Welcome to SAAS

Call For Papers for Our Next Conference

"A Return to (What Never Was) Normal: Discourses of (Ab)Normalcy in US Culture, Literature, Arts, and Politics; Past, Present, and Futures"

PANEL 10

10) "Illness, Recovery, and the American (Im)Possibility of Normative Bodies/Minds"
Panel Chair: Claudia Alonso-Recarte, Universitat de València
E-mail: Claudia.Alonso@uv.es  

In recent years, academia has witnessed a surge in the study and shaping of what have come to be known as Medical Humanities. Such interdisciplinary field aims to describe, articulate, and analyze the psychological, cultural, and social experience of disease as illness—that is, as an organic system of structures and meanings that link the body, the self and society—through representations in literary and aesthetic expression. Societal markers of identity such as gender, race, class, and nationality, of course, reveal themselves in these contexts as transversal factors that affect the conceptualization and manifestation of the ill body or mind as a discursive construct. Narratives about the diagnosis, treatment and (im)possibility of recovery inevitably intersect with perceptions and experiences having to do with normative understandings and expectations regarding gendered bodies, sound minds, and culturally and ideologically acceptable attitudes and worldviews. This panel aims to address how these multiple discourses on illness are negotiated within the wider spectrum of the exploration of "normalcy," and how such process assists in the implosion of the normative and the reexamination of gender, class, and race-based boundaries. We welcome paper proposals from the fields of literary/film/cultural studies specifically dealing with how these intersections speak to America's own evolving perception of these identity markers, and also about the nation's agency and place as a fabricator of beliefs and impressions surrounding medical research and the healthcare system.

GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPANTS

Abstracts of Proposals are to be e-mailed directly to the chair of the selected panel using this form. The deadline for submitting abstracts is October 15, 2022. Panel chairs are expected to accept/reject proposals and have panels set up by November 7.

Non-members of SAAS (of all nationalities) are welcome to participate in the conference, but will be required to pay membership dues for one year as well as the conference registration fee. Members of ASA (American Studies Association), AISNA (Associazione Italiana di Studi Nor-Americani), APEAA (Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies) and HELAAS (Hellenic Association for American Studies) need only pay the conference registration fee.

Further guideliness for participants can be found here.