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McGill University, Montreal
March 4 to 6, 2011
Focus: luxury, privilege, commodity, and consumption in literature, and other texts and cultural artifacts
We invite presentations from all periods and fields of literary study, as well as theatre, film, and cultural studies. Interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., with reference to history, philosophy, science, medicine, economics, art history, religious studies, and other fields) are welcome and encouraged. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the following:
- Class and social standing.
- Wealth and poverty, images of excess and need.
- Human rights (sexual freedoms, disability rights, etc.) versus social privilege
- The racialization of wealth and status.
- The politics of pleasure.
- Iconography, brands and branding, labels, commodity fetishism.
- Consumer behavior and identity.
- Binaries of public/private, high/low, male/female, and consumer/producer central to markets and marketing.
- Literary depictions of shopping, markets, fairs.
- Imperialism, colonialism, trade, and their effects (e.g., environmental degradation, exploitative labor).
- Gift-giving, treasure, hoarding.
- Gender, the body, cosmetic technologies and practices.
- Camp, ostentation, glamor, performance and performativity.
- Fashion and sartorial luxuries.
- Spectacle in film and theater.
- Cultural and aesthetic decadence.
- Literature as a luxury (e.g., book-making expenses & practices, middle- & upper-class education as privilege).
- How has literature shaped or complicated our sense of luxury and commodity?
- How has literature responded to economic or financial fluctuations?
- Gastronomy, epicureanism, connoisseurship, and urbanity.
- Luxury goods and taxes.
- Lifestyle porn (e.g., luxury travel, culture, or celebrity narratives).
- an anonymous 250-word abstract detailing your proposed paper.
- a separate cover letter including a brief biographical paragraph.
Conference Organizer: Marc Ducusin
