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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 Future "

PANEL 2

2) "Abnormal Houses as Sanctuary in US Literature"
Panel Chair: Cristina Alsina Rísquez, Universitat de Barcelona
E-mail: alsina@ub.edu  

US literature is ripe with examples of houses that do not meet the requirements to become "normal" homes because, far from being the haven which offers protection from the world, they have become places of discomfort and pain. Beloved's spiteful house, the homicidal suburban house in Rabe's Sticks and Bones, the menacing houses that pepper the road south of the father and son in McCarthy's The Road serve as examples. The unlivability of those houses can be the result precisely of the demands involved in the hegemonic definition of American house and of American feelings of belongingness.

This panel invites papers that will explore examples of alternative/abnormal houses/homes/dwelling places to be found in US literature that challenge our preconceptions of what a home/house ought to be like. We are interested in the analysis of houses/homes/dwellings that move beyond the unquestionability of the normative households and of the social and economic demands they generate and which, in so doing, engage in what Paula Geyh refers to as unhousing, that is, a movement to the margins of the relatively stable structures of society and the deconstructing of a unitary, grounded subjectivity. We are interested in how these new dwelling places become spaces from which to rethink both the houses we live in and the human organizations that emerge from them, and suggest alternative ways to live more habitable, healthier existences that allow for new, freer subjectivities.

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.