2018 NOVEL Symposium: The Return of Genre Fiction

2018 NOVEL Symposium: The Return of Genre Fiction

November 2, 2018

Smith Warehouse, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4, C105

This forum brings together 2 scholars whose current work considers the question of why we seem to be seeing a resurgence of popular genres—e.g., science fiction, romance, historical fiction, the novel of manners, detective fiction, the city novel, the Western, and so forth-in novels now written for and marketed to a global readership. Speakers will address one or more of the following questions: How do various contemporary novels transform generic prototypes that once enabled readers to imagine how they belonged to a coherent national community, the historical origins of that community, the social bonds needed to hold it together, what had to be kept out, how it perpetuated itself, and thus its possible futures. To what contemporary genre do novels attribute this transformation? What sensory, cognitive, and/or affective equipment does one require to negotiate the altered world of these novels? What political possibilities do these novels open up or close down?

Speakers

Eva Illouz, Hebrew University Sociology

Mark Seltzer, UCLA

Schedule

11:00-11:30          Coffee and rolls in Bay 4, Smith Warehouse

11:30-11:45           General Introduction

11:45-1:15             Eva Illouz, “Courtship, Sexual Freedom and the Narrative Self”

1:15-2:30               Buffet lunch 

2:30-4:00               Mark Seltzer, " The Extinction of Genre."

4:00-4:15               Coffee and snacks

4:15-5:45               Roundtable: Rey Chow, Duke University; Tim Bewes, Brown University;

                               Aarthi Vadde, Duke University.    

7:00                       Buffet/Reception at the home of Nancy Armstrong and

                               Len Tennenhouse (2240 Cranford Road)