The American Politics of Death:

Death and mourning have long marked the landscape of American politics. Authors and politicians rely upon images of death to galvanize their political agendas; marginalized communities rewrite death as an opportunity for empowerment and liberation rather than oppression and extinction; monuments and spaces of loss become sites for public and political expression. In all of these ways, the individual – even “local” – event of death is politicized with profound implications for national and global societies. This panel examines the intricate relationship between death and American politics as expressed in literary texts, historical events, and popular culture.

Papers might address literatures of grief and loss, the erotics of death, specific deaths in American political history, acts of mourning and commemoration, national memory, the racialization of death, media representations of death, etc. Scholars who are interested in addressing the events of Sept. 11 are welcomed; scholars whose work takes a historical approach are especially encouraged. Send a one page abstract and one page CV, preferably by email, to the address below. Deadline: Jan 7 2002