SNS 2025 Novel Languages Program
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Novel Languages
Society for Novel Studies Biennial Conference
Duke University
Durham Convention Center May 29 – June 1, 2025
About SNS
The Society for Novel Studies (SNS) exists to further the study of the novel as a genre and to examine the role of fiction in engaging, formulating, and shaping the world.
Members of the SNS share an interest in the novel as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, as a genre continually open to change and experimentation, and as a national, regional, transnational, and global form. The society’s membership is occupied in researching individual works of fiction and their writers and in engaging in critical study of the theoretical questions posed by the writing, reading, translation, distribution, and consumption of novels.
Conference Organizing Team: Aarthi Vadde, Sarah Quesada, Janice Ho, Barbara Halla, and Yeonwoo Koo
Panel Chair Guidelines: SNS chairs are responsible for introducing speakers, keeping time, and ensuring at least 30 minutes for Q&A. Thank you for chairing a panel!
We recommend 20 minute papers for panels of 3 speakers and 15-17 minute papers for panels of 4 speakers.
AV Availability: All rooms for panels will have a projector for showing slides. You’ll need to provide your own laptop. Seminar rooms do not have AV due to high costs and short presentations styles.
SCHEDULE
Thursday, May 29th
4:00-5:30 Opening Peripatetic Seminar
“Speculative Fiction”
Leader: John Plotz (Brandeis University) and Paul Saint-Amour (University of Pennsylvania)
Location: Meet in lobby of the Marriott Downtown Durham.
Participants:
Group 1 with John: Philip Joseph, Upasana Dutta, Kalyan Nadiminti, Penny Fielding, Richard So, Jarvis McInnis, Hamish Dalley, Sarah Quesada, Preeti Singh, Jesse Cordes Selbin, Charlotte Sussman, Kata Gellen, Pratistha Sané Bhattarai, Erin Greer, James Elkins, Jason Ahlenius, Apala Bhowmick, Avni Sejpal, Soumya Shailendra, Saskia Ziolkowski, Elizabeth Callaway, Ali Kulez
Group 2 with Paul: Nina Begus, Barbara Halla, Begum Tuglu Atamer, Edward Romeyn, Ben Mangrum, Anna Muenchrath, Amit Baishya, Jap-Nanak Makkar, Laura Winkiel, Monika Kaup, Laura Bieger, Matthew Eatough, Hannah Kim, Sarah Dimick, Rachit Anand, Sonali Perera, Cullen McMahon, Shir Alon, Alec Pollak, Siân White
Friday, May 30th
All events will take place in the Durham Convention Center (301 W Morgan St; connected to Marriott Downtown Durham)
8:00-8:30 Registration Desk Open; Coffee and Tea in Jr. Ballroom B-C
Pick up Nametag, Program, Drink Tickets for Saturday night
8:30-10:15 Keyword Seminars and Panels (Registration remains open)
A. Keyword Verb (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Penny Fielding (University of Edinburgh) and Paul Saint Amour (University of Pennsylvania)
Presenters: Yoon Sun Lee (Wellesley), Jeehyun Choi (Rutgers University), Jonathan Dick (University of Pennsylvania), Anastasia Eccles (Yale University).
Participants: John Lurz, Annie McClanahan, Adela Pinch, Kelly Rich, Bécquer Seguín, Shir Alon, Amanda Anderson, Timothy Bewes, Michaela Bronstein, Chloe Kitzinger, Cara Lewis, Kate Marshall, Siân White, Rivky Mondal, Curtis Browne, Brennan Jones, Ruoxi Zhu, Soumya Shailendra, Joelle Troiano, Kelly Yin Nga Tse, Stephanie Insley Hershinow, Ayten Tartici, Katarzyna Bartoszynska
B. New Perspectives on the Turkish Novel (Junior Ballroom A1)
Arif Camoglu (NYU Shanghai)
“Remapping the Rise of the Novel through the Ottoman Institution of Slavery”
Ipek Sahinler (University of Texas at Austin)
“Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s ‘Müphem Utopias’ and Queer Horizons in Turkish Literature”
Ali Kulez (Boston College)
“The Literary Misencounter: South-South Hermeneutics in Aslı Erdoğan’s The City in Crimson Cloak”
Pelin Kivrak (Emerson College)
“‘This World Belongs to Me’: Orhan Pamuk’s Illustrated Notebooks as a Lens into His Novelistic Craft”
Chair: Erdağ Göknar (Duke)
C. The Translated Novel in the United States (Junior Ballroom A2)
Anna Muenchrath (Florida Institute of Technology)
“The Rise of the Translated German Novel in the U.S.”
Nancy Linthicum (University of South Carolina)
“AUC Press and Translated Arabic Literature in the U.S.”
Sean DiLeonardi (University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg)
“Historicizing Translated International Bestsellers in the U.S.”
Chair: Shinjini Chattopadhyay (UNC-Chapel Hill)
D. Novel Ecologies (Junior Ballroom A3)
James Zeigler (University of Oklahoma)
“Earth Without Us: The Historical Picture Novel Here”
Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez (UC Davis)
“The Suchiate River: Permeable Bodies in La Mara by Rafael Ramirez Heredia”
Jeewon Yoo (Williams College)
“Inverted Worlds: Representations of Nature in Novels of Nonsense”
Chair: Ramesh Mallipeddi (University of British Columbia)
E. How Novels are Written Now (Junior Ballroom D1)
Jess Rafalko (Pennsylvania State University)
“Literary Form as Writerly Labor”
Ellen Stenstrom (Indiana University)
“The Struggle is Real: Contemporary Narratives of Neurodivergence”
Hannah Jorgensen (Duke)
“Contemporary Autofiction and Negotiating Digital Literary Celebrity”
Chair: Scott Selisker (University of Arizona)
F. Move Fast and Break Things (Junior Ballroom D2)
Justin Mitchell (University of Michigan)
“Breaking the Spy Novel: Sol Yurick, Information Technology, and the Aesthetics of Anti-Capitalism”
Matt Tierney (Pennsylvania State University)
“Walk to the End of the Machines”
Benjamin Mangrum (MIT)
“The Choose Your Own Misadventure Novel”
Chair: Juno Richards (Yale)
G. Science Fiction, Science Fact (Junior Ballroom D3)
Serhii Tereschchenko (University of Albany)
“Images of Alterity and the Pluralist Worldview”
Alec Pollak (Cornell University)
“Rejoice, little book!”: The Feminist Novellas of Joanna Russ”
Danila Cannamela (UNC Chapel Hill)
“When the World is Upside Down: The Reorienting Roots of Italian Solarpunk”
Eleanor Courtemanche (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)
“Slow Utopias and Darwinian Timescales around 1900”
Chair: Saskia Ziolkowski (Duke)
10:15-10:30 Coffee Break (Registration open)
10:30-12:15 Keyword/Novel Seminars and Panels
A. Keyword Co-Intelligence (Meeting Room, MR 2)
Leaders: Richard Jean So (McGill) and Aarthi Vadde (Duke)
Presenters: Nina Begus (UC Berkeley), Elizabeth Callaway (University of Utah), Jonathan Cheng (Riot Games), Dennis Yi Tenen (Columbia), Melanie Walsh (University of Washington)
Participants: Ryan Carroll, Ben Mangrum, Anna Muenchrath, Lindsay Thomas, Yeonwoo Koo, Rachel Gevlin, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Sierra Eckert, Penny Fielding, Tatyana Gershkovich, Megan Ward, Junting Huang, Pratistha Sané Bhattarai, Hannah Jorgensen, Erin Greer, Cassandra Luca, Joel Mire, Julia Gordon, Marie Sanazaro, Serhii Tereshchenko, Hannah Kim
B. Novel Minor Detail (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Angela Naimou (Clemson University) and Shir Alon (University of Minnesota)
Participants: Jap-Nanak Makkar, Laura Winkiel, Philip Joseph, Paul Saint-Amour, Ignacio Sanchez Prado, Allison Schachter, Laura Bieger, Martin Aagaard Jensen, Kaneesha Parsard, Preeti Singh, Patricia Stuelke, Natasha Gordinsky, Pelin Kivrak, Erdag Goknar, Timothy Bewes, Kate Marshall, Apala Bhowmick, Avni Sejpal, Sonali Perera, Sarah Quesada, Jonathan Dick, Farah Bakaari, Sarah Allison, Kelly Yin Nga Tse, Nancy Linthicum, Adrienne Ghaly, Sangina Patnaik
C. Keyword Antisocial (Meeting Room, MR 4)
Leaders: Nasser Mufti (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Lily Saint (Wesleyan)
Presenters: Audrey Jaffe (University of Toronto), Rivky Mondal (University of Chicago), Zach Samalin (NYU)
Participants: Sarah Coduto, Erica Fretwell, Gage McWeeny, John Plotz, Nicole Rizzuto, Harris Feinsod, Jeewon Yoo, Upasana Dutta, Chris Holmes, Maha Jafri, Kalyan Nadiminti, Victoria Baugh, Sonali Perera, Anna Zalokostas, Sophie Esch, Philip Tsang, Corina Stan, Carlos Rojas, Sheri-Marie Harrison, Ann Cvetkovich
D. Circulation and Translation in the Global Marketplace (Junior Ballroom A1)
Günter Leypoldt (University of Heidelberg)
“The Novel and Language Inequality on World-Literary Space”
Matt Eatough (CUNY)
“Little Fiction: The International Networks of Small-Press Translation”
Siddharth Srikanth (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
“Aesthetic Derivativeness and the Postcolonial Novel”
Chair: Sunny Yudkoff (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
E. What Do We Owe Fake People? (Junior Ballroom A2)
Jesse Cordes Selbin (Gettysburg College)
“When Characters Began to Feel Real”
Joshua Gang (University of California, Berkeley)
“What Do We Owe a Dot”
David Kurnick (Rutgers University)
“Ficelles, Feminists, and the Future of Characters”
Chair: Chloë Kitzinger (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)
F. The Everyday Details of Climate Fiction (Junior Ballroom A3)
Kuhelika Ghosh (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“The Hunger of Tomorrow: Exploring Food Scarcity in Diana McCauley’s Vision of 2084 Jamaica”
Sarah Dimick (Northwestern University)
“Left Out to Dry: Unhousing in Contemporary American Climate Fiction”
Tara K. Menon (Harvard University)
“Against Cli-Fi: Writing the Everyday in Transnational Climate Fiction”
Chair: Janice Ho (University of British Columbia)
G. The Novel and State Logics (Junior Ballroom D1)
Soumya Shailendra (Northwestern University)
“Categorizing Caste: Love and Desire in the Mandal Novel”
Spencer Morrison (University of Groningen)
“Human Rights, Post-Secularism, and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One”
Ayten Tartici (Independent Scholar)
“Women Writing the Coup: Resistance, Precarity and the Politics of Language in 20th Century Turkish Literature”
Adam Kerker (Indiana University-Bloomington)
“To Be ‘On Top of the Time’: The Aesthetics of Description and Turkish Linguistic Politics in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s The Time Regulation Institute”
Chair: Arif Camoglu (NYU-Shanghai)
H. The Return of the Rural in the Iberian Novel (Junior Ballroom D2)
Katryn Evinson (Duke University)
The Rural as Spain’s Political Unconscious in the Iberian Novel”
Irene Gómez-Castellano (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
“The Roar of the Rural: Mapping 21st Century Spanish Women’s Fiction”
Kelly Moore (University of Virginia)
“Shelter Writing in the Iberian Rural”
Bécquer Seguín (Johns Hopkins University)
“The Novelist Intellectuals of Empty Spain”
Chair: Pavel Andrade (Texas Tech University)
12:30-2:15 Luncheon and Plenary Panel on “Novel Languages” (Junior Ballroom B-C)
Presenters: Ainehi Edoro (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Stephanie DeGooyer (UNC-Chapel Hill), Victoria Saramago (University of Chicago), and Jorge Téllez (University of Pennsylvania)
Chair: Penny Fielding (University of Edinburgh and SNS President)
2:30-4:15 Keyword/Novel Seminars and Panels
A. Keyword Labor (Meeting Room, MR 2)
Leaders: Janice Ho (University of British Columbia) and Nicole Rizzuto (Georgetown)
Presenters: Andy Hines (Swarthmore), Kaneesha Parsard (University of Chicago), Sonali Perera (CUNY Hunter), Anna Zalokostas (North Carolina State University, Neelofer Qadir (Georgia State University)
Participants: Alya Ansari, Jess Rafalko, Pavel Andrade, Audrey Jaffe, Ramesh
Mallipeddi, Edward Romeyn, Preeti Singh, Kelly Moore, Charlotte Sussman, Avni Sejpal, Chadd Heller, Scott Selisker, Ana Sabau, Juno Richards, Robert Higney, James Zeigler, Matt Tierney, Sangina Patnaik, Mia Florin-Sefton, Katryn Evinson, Cliff Mak
B. Novel The Transit of Venus (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Kinohi Nishikawa (Princeton) and Jesse McCarthy (Harvard)
Participants: Barbara Halla, Gage McWeeny, Monika Kaup, Shinjini Chattopadhyay, Rachel Ablow, Jeewon Yoo, Gage McWeeny, Penny Fielding, Jennifer Fleissner, Zoe Henry, Justin Mitchell, James Elkins, Yoon Sun Lee, Jack Quirk, Alec Pollak, Tara Menon, Cassandra Luca, Ashley Cullina, Adam Kerker, Ipek Sahinler, Stephanie Insley Hershinow, Lisa Moore, Eilis Lombard, David Kurnick, Ayten Tartici
C. Keyword Multispecies (Meeting Room, MR 4)
Leaders: Sophie Esch (Rice) and Amit Baishya (University of Oklahoma)
Presenters: Apala Bhowmick (Emory), Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim (Kadir Has University), Elisha Cohn (Cornell)
Participants: Tara Menon, Elizabeth Callaway, Arif Camoglu, Ali Kulez, Paul Saint-Amour, Victoria Saramago, Sarah Dimick, Laura Winkiel, Jarvis McInnis, Sarah Quesada, Charlotte Rogers, Emily Celeste Vazquez Enriquez, Jason Ahlenius, Kuhelika Ghosh, Danila Cannamela, Siân White
D. Philosophy and the Novel (Junior Ballroom A1)
Erin Greer (University of Texas at Dallas)
“Novel Conversations of Justice”
Cara Lewis (Indiana University Northwest)
“Theory as Novel Language”
Hannah Kim (University of Arizona)
“Fiction without Mimesis: a Comparative Philosophy of Fiction”
Chair: Junting Huang (SUNY-Binghamton)
E. I Am (Not) a Robot (Junior Ballroom A2)
Laura Bieger (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
“Mr. Tuttle’s Language, or, Probing the Limits of the Human through Speech”
Beth Blum (Harvard University)
“Touch Grass”
Erica Fretwell (SUNY-Albany)
“The Spine of the Novel”
Jay Shelat (Ursinus College)
“Robopocalypse: Technoanxiety in the Contemporary Novel”
Chairs: Emily Hyde (Rowan University) and Sarah Wasserman (Dartmouth College)
F. Data and the Novel (Junior Ballroom A3)
Sierra Eckert (Wesleyan University)
“Henry James’s Data”
Lindsay Thomas (Cornell University)
“Reading and Not Reading the Long Novel”
Mia Florin-Sefton (Columbia University)
“Novel Literacies”
Sarah Allison (Loyola University New Orleans)
“This One Goes Out to Reviewer 2: How Data-Driven Approaches Can Mess Up Your Argument”
Chair: Megan Ward (Oregon State University)
G. Material Sentiments: Victorian Novels in/and the Industrial World
(Junior Ballroom D1)
Marie Sanazaro (American University of Beirut)
“Learning to be Machines: The Language of Anti-Pedagogy in Hard Times”
Paul Stasi (The University at Albany)
“Reading The Mill on the Floss with Andreas Malm”
Corbin Hiday (University of Illinois at Chicago)
“George Eliot’s Felix Holt and the “Mass Experience” of Energy”
Chair: Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (UC Davis)
H. Crisis, Temporality, and the Novel (Junior Ballroom D2)
Martin Aagaard Jensen (University of Kentucky)
“Dead Man Working: Labor, Race, Prolepsis”
Annie McClanahan (UC Irvine)
“Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Servant Novel”
Laura Winkiel (University of Colorado, Boulder)
“Diego Garcia and the Imperial Longue Durée”
Bruce Robbins (Columbia University)
“Atrocity in Time”
Chair: Jap-Nanak Makkar (University of Kentucky)
I. Forms of Resistance and Survival in the Novel (Junior Ballroom D3)
Renée Michelle Ragin Randall (University of Michigan)
“Necropolitical Regimes and the Ghosts of Dead Languages in Elias Khoury’s Yalo”
Hamish Dalley (Daemen University)
“Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Languages in the Novel: Contesting Linguistic Imperialism in Colonial Algeria and Australia”
Begum Tuglu Atamer (Ege University/Duke University)
“Exploring the Aesthetics of Survival through Subjective Morality in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sevgi Soysal’s Dawn”
Kelly Yin Nga Tse (Education University of Hong Kong)
“Novel Testimony, Novel Address”
Chair: Bécquer Seguín (Johns Hopkins University)
4:15-4:30 Coffee and Tea
4:30-6:00 Keynote Novelist Address (Junior Ballroom B-C)
Vauhini Vara
“If Computers Can Write, Why Should We?”
As companies began developing AI models to produce language, Vauhini Vara gained early access to what would become ChatGPT. She used it to co-write an essay about her grief over her sister’s death. That essay, “Ghosts,” published in The Believer, was both more moving and more disturbing than she had expected. The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies shape her understanding of self and the world around her — the subject of her book Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age. In this talk, Vara will explore what, in an age in which computers can write, distinguishes human writers from artificial ones — and why the distinction matters.
Welcome Remarks: Leo Ching: Dean of Humanities and the Arts at Duke
Chair: Aarthi Vadde (Duke and SNS Vice-President)
6:00-7:00 Reception in the Junior Ballroom B-C
Saturday, May 31st
8:00-8:30 Coffee and Tea: Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:15 Keyword/Novel Seminars and Panels
A. Keyword Nostalgia (Meeting Room, MR 2)
Leaders: Kata Gellen (Duke) and Saskia Ziolkowski (Duke)
Presenters: Natasha Gordinsky (University of Haifa), Barbara Halla (Duke), Brett Ashley Kaplan (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Stiliana Milkova Rousseva (Oberlin), Allison Schachter (Vanderbilt)
Participants: Irene Gómez-Castellano, Brett Kaplan, Lily Saint, Ramesh Mallipeddi, Paul Stasi, Jo Klevdal, Ashley Cullina, Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim, Jay Shelat
B. Keyword Translation (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Sangeeta Ray (University of Maryland at College Park) and Tze-Yin Teo (University of Oregon)
Presenters: Akshya Saxena (Vanderbilt), Laura Brueck (Northwestern), Harris Feinsod (Johns Hopkins), Farah Bakaari (Cornell), Yoon Jeong Oh (NYU)
Participants: Rachit Anand, Sean DiLeonardi, Matthew Eatough, Hannah Kim, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Angela Naimou, Hamish Dalley, Sukanya Banerjee, Anke Birkenmaier, James Elkins, Marta Figlerowicz, Erdag Goknar, Yoon Jeong Oh, Tze-Yin Teo, Akshya Saxena, Spencer Morrison, Jesse McCarthy, Nancy Linthicum, Jeehyun Choi
C. The Poetry of the Novel: Verse, Lyric, Sound (Junior Ballroom A1)
Ryan Carroll (UNC-Chapel Hill)
“Affective Muchness in The Ring and the Book”
John Lurz (Tufts University)
“Word Reaction: H.D., the Poet’s Novel, and the Verbal Life of Literature”
Lydia Brown (University of Virginia)
“Lyric and Novel”
Eilis Lombard (University of Pennsylvania)
“Blues, Blueprints, and Bildung: National Narrative and Sonic Irruption in Invisible Man”
Chair: Corina Stan (Duke University)
D. The Language of Proof in Histories of the Novel (Junior Ballroom A2)
Sri Basu McCall (UC-Irvine)
“Data and the Slave Narrative: A Troubled History”
Kay R. Barrett (Stanford)
“The Haunted Plantation: Hannah Crafts’ The Bondwoman’s Narrative and the Afro-Gothic Novel”
Megan Ward (Oregon State University)
“Realer Than Science Fiction: The Realist Novel and AI”
Kara Wittman (UC-Berkeley)
“The Novel is Filled with Figgerits”
Chair: Sarah Allison (Loyola University New Orleans)
E. Decentered Geographies of Labor and the Mexican Novel (Junior Ballroom A3)
Jason Ahlenius (Vanderbilt University)
“In the Shadow of Slavery: Unfree Labor and the Provincial Mexican Novel in the Age of Emancipation”
Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón (Oberlin College)
“Busywork, 1943-1945: Work and The Novel in India and Mexico”
Ana Sabau (University of Michigan)
“The Work of Mourning in José Revueltas’s El luto humano“
Pavel Andrade (Texas Tech University)
“Bricks, Labor, and the Novel: The Case of Vicente Leñero”
Chair: Ignacio Sánchez Prado (University of Washington in St. Louis)
F. Free Indirect Discourse and Collective Life (Junior Ballroom D1)
Katarzyna Bartoszyńska (Ithaca College)
“FID and Collective Narration”
Victoria Baugh (Arizona State University)
“FID and Race in Jane Austen’s Emma”
Elisha Cohn (Cornell University)
“Multispecies FID”
Chair: Stephanie Insley Hershinow (CUNY Baruch College)
G. Legal [ _______ ] (Junior Ballroom D2)
Sangina Patnaik (Swarthmore College)
“Legal Crimes: Reparations for Extrajudicial Killing”
Kelly M. Rich (Wellesley College)
“Legal Kinship: Making and Breaking Families”
Juno Richards (Yale University)
“Legal Sexualities: the Sexual Psychopath and Transgender Crime”
Chair: Aarthi Vadde (Duke University)
H. The Postcolonial Bildungsroman (Junior Ballroom D3)
Coílín Parsons (Georgetown University)
“Inexplicable Irishness in Nigerian and South African Fiction”
Liam Kruger (University of Notre Dame)
“Limited Views: Periodizing Xi Xi’s My City After 1997”
Alya Ansari (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)
“Multiply the Middleman: Bureaucratic Stagnation in English, August”
Valentina Montero Román (University of California, Irvine)
“Temps Perdi’: Wasted Time in the Developmental Narratives of Jean Rhys”
Chair: Jed Esty (University of Pennsylvania)
10:15-10:30 Coffee and Tea
10:30-12:15 Keyword/Novel Seminars and Panels
A. Keyword Heteroglossia (Meeting Room, MR 2)
Leaders: Tim Bewes (Brown) and Merve Emre (Wesleyan)
Presenters: Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman (Brown), Marta Figlerowicz (Yale), Chloë Kitzinger (Rutgers), Maya Kronfeld (Duke), Kent Puckett (UC Berkeley), Curtis Browne (Brown)
Participants: Audrey Jaffe, Barbara Halla, Caroline Bailey, Jed Esty, Philip Joseph, Monika Kaup, Stiliana Milkova, Bruce Robbins, Saskia Ziolkowski, Jap-Nanak Makkar, Martin Aagaard Jensen, Günter Leypoldt, Jesse Cordes Selbin, Jennifer Fleissner, Natasha Gordinsky, Zoe Henry, Pelin Kivrak, Justin Mitchell, Lydia Brown, Jack Quirk, Jonah Shallit
B. Novel Pedro Páramo (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Ignacio Sánchez Prado (Washington University in St Louis) and Sarah Quesada (Duke)
Participants: John Lurz, Ryan Carroll, Edward Romeyn, Anna Muenchrath, Lindsay Thomas, Angela Naimou, Pavel Andrade, Ali Kulez, Josh Gang, Jorge Tellez, Matthew Eatough, Rachel Gevlin, Maha Jafri, Megan Ward, Bécquer Seguín, Charlotte Sussman, Charlotte Rogers, Anke Birkenmaier, Shir Alon, Amanda Anderson, Cara Lewis, Jason Ahlenius, Brennan Jones, Joelle Troiano, Ana Sabau, Robert Higney
C. Keyword Setting (Meeting Room, MR 4)
Leaders: Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (UC-Davis) and Benjamin Morgan (University of Chicago)
Presenters: Michaela Bronstein (Johns Hopkins), Yeonwoo Koo (Duke), John MacNeill Miller (Allegheny College), Rafael Walker (CUNY Baruch), Dora Zhang (UC Berkeley)
Participants: Laura Bieger, Beth Blum, Eleanor Courtemanche, Andrew Hoberek, Liam Kruger, Jorge Tellez, Sunny Yudkoff, Pratistha Sané Bhattarai, Erin Greer, Valentina Montero Román, Corbin Hiday, Stephanie DeGooyer, Adrienne Ghaly, Eilis Lombard, Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim and Arif Camoglu
D. Cartographies of the Novel: Realism, Race, Colonialism (Junior Ballroom A1)
Govind Narayan (Northwestern)
“Gibberish: Language and Energetic Racialization in Wuthering Heights”
Chad Heller (Duke)
“No Symbols Where None Intended: Samuel Beckett and the Aporetic Afterlives of the Big House Novel”
Dominique Vargas (University of Texas at San Antonio)
“More than the Apocalypse: Realism Beyond Mimesis and Language”
Erdağ Göknar (Duke University)
“Racialized Cartographies: Mapping the Limits of “Whiteness” in the Orhan Pamuk Novel”
Chair: Nasser Mufti (University of Illinois at Chicago)
E. Novel Fissures: War, Dismemberment, Totality (Junior Ballroom A2)
Upasana Dutta (Fairfield University)
“Fractured Insights: Failures of the First Person in The Collaborator and The Far Field”
Cliff Mak (Queens College, CUNY)
“Fuss and Horror: Sardonic Empire in Kipling and Saki”
Kalyan Nadiminti (Northwestern University)
“Phantom Limbs, Imperial Occupation. and the Contemporary Afghan Novel”
Anushka Sen (Loyola University)
“Head versus Voice: Decapitation and Silence as Protest in Anna Burns’ Milkman”
Chair: Kelly Rich (Wellesley)
F. Novel and Popular Media (Junior Ballroom D1)
Jo Klevdal (UNC Chapel Hill)
“Frans Masereel and the Novel Without Words”
Emily Hyde (Rowan University)
“V.S. Naipaul and Mass Reproducibility”
Chris Holmes (Ithaca College)
“Kazuo Ishiguro and Theatrical Adaptation”
Chair: Kata Gellen (Duke)
G. Languages of Belief in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Junior Ballroom D2)
Daniel Hack (University of Michigan)
“Meaning-Talk and the Novel”
Sukanya Banerjee (University of California, Berkeley)
“Loyalty, Narrative, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857”
Rachel Ablow (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
“Belief as Culture: Flora Annie Steel’s Multicultural Imperialism”
Chair: John Plotz (Brandeis University)
H. Translatability (Junior Ballroom D3)
Rachit Anand (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
“A Rootless Language”
Carlos Rojas (Duke)
“Translation as Consumption: Empire, Food, and Language in Yáng Shuāng-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue”
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan (Rice University)
“Reading Backward”
Chair: Harris Feinsod (Johns Hopkins)
12:30-2:30 Lunch Break (On your own)
2:30-4:15 Keyword/Novel Seminars and Panels
A. Keyword Novella (Meeting Room, MR 2)
Leaders: Jed Esty (UPenn) and Kate Marshall (Notre Dame)
Presenters: Jennifer Fleissner (UChicago), Morgan Day Frank (Harvard), Zoë Henry (Columbia), Avni Sejpal (UPenn)
Participants: Shinjini Chattopadhyay, Josh Gang, Benjamin Morgan, Ignacio Sanchez Prado, Allison Schachter, Sarah Wasserman, Dora Zhang, Emily Hyde, Daniel Hack, John MacNeill Miller, Kinohi Nishikawa, Anushka Sen, Paul Stasi, Apala Bhowmick, Soumya Shailendra, Ellen Stenstrom, Cullen McMahon, Jonathan Dick, Farah Bakaari, Adam Kerker, Rafael Walker, Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Dominique Vargas, David Kurnick
B. Keyword Vicky Fem (Meeting Room, MR 3)
Leaders: Charlotte Sussman (Duke) and Amanda Anderson (Brown)
Presenters: Ann Cvetkovich (UT-Austin), Rachel Gevlin (Virginia Commonwealth University), Stephanie Insley Hershinow (CUNY Baruch College), Lisa Moore (UT-Austin), Adela Pinch (University of Michigan)
Participants: Rachel Ablow, Elizabeth Miller, Victoria Baugh, Elisha Cohn, Alec Pollak, Cassandra Luca, Sarah Allison, Kate Turner, Tye Landels, Jane Harwell, Christopher Catanese, Katherine Carithers, Cliff Mak
C. Novel Roadside Picnic (Meeting Room, MR 4)
Leaders: Sunny Yudkoff (UW Madison) and Tatyana Gershkovich (Carnegie Mellon)
Participants: Begum Tuglu Atamer, John Plotz, Amit Baishya, Aarthi Vadde, Chris Holmes, Kalyan Nadiminti, Hamish Dalley, Chloe Kitzinger, Jo Klevdal, Hannah Jorgensen, Julia Gordon, Katarzyna Bartoszynska, Matt Tierney, Richard Jean So, Marie Sanazaro, Serhii Tereshchenko
D. Alejo Carpentier and the Novel (Junior Ballroom A1)
Monika Kaup (University of Washington, Seattle)
About Not Guillotining the Past: The Alternative Modernity of Carpentier’s Baroque Futurism”
Anke Birkenmaier (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“Carpentier’s Revolutionary Novels”
Charlotte Rogers (University of Virginia)
“Marvelous Ecologies: The Surprising New life of Alejo Carpentier’s lo real maravilloso in Contemporary Latin American Environmental Fiction”
Chair: Gustavo Furtado (Duke University)
E. Peripheries of World Literature (Junior Ballroom A2)
Andrew Hoberek (University of Missouri)
“Not So Independent People: Halldór Laxness and the Rise of Logistics”
Patricia R. Stuelke (Dartmouth College)
“‘Go Bid the Soldiers Shoot’: The Novel and the Commune Form”
Chair: Sheri-Marie Harrison (University of Missouri)
F. Novel Bodies in Novel Environments (Junior Ballroom D1)
Pratistha Sané Bhattarai (Grand Valley State University)
“The Novel’s Imagined Communities: Moving from Narrative Structure to Descriptive Language”
Robert Higney (CUNY)
“Infrastructural Narrative and the Languages of Sensation”
Preeti Singh (Duke University)
“Geological Histories, Vernacular Aesthetics: Archaeologies of Decolonization in Uzma Aslam Khan’s Geometry of God”
Sarah Coduto (Stanford University)
“No Future?: Crises of Representation and Trans Narrative Temporality in Rita Indiana’s Tentacle”
Chair: Nicole Rizzuto (Georgetown)
G. What Makes the Novel Now? (Junior Ballroom D2)
Siân White (James Madison University)
“‘Some Distant Warning’: Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018) and the Irish Historical Novel”
Corina Stan (Duke University)
“Only a novel…”: Alternative Histories of the West”
Rafael Acosta Morales (UNC Chapel Hill)
“Technologies and colonization of the self in recent Mexican autofiction”
Scott Selisker (University of Arizona)
“Cultural Appropriation and Language’s Networks in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty”
Chair: Ben Mangrum (MIT)
H. Linguistic Utopianism in the Novel (Junior Ballroom D3)
Jonah Shallit (Johns Hopkins)
“America’s Volapük Utopias”
Caroline Bailey (Stanford)
“The Afterlives of Sapir-Whorf”
Shinjini Chattopadhyay (UNC Chapel Hill)
“Networks of Language: Modernist Cosmopolitanism and Its Afterlives in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Nabarun Bhattacharya’s Kāngal Mālshāt”
Philip Tsang (Colorado State University)
“Premchand’s Bricolage Utopianism”
Chair: Paul Saint-Amour (University of Pennsylvania)
4:15-4:30 Coffee and Tea
4:30-6:00 Keynote Scholar Address: (Junior Ballroom B-C)
Waïl Hassan (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) “Arab Brazil: Fictions of Ternary Orientalism”
The representation of Arab and Muslim immigrants in a century of Brazilian fiction since the 1920s reveals anxieties and contradictions in the country’s ideologies of national identity. In novels by Malba Tahan, Jorge Amado, Ana Miranda, Nelida Piñon, and others, the Arab world is a site of otherness and solidarity. What explains this paradox is a Brazilian strand of Orientalism that is distinct from the British, French, and U.S. varieties analyzed by Edward Said, and which problematizes the idealized image of Brazil as a country built on mistura, or ethnic, racial, and cultural mixing. This talk tries to answer the question of what happens to a colonial discourse like Orientalism when it migrates to the Global South.
Chair: Sarah Quesada (Duke)
6:30-10:00 Party at Durham Food Hall. (530 Foster St – 5 min walk)
Complimentary SNS signature cocktails, beer, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages for registrants with drink tickets.
Sunday, June 1st
9:00-10:30: Closing Peripatetic Seminar
“Novel Revivals and Kinships”
Leaders: Philip Joseph (University of Colorado-Denver) and Angela Naimou (Clemson)
Location: Meet in the lobby of the Marriott Downtown Durham.
Participants: Group 1 with Phil: Nina Begus, Begum Tuglu Atamer, John Plotz, Jap-Nanak Makkar, Elizabeth Callaway, Rachel Gevlin, Upasana Dutta, Hamish Dalley, Jesse Cordes Selbin, Jennifer Fleissner, Natasha Gordinsky, Anushka Sen, Pratistha Bhattarai, Erin Greer, Anke Birkenmaier, James Elkins
Group 2 with Angela: Chloe Kitzinger, Jack Quirk, Apala Bhowmick, Soumya Shailendra, Adam Kerker, Ipek Sahinler, Joelle Troiano, Lisa Moore, Kelly Yin Nga Tse, Sri McCall, Sangina Patnaik, Sophie Esch, Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, Dennis Yi Tenen, Mia Florin-Sefton
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