The Bildungsroman: form and transformations
This conference will explore the past and present condition of the Bildungsroman, with its myriad transformations and diversifications not only in the novel proper but also in memoir, film and long-form television. It will bring together exciting work in disciplines often separated by periodising and disciplinary paradigms and gather experts in prose fiction, film and television from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries and from a range of language areas to concentrate on this key narrative form. The novel of the emotional and social development or formation of a young person as they learn to make their way in an often hostile world, the Bildungsroman was a key form taken by the European novel from the early 19th century. How has it made its way across transhistorical formations and transgeneric remediations?
Keynotes:
Nancy Armstrong, Gilbert, Louis & Edward Lehrman Professor of English, Duke
Joseph Litvak, Professor of English and Chair of Department, Tufts
Katie Trumpener, Emily Sandford Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale
We invite proposals for individual papers, panels, roundtables and single text discussion sessions, on the following or other related topics. The panel format will involve pre-submission of the paper to ensure closer audience engagement with its arguments:
Theory and the bildungsroman
The bildungsroman, the künstlerroman, the erziehungsroman: overlaps and distinctions
The origins of the bildungsroman
The contemporary bildungsroman
The female bildungsroman
The queer bildungsroman
Gender in the bildungsroman
Narrative theory and the bildungsroman
Psychology and the bildungsroman
The postcolonial bildungsroman
The coming of age film as bildungsroman
The bildungsroman and television
The Bildungsroman and the city
Transnationalism and the bildungsroman
Memoir and the bildungsroman
The anti-bildungsroman
The eco-bildungsroman
200 word abstracts should be emailed by June 15 to vanessa.smith@sydney.edu.au.