Multicultural Borders - Cosmopolitan Crossings (1/13/03; SCMLA, 10/30/03-11/1/03)

South Central Modern Language Association Call for Special Sessions: Hot Springs, Arkansas 2003. Abstracts invited for the following Special Session:

******** "Multicultural Borders - Cosmopolitan Crossings" **********

This session will offer literary, political, and/or historical analyses of how multicultural differences, borders, and communities help, hinder, and/or clarify a cosmoplitan world citizenship. How can cosmopolitans and multiculturalists co-exist? Can their theoretical positions reinforce each other? Although some multiculturalists have disparaged cosmopolitanism as an empty elitism, others have deemed it a useful defense against unwarranted national power. Participants might consider, for example, how texts define a cosmopolitan personhood that transcends national boundaries without being anti-nationalistic. Or, conversely, some submitters may want to focus on twentieth and twenty-first century writers who see the exhaustion of certain forms of multiculturalism leading to satire, burlesque, and cynicism. Do such critiques help us understand what a cosmopolitan political loyalty would look like in relation to a multicultural one? How do "hyphenated" contemporary writers approach these issues? Can a "rooted" cosmopolitanism exist comfortably with particular varieties of multiculturalism?

Send abstracts electronically or otherwise (no papers at this time, please) and short vitas by Dec 15 to the following:

Lou Caton - lcaton@wisdom.wsc.ma.edu
fax: 413 562 3613
Westfield State College - English Department
577 Western Avenue
Westfield, MA 01086