Michel Houellebecq’s Submission

December 31, 2015 – telospress.com

Houellebecq and Huysmans By Ellis Hanson

https://thestockholmreview.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/img_1630.jpg

” […] Houellebecq seems to have mashed together two very different books: one a dreary campus novel about a disillusioned academic who ironically relives the subject of his dissertation, and the other a Swiftian political satire about Islam and the decline of French civilization […]” 

CfP: “The Concepts of Home in the Context of Academe and Academic Fiction,” Kyiv, Ukraine, 17-18 March 2016

Call for Papers

“The Concepts of Home in the Context of Academe and Academic Fiction”

Kyiv, 17-18 March 2016

Panel

organised within the framework of the

International Conference in Literary Studies “Poetics of Home/House”

Kyiv National Linguistic University

 

In which ways does the academia warrant the status of a “second home” for its members? Do the groves of academe function as a safe haven, a sanctuary of classrooms and libraries, a harbor for liberal education, cultural exchange, tradition, and free thought? Can the academia constitute a private microcosm for an expat scholar, conference hopper, or a foreign student? And if it can, as a multicultural space providing a sense of home for representatives of diasporic communities, can it foster dialogue and reduce conflict between societies and countries?

We are looking for explorations of the academia-as-a-home in the short and the long term, in fiction old and new, ranging from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin to Michel Houellebecq’s Submission.

We invite papers treating these, and related themes, in all genres and sub-genres referred to as academic fiction by British, American, and international writers.

Possible topics (the list is suggestive not exhaustive):

• The university as a private universe in academic fiction,
• Intercultural communication in academic fiction,
• Multiculturalism in academic fiction,
• Expat scholars, conference hoppers, and foreign students,
• Exchange and staff mobility programs (Erasmus+, ISEP, Fulbright etc.),
• University as shelter,
• At home in the world: cosmopolitanism in academic novels,
• Surrogate homes abroad: music, food, and literature in academic fiction,
• Unwilling dislocations and homesickness in academic fiction,
• Speaking in tongues: language in and of academic fiction,
• From home to college: university as a rite of passage,
• The concept of home in academic life writing.

Please send a short abstract (no more than 200 words) and bio by 15 January, 2016 to Marta Lysik at marta.lysik@uwr.edu.pl.

The language of the panel is English.