M3J 1P3
e-mail: stirling@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
fax: (416) 736-5412