The 25th AISNA Biennial Conference: ‘Gate(d) Ways. Enclosures, Breaches and Mobilities Across U.S. Boundaries and Beyond’

The conference takes place in Ragusa, Sicily with the Università degli Studi di Catania from September 26th to the 28th.  All the information can be found in the link below:
http://www.sdslingue.unict.it/it/content/call-papers-1

Panel: Walls as Tropes of Separation and Contact in American Literature

Strictly speaking, the definition of the word “wall” suggests a separation as well as an enclosure. But what if the wall is represented not as a permanent division, but rather a permeable membrane between the inside and outside? What kind of contact takes place through the wall and despite it? What is the epistemological relevance of the wall in literature? “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” is the opening line of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall.” The scrivener Bartleby, in Melville’s most memorable tale, chooses to spend most of his time staring out of his office’s window at a brick wall. How has the wall been portrayed in American literature? How does this fit in and compare to the wider context of World Literature? The wall can function as spatial and generic demarcation and at the same time it can represent a desire for transgression and hybridity. The US myth of the frontier is in itself a metaphorical wall of separation that has been negotiated and renegotiated, written and rewritten – and thus reappropriated – over time. Moreover, notions of “walls” are in constant evolution, and can be considered as being the product of historical, social and political relations, weaving a network of representations and mental images.

This panel will specifically focus on critical relations between interior and exterior, the known and the unknown, form and formlessness, flux and fixity, absence and presence, real and imaginary geographies, forms or acts of “translation” in the etymological sense of “carrying across.” In the absence of a physical wall, what are the metaphorical representations of borders, margins, thresholds and gate(way)s? How might these be read as a creative re-use of walls? The coordinators invite proposals for papers on fiction and non-fiction, prose and poetry, translation, ecocriticism, geocriticism and spatial literary studies in American literature.

Panel Coordinators:
Paola Loreto, University of Milan, paola.loreto@unimi.it
Margarida Cadima, University of Glasgow, mcadima@gm.slc.edu

Paper proposals (max. 300 words) should be submitted, together with a brief biographical note, to the Panel Coordinator(s), to the Conference Organizer Gigliola Nocera (noceragi@unict.it) and to the Aisna Secretary Simone Francescato (segretario-aisna@unive.it) by June 15, 2019. Successful proponents will be notified by June 30, 2019.