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Presenters are needed for the McGill English Department’s 17th Annual Graduate Conference on Language and Literature, titled "Luxuries of the Literary Mind: Readings of Commodity and Privilege," which will take place on the McGill campus in Montreal from March 4 to 6, 2011. The conference will centre on issues of luxury, commodity, and consumption in literature, and other texts and cultural artefacts. Conference papers are invited from all periods and fields of literary study, as well as theatre, film, and cultural studies. Interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., with reference to history, philosophy, science, medicine, economics, art history, religious studies, and other fields) are welcome and encouraged. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the following:
-class and social standing
-wealth and poverty, images of excess and need
-human rights (sexual freedoms, disability rights, etc.) versus social privilege
-the racialization of wealth and status
-iconography, brands and branding, labels, and commodity fetishism
-consumer behaviour and identity
binaries of public/private, high/low, male/female, and -consumer/producer central to markets and marketing
-literary depictions of shopping, markets, fairs
-imperialism, colonialism, trade, and their effects (e.g., environmental degradation, exploitative labour)
-gift-giving, treasure, hoarding
-gender, the body, cosmetic technologies and practices
-camp, ostentation, glamour, performance and performativity
-cultural and aesthetic decadence
-literature as a luxury (e.g., book-making expenses and practices, middle- and upper-class education as privilege)
-How has literature shaped or complicated our sense of luxury and commodity? (e.g., American Psycho, Confessions of a Shopaholic)
-How has literature responded to economic or financial fluctuations?
-Gastronomy, Epicureanism, connoisseurship, and urbanity
-Luxury goods and taxes
-Lifestyle porn (e.g., luxury travel, culture, or celebrity narratives)
Conference presentations should not exceed twenty minutes. Proposals will be blind-vetted, and must include a double-spaced, 250-word abstract plus a cover sheet with your name, university, contact information, and a brief biographical paragraph about your academic interests and achievements. Please send your proposal as an email attachment in .doc or .pdf format to mcgillconference2011@gmail.com by the extended deadline January 14, 2011.
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