ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

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:

1. How is the Subject constituted within the text on a formal, structural or aesthetic level?
2. Is there any Subjectivity achieved outside the text?
3. 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?
4. What is the relationship between the Subjective (the world of the Subject) and the Objective (the world of the object) world?
5. What is Subjectivity? What is its relation to the environment? Does Subjectivity necessarily imply consciousness and agency?
6. What are some moral consequences of subjectivity?

Friday, March 24

Jacqueline Loeb, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
“The Endless Subject: Human as Text in Borges and Eco”
German Campos-Munoz, The Pennsylvania State University
“The ‘Somatic Psyche’: Animal Representations in The Iliad and José Watanabe’s ‘Cosas del Cuerpo’”
Heather Latimer, Simon Fraser University
“‘Unnatural’ Subjectivity in Shelly Jackson’s Patchwork Girl”
Paulette Lane, University of South Florida
“Death is Woven in With the Violets: Subjectivity Revisited in Levinas and Woolf”

Saturday, March 25

Patricia Ferrer-Medina, Trinity College/Rutgers University
“Ecological Difference and Modern Subjectivity in 16th century Travel Narrative to the Caribbean”
Cheryl Lousley, York University/Wilfrid Laurier University
“Subject/Matter: Narrative Form and Environmental Degradation”
Atreyee Phukan, Rutgers University
“The Ecology in Creolization: A Reading of Harold Ladoo’s ‘No Pain Like This Body’”
Linda Williams, RMIT University
“Modernity, Subjectivity, and the Non-Human world: An Eliasian”

Sunday, March 26

Xianfeng Mou, Purdue University
“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Black Woman: Hurston’s Construction of Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God”
John Peterson, Claremont Graduate University
“Landscape, Ancestry, Language: N. Scott Momaday’s Act of Self Creation”
Stanka Radovic, Cornell University
“Tarkovsky’s Uncanny Landscape: Estrangement and Self-Discovery in Stalker”
Haihong Yang, The University of Iowa
“The ‘Evental’ Reading of Subjectivity in Pre-modern Chinese Landscape Poetry”