We invite proposals for a seminar to be held at next Spring's American Comparative Literature annual conference at the Pennsylvania State University, March 11-13, 2005. This seminar will assess what is living and what is dead in the notion of avant-gardism. Is it possible to discuss the avant-garde in the singular, as a singular entity? Can avant-gardism be generalized as a set of radical aesthetic, political, and cultural practices, or is such radicalism contingent upon specific historical, political, and even interpretive conditions?

We welcome papers that interrogate the status of avant-gardism within the contemporary intellectual climate, either as a critical concept or as the self-definition of radical aesthetic or political movements; we also welcome papers that aim to further our understanding of the historical and political role played by avant-garde movements in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. What might a sustained attention to the notion of avant-gardism reveal about the relationship between aesthetics and history, between art and power, or between radicalism and “progress”?

Please submit 200-word abstracts by October 15, directly to the ACLA conference website at the web address given below.

For additional details, please consult the ACLA website at www.acla.org