Here, there be monsters

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CALL FOR PAPERS

The Undead
A conference at the University of California at Berkeley

October 19-20, 2006
Hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature

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From age-old whisperings of spirits and ghosts to the contemporary
explosion of cultural interest in zombies, the concept of the undead is
one that refuses to die.

Inspired by the profusion of the undead across so many literatures, we are
seeking papers from a variety of disciplines that explore the significance
of the undead in any cultural context or time period. We also welcome work
that takes the undead as an optic to study bodies, texts, concepts, and
cultures that are at the intersections life and death.

The undead is also a potent symbolic index for the instability of various
categories of subjectivity, such as race, gender, class, and nationality.
We are looking for papers that focus on these entangled figures.

We are interested in works that address the many forms of haunting, from
discussions of authorial influence and working in a "dead" language, to
investigations of spectrality in critical theory and the persistence of
trauma or melancholia.

Through this interdisciplinary conference, we seek to understand the
status of the undead in literature, the arts, and critical theory.

Some possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- zombies and automatons
- vampires and parasitism
- ghosts and folk beliefs
- figurations of race and gender
- organ transplants, brain death, stem cells, phantom limbs
- reanimating/preserving languages
- trauma, melancholia
- martyrdom
- conceptual hauntings
- creative inspiration
- authorial influence
- biopolitics and the human

We welcome submissions from graduate students, faculty, and independent
scholars in disciplines including but not limited to literary studies,
anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, critical race
theory, film studies, folklore, performance studies, linguistics,
musicology, sociology, political science, rhetoric, art history, and area
studies.

Please send abstracts of about 400 words to undead.conference@gmail.com by
September 1, 2006.

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