International Pynchon Week | Belgrade, Serbia | June 17-21, 2024
Deadline: September 1, 2023
Call for papers: International Pynchon Week 2024, Belgrade, Serbia
International Pynchon Week will have its next venue in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, from June 17 to June 21, 2024. Although most Pynchon scholars have heard of the event, we are taking this opportunity to spread the news to a wider audience. We invite paper and panel proposals on all topics that center on the Pynchon universe, with 20-minute-long presentations allotted to every speaker. All talks are given in plenary form, without breakaway sessions. Apart from the usual individual format, presentations may be jointly given by two persons, and a group of three or more is not recommended for this conference. As far as the topic range is concerned, we suggest a tentative outline, and hope for other innovative ideas that derive from contemporary discussion in the humanities (and beyond):
- Pynchon and influences by him / on him (generic and thematic)
- Representations of liberalism in Pynchon
- Pynchon and (neo)colonialism
- Pynchon and the spatial imagination
- Pynchon and history
- Discourses of crisis
- Resistance and counternarratives
- Pynchon in intersectional perspectives of race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.
- Ecology and environment in Pynchon
- Pynchon and the technological imagination / Science and technology
- Pynchon in comparative perspectives
- Pynchon and the Balkans
Other points of interest also abound: Pynchon’s renditions of political matters as seen in American society and abroad; the doctrine of the Elect vs. the Preterite; Eurocentrism and its legacies and ramifications; the dubious success of the Enlightenment project in the last quarter of a millennium; methodological approaches to Pynchon’s body of work, and similar contexts conducive to fruitful discussion. There is more at: https://www.internationalpynchonweek.org.
Each presentation is also allotted 10 minutes for discussion and follow-up questions. There are three presentations per session, and the interested scholars can submit abstracts of up to 300 words in .doc or .docx formats to the conference email: pynchonweek2024@gmail.com by September 1, 2023.
A prospective participant can also suggest a three-presentation thematic panel, with the topic and eligible presenters’ summaries included in the proposal. This three-paper proposal can be between 500 and 700 words in length.
Sergej Macura
Aleksandra Vukotić,
Organizers