MLA Panel: Call for Papers

I am co-organizing a panel with Gabriel Rockhill (Philosophy, Villanova University) for the 2017 MLA convention in Philadelphia. The panel is on “Literature and Philosophy Otherwise.” We have found that “literature and philosophy” has often meant looking at abstract concepts in philosophy and applying them to literature, or finding philosophical themes in literary texts. While this is all well and good, we’d like to raise questions about literature and philosophy from more practical and institutional perspectives, as well as from a broader range of philosophical positions than the standard Continental names or emerging interests in post-analytic philosophy. Some questions we are considering: how do literature and philosophy interact around the lived experience of revolution? How do we factor the lived realities of philosophical concepts into our analysis of those concepts — for example, what might a “Buddhist” analysis of literature look like if we go beyond generic ideas like “nondualism,” and take into consideration the history of power and violence that has always accompanied Buddhist philosophy? If you have a paper or an idea that might be of interest, please send a 150-word abstract to us by March 14, 2016: avram (dot) alpert (at) rutgers.edu; gabriel (dot) rockhill (at) villanova.edu.