Bucknell University Humanities Center
Lewisburg, PA, USA
1-4 November 2018
https://buisss18.scholar.bucknell.edu
As we near the centenary mark of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), the movement’s influence continues to reverberate across contemporary poetry, art, film, philosophy, and popular culture. The scholarly study and teaching of surrealism extends correspondingly to arts and humanities fields and departments around the world. The International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) aims to advance surrealism’s widespread cultural and intellectual influence by organizing events and managing channels of information to facilitate cross-disciplinary and inter-regional exchange. The mission of the ISSS is to incorporate and promote new scholarship on global surrealism as well as to introduce new ways to approach its various literary and artistic expressions throughout Europe. In addition, we seek to foster exchanges between practicing artists and writers and the scholarly community for whom surrealism (past and present) is a field of ongoing inquiry.
The Bucknell Humanities Center will host the society’s inaugural conference on 1-3 November 2018. The conference will include scholarly presentations, film screenings, poetry readings, an exhibition on surrealism and new media art, and a performance at the Milton Art Bank. Bucknell University, located in Lewisburg, PA, is a three-hour drive from New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Baltimore. To facilitate travel, the conference will organize a shuttle between the campus and the nearest airport (Harrisburg, PA). The conference website will be online shortly with additional information.
For our inaugural conference we invite proposals for individual papers, panels, or roundtable discussions on any topic related to surrealism in its various incarnations. We are interested in the full range of media across all geographical locations and within all relevant temporal frames. Our goal is to promote new directions in surrealist scholarship and research, bringing surrealist groups and tendencies across continents and archipelagos into conversation. We are especially interested in anti-colonial and postcolonial surrealist activities around the world, including, for example, surrealism in North Africa, trans-Caribbean surrealism, South and Latin American surrealism, Eastern European and Asian surrealism.
Proposals for individual papers (20-minutes) should include a 250-word abstract along with title, affiliation, and contact information. Pre-organized panels submissions, which might include three or four papers per panel, should include an additional paragraph describing the rubric and proposed title of the panel. Roundtables, alternative format panels, and the like are encouraged. We welcome proposals from independent artists and writers interested in presenting their work in a scholarly context. We welcome submissions from graduate students for whom surrealism is central to their research. Those who wish to present in a language other than English may do so, but must also include a précis or translation in English.
Send your proposals to isss2018bucknell@gmail.com by 1 April 2018.
Notification of acceptance by 1 June 2018.
Conference Coordinators:
Jonathan Eburne jpe11@psu.edu
Effthymia Rentzou erentzou@princeton.edu
Roger Rothman roger.rothman@bucknell.edu
Abigail Susik asusik@willamette.edu