Call for Papers

The Novel: Democracy’s Form?

‘Countless are the novels of the world. So how can we speak of them?’
(Franco Moretti, 2006)

This is a call for papers for ‘The Novel: Democracy’s Form?’, a two-day conference to be held over the 13th and 14th of April 2007 at the University of Sussex. The core purpose of the conference is to explore the contemporary status of the novel within the fields of literary theory, history and philosophy. We are eager to hear from those working on the problems faced when looking at relations between cultural forms and history, and relations between cultural forms and identity. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary, trans-cultural approaches and would, therefore, welcome contributions from the fields of the humanities in general, cultural studies and social and political thought. We aim to attract an international array of contributors to focus and begin exploring the question: is a theory of the novel necessary?

Plenary speakers include:
Nancy Armstrong, Alex Callinicos, Massimo Fusillo (tbc), Richard Godden, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tom Hickey, Declan Kiberd, Michael Levenson, Laura Marcus, Francis Mulhern (tbc), David Trotter, Patricia Waugh.
Papers could be addressed to, but need not be limited by, the following questions:
• Genealogies of the novel; ancient or modern
• The privatization of writing and reading
• Bakhtin
• Theories of the novel and/or narratology
• Globalization and representation
• Modernity and the novel
• The novel as commodity and its markets
• Lukács
• The discourses of democracy
• The Hellenistic/ ‘pre-modern’ novel.
• Migrancy and writing
• Misogyny and the novel
• Resistance narratives and their appropriations
• The ‘global novel’?
• Barthes
• The erotic novel
• Significant shifts: Modernism, Postmodernism…
• Divisions within - 1: The novel and its subgenres
• Divisions within - 2: the ‘literary’, the ‘middlebrow’, the ‘popular’
• Reading novels – the novel and its publics
• Slave narratives
• The future(s) of the novel

Papers should be 20 minutes long. For further details, or to submit a proposal of between 200-300 words, contact: novelconference@sussex.ac.uk. or visit the website at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/english/1-4-1.html The deadline for abstracts is January 31st, 2007.