Hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, along with other departments and programs in the humanities and the creative arts, the conference will focus on a central theme: “The Human and Its Others.”

What does it mean to be‚ or not be‚ Human? In the long history of attempts to draw boundaries around the human, in efforts to define its mental, spiritual, physical, and linguistic particularities, as well as its ideals, its failures, and, in the view of some, its extinction in a posthuman era, literature has encountered almost every other discipline and domain of experience. It has also participated in the creation of a series of Others, against which, and whom‚ the human has defined and measured itself.

Looking to literary examples and theoretical distinctions, to changes through time and through cultures, to explanations arising from modern technologies as well as from ancient myths, we will highlight a range of questions:

How does literature, along with the other creative arts, help define the human? How do definitions differ according to time and place? How elastic is the idea of the human? How has it been shaped by religion, politics, philosophy, science, economics, medicine, and technology? Against what images, ideas, dreams, and nightmares has it been defined and refined? And why does it seem to be a particularly pertinent, if not pressing, concern for us today? The conference invites discussion of these various issues as they have helped create our sense of literature, the Humanities, and, of course, the study of Comparative Literature.

About the Annual Meeting

The ACLA’s annual conferences have a distinctive structure in which most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day for the three days of the conference to foster extended discussion. Some eight-person (or smaller) seminars meet just the first two days of the conference. This structure allows each participant to be a full member of one seminar, and to sample other seminars during the remaining time blocks. Previous conference programs that show this pattern are available online at the ACLA website. The conference also includes plenary sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events.

You can find more details on seminars, the schedule of events, how to register for the conference and for membership in the ACLA, reserve a hotel room, and travel to Princeton.