CEA 2007 -- Special Session on "Self and Other: Defining, Constructing, and Representing Relationships through Empathy and Ethics"

The 38th Annual College English Association Conference New Orleans, Louisiana, April 12-14, 2007

Deadline for all proposals: November 1, 2006

I am coordinating a set of panels on the topic of "Self and Other: Defining, Constructing, and Representing Relationships through Empathy and Ethics," for the 2007 National College English Association Annual Conference. We welcome individual and panel presentation proposals that address the ways in which relationships build on, negotiate, and/or lack a framework of empathy and ethics between oneself and others.

In An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the Nameless Others, Edith Wyschogrod raises significant questions with her statement: "The history of ethics attests that, from the pre-Socratics to the present, philosophers have attempted to adjudicate the conflicting claims of self and other, to frame a concept of justice that would subsume them" (xii). To what extent is "justice" an appropriate model for conceptualizing and evaluating relationships? What types of "conflicting claims" circumscribe and dominate different types of relationships? What role do empathy and ethics play in determining the way we relate to others? How do issues of power and equality impact our ability to empathize with others and to relate to others in ethical ways?

Proposals might consider the history, politics, and representation of the empathy and ethics of relationships, as they relate to our personal, professional, and academic lives. Some possible issues are:

•Classroom relationships: teacher--student; student--student; student/school--object of study
•Cultural constructions of relationships between the individual and his/her community
•Continuity and change in historical concepts of "relationship"
•The role of empathy and ethics in defining relationships as normative versus "deviant"
•Memory and forgetting of the "other"
•Ethics and empathy as ways of reifying or dissolving boundaries between "self" and "other"
•Speaking for "the other"
•Recovery of the lost or missing "other"
•Assimilation of/affiliation with the "other"

Submission Guidelines

CEA asks that you submit your proposal electronically through our conference management database housed at the following web address:

http://english.ttu.edu/cea/conftool

Abstracts for proposals should be between 200 and 500 words in length and should include a title.

Submitting electronically is a two-step process: (1) setting up a user ID, then (2) using that ID to log in-this time to a welcome page which provides a link for submitting proposals to the conference.

If submitting a panel, panel organizers should create user IDs for all proposed participants.

Panel organizers should include the above information for all proposed participants.

• Name
• Institutional affiliation (if applicable)
• Mailing address (including zip code)
• Phone number
• E-mail address
• Title for the proposed presentation.
• Abstract of 200-500 words
• A-V equipment needs, if any
• Special needs, if any

If you are willing to serve as a session chair or respondent, please indicate this in your cover letter.

Important Information

Address any other conference correspondence to the Program Chair.

Ed Demerly
English Division
Henry Ford Community College
5101 Evergreen Road
Dearborn MI 48128-1495
Office Phone: 313.645.9659
Email: edemerly@aol.com

CEA membership is required for all presenters. Conference registration material will arrive in January and will indicate registration fee payment deadlines at that time. However, CEA membership dues must be paid by January 1, 2007, for presenters' names to appear on the program.

•To preserve time for discussion, CEA limits all presentations to 15 minutes.
•Notifications of proposal status will be sent around December 5th.
•All presenters must join CEA by 1 January, 2007 to appear on the program.
•No one may read more than one paper at the conference.
•CEA does not sponsor or fund travel or underwrite participant costs.

Note to Graduate Students

Graduate students may submit their conference presentation for the CEA Best Papers Award, which carries a small prize. Information on how to submit that paper will be sent to accepted panelists after the membership deadline.

Graduate students are asked to identify themselves in their proposals so that we might send information about the Best Paper Award when it is available.

Special Panel Coordinator:
Lisa Bernstein
University of Maryland University College
E-mail: lbernstein@umuc.edu
Fax: 240.582.2993
Phone: 240.582.2838