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Call for Papers 

Submissions are invited for the eighth annual conference ofThe Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945, at Bucknell University,Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, June8-11, 2006.

Mobility/Stasis/Modernityin the Space Between, 1914-1945

Acceleration, terminal velocity, downward-spiral,displacement, paralysis, collision, modernity.The years 1914-1945 were marked by wars colliding with peace movements,by the formation of new nations, the dissolution of old empires, and thevoluntary and forced movement of people from ancient homelands to modern andnascent nation-states. Mobility, exile,migration, diaspora, and expulsion producedexpatriates and immigrants, the return of the soldier, the lost generation, theexile of surplus women, and the liberation of others. Speed and slow-motion,fragmentation and revolution transformed people, technology, and art.

From army mobilization in August 1914 to the liberation ofdeath camps and nuclear annihilation in 1945, the interwar and war yearswitnessed political, economic, and cultural upheavals that in concert withtechnological revolutions in transport and warfare revolutionized the movementof masses and the creation of art, literature, film, and other media. Planes,underground shelters, tanks, and skyscraper elevators altered social relationsand destabilized class, cultural, and racial barriersas did, in far more direways, trench warfare, air raids, and transport to concentration and deathcamps. New media such as the cinema, the newsreel, and the wireless enlargedviewers perceptions and eradicated distances, confronting audiences with theexcitement and terror of far-away places. Such physical, political, andcultural eruptions, confinements and displacements produced new forms ofliterature and art.

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the contexts,manifestations, effects, and representations of motion and stasis during theyears 1914-1945. What did it mean tolive, work, create, and be killed at the center of these turbulent times? Weare eager to explore the multiple ways in which the mobility and immobilities of the period found their way into culturalproduction.

Please send 300-word abstracts by February1 to Dr. Roger Rothman (rrothman@bucknell.edu)

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Keynote Speaker

Roberto Dainotto is Associate Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University.His publications include Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities(Cornell UP, 2000) and  Europe(in Theory) (Duke UP, forthcoming). He has edited RaccontiAmericani del '900 (Einaudi,1999), and Mediterranean Studies (with Eric Zakim,MLA Books, forthcoming).

His new book-project,"Nouveau Riches with Fords and Chevrolets": Italian-Americans andthe Contemptuous Motherland looks at representations of Italian-Americans inItalian culture, where they consistently appear as allegories both of anuprooting modernity, and of the unresolved "southern question" of Italy's failedmodernization.