New Editors
Anne L. Birberick
and Russell Ganim assumed editorship
of EMF and EMF Critiques in 2002.
[top]
____________________
EMF's Editorial Board:
Thomas Carr: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
George Hoffman: University of Michigan
Sarah Maza: Northwestern University
Allan Pasco: University of Kansas
Amy Wygant: University of Glasgow
Marian Rothstein: Carthage College
James Farr: Purdue University
Peter Bayley: Cambridge University
David Laguardia: Dartmouth College
Kathleen Wine: Dartmouth College
[top]
____________________
Forthcoming issues:
EMF 9 New Biographical Criticism: On the
Making New of an Old Discipline. Guest Editor: George Hoffman.
Projected publication date: 2003. Included is a summary of the
volume's Introduction:
Biographical criticism appears today as the old Old School of
modern literary studies; it predates the status quo ante
now occupied by New Criticism - a position which New Criticism
owes to having deposed the biographical as a meaningful field
of inquiry for the literary critic. Over the last two decades,
the pendulum between contextual and formal concerns has swung
in the other direction, back toward what René Wellek called
"extrinsic criticism." But along the return trajectory,
literary critics have somehow managed to avoid a reappraisal of
biographical studies. Historical disciplines - social, political,
institutional, and even stuffy old Intellectual History - have
all reemerged as topics of interest and even dominant modes within
certain approaches; but biography has gone its own way, enjoying
enduring commercial success while remaining virtually unnoticed
by academic critics.
If it is fully to avail itself of new historical
methods, biographical criticism must become a disicipline of the
"present," in the sense of casting a wider net over
the general conditions of life in an author's time. This volume
brings together both theorizers and practitioners in the art of
biography so as to reflect upon the ways such a renewal may unfold
in the coming years.
EMF 10 and EMF 11will focus on how the modern
and contemporary eras interpret the Early Modern in all facets
of its representation. Details will be posted on subesequent web
updates.
[top]
____________________
Call for Submissions
Early Modern Convent
Voices: The World and the Cloister, ed. Thomas M. Carr, Jr. to
appear as volume 11 of EMF: Studies on Early
Modern France, with
a projected publication date of late 2005.
The range and vitality of writing by French nuns has not received
the recognition afforded their Hispanic and Italian sisters.
Writing pervaded convent life, and an exhaustive list of women
religious who were published during the Ancien Regime would probably
number in the hundreds. Whether nuns cultivated a mépris
du monde in the cloister or sought to transform
society according to the norms of the Counter Reformation, the
intersection of their spiritual life and the world shaped their
voices. Their spiritual aspirations were filtered through a mix
of power and gender relations, economic ties, class consciousness,
and literary conventions as well as through the traditions of
their order.
Proposals in French or English dealing with writing by, to,
or about nuns during the Ancien Régime are invited from
historians, literary scholars and specialists of spirituality
and gender studies.
The volume is not intended as a miscellany of articles dealing
with nuns, but as an illustration of the many ways their voices
could be inflected. Most articles will probably focus on a few
exemplary figures or on a community or order, but will also address
the broader factors that
modulated convent voices. Articles might address some of following
issues: The convent parlor as a nexus of social networks of women;
intersections with the secular milieus of the salons and the
academies; nuns as précieuses or savantes; relations between
nuns and their male directors; the limits of poverty, chastity
and obedience; the reworking of female
models from scripture and hagiography; nuns' apostolate to the
outside world; secular images of convent life and the efforts
of nuns to modulate this image; the mystical impulse; the persistence
of class consciousness and family ties; the impact of the Pauline
prohibitions on the intellectual life in convents; overviews
of various genres of convent writing: letters,
poetry, drama, autobiography and biography, chronicles of orders
and houses, meditations, etc.
There is no set length for articles in EMF. Authors are asked
to develop and document their arguments fully. For some this
may be 15 pages; for others, many more. Articles in EMF are refereed.
(For more information about EMF, a themed, refereed annual, see
its Web site:
http://www.unl.edu/EMF/content/pubs.html.)
Proposals (300 words) should be sent to Thomas M. Carr by December
10 at the following address: Department of Modern Languages,
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE 68588-0315, or by
email: tcarr1@unl.edu.
Submissions will be invited based on the
proposals by the end of December. Completed manuscripts (in
French or in English) will be due September 1, 2004.
[top]
News