As in previous years, the ACLA 2017 will host a seminar for BA and MA students. Looking at current changes in the political climate and in what is acceptable political discourse in Europe and America, this year’s (under)graduate seminar will examine the role of literature, media, and the narrative arts as agents in society, whether for change or stability. The role of the arts as a mobilizer in society is in no way an unexplored arena. Edward Bulwer-Lytton first coined the phrase “the pen is mightier than sword” in 1839, and Thomas Hardy reflected on the way reading fosters critical literacy for social life when he suggested that in reading fiction “our true object is a lesson in life, mental enlargement from elements essential to the narratives themselves and from the reflection they engender.” Unsurprisingly, art’s capacity to engender this critical reflection of society has intermittently resulted in book bans and burnings. In recent times this potential, its limits, and its actualization have come under close scrutiny. James Baldwin caused a stir in 1949 when he published his essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” characterizing protest fiction as a “rejection of life” and dismissing its paragon Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as self-righteous and dishonest. Baldwin has continued to loom large in reflections on narrative arts’ activating potential, acting recently as an interlocutor to Robert McParland when he discussed Django Unchained, and as an avowed inspiration for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of the most celebrated artists today to engage in both writing and activism. Sixty years after Baldwin’s famous essay, with the veil pulled from the capitalist machinery underlying cultural production and with renewed appreciation for the role stories can play in deciding communal values, what can be said about the narrative arts and the wider world?
We warmly invite (R)MA students and senior BA students of the humanities to send in their 300-word proposals and short bio to acla-studentseminar@uu.nl before January 31st.
Some suggested themes:
– Literature, transmedia storytelling and pedagogy
– Cultural production and the nexus between individual and society
– Storytelling for personal and collective empowerment
– Impact
– Capitalism, cultural production and criticism
– Literature, film, critical thinking and politics
– Authority and moral agency
– Rereading, revisiting and remediation stories nestled in the collective imagination
– Social novels and the stylistics of social commentary
– Changing media, new publics and changing storytelling
The Euroculturer 