ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others
Princeton University, March 23-26, 2006
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Natural Subjectivity: The Textual Making of the Human or Natural Subject
Last modified March 20, 2006Seminar Leader(s):
Patricia Ferrer-Medina, Rutgers University/Trinity CollegeJackie Loeb, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
This panel seeks to explore the textual construction of Human, Animal, and/or Environmental Subjectivity in relation to each other. Papers from any theoretical approach will be welcomed, especially from: Ecological Criticism, Gender, Postcolonial, Ethnic, Subaltern Studies, Philosophical, or Psychoanalytical perspectives. Different definitions of Subjectivity are also welcomed. Though the object of study can be any text/s, fiction or not, belonging to any period or tradition, the paper should focus on the way the text constitutes the subject (Human, Animal, or Environmental). It should seek to answer these or similar questions:
- How is the Subject constituted within the text on a formal, structural or aesthetic level?
- Is there any Subjectivity achieved outside the text?
- Is this a speaking subject? Who is s/he speaking to? What are the consequences of this speech? Is any kind of agency attained through this speech?
- What is the relationship between the Subjective (the world of the Subject) and the Objective (the world of the object) world?
- What is Subjectivity? What is its relation to the environment? Does Subjectivity necessarily imply consciousness and agency?
- What are some moral consequences of subjectivity?
Neurology and Literature, 1800-present
Last modified March 17, 2006Seminar Leader(s):
Anne Stiles, UCLAMaria Farland, Fordham University
Neurologists from the nineteenth century to the present have actively engaged in debates about what it means to be human. For instance, late-Victorian laboratory experiments on the brains of frogs, dogs, pigeons and monkeys suggested that animal and human brains are uncomfortably similar. These findings caused scientists and laymen alike to ponder whether humans are soulless automata. This seminar will explore how literary authors after 1800 have intervened in debates regarding brain function. In so doing, we aim to fill a prominent gap in current scholarship. Although there has been much excellent work on the relationship between literature and science in recent years, there has been very little discussion of the traffic between neurology and literature. Rather than suggesting that neurology influenced literature or vice versa, this seminar will emphasize the complex dialogue between these two disciplines. To that end, we will consider papers examining literature from a neurological perspective, as well as papers performing literary explications of neurological texts.