Conferences
Explore past and upcoming conferences and symposia organized or supported by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies.
Upcoming Conferences View All Events
Her True-True Name Celebration/Conference (February 2021)
A conference commemorating the publication of Her True-True Name with women writers from the Anglophone, Hispanophone, and Francophone Caribbean.
“Resistance in the Materials”: A Gathering of Printers Pressing for Change (February 2021)
A bicoastal event that will center BIPOC artists, scholars, and interventionists (and allies) and celebrate "printing" (broadly construed across many media) as an accessible form of activism capable of leaving its own unique impressions in diverse communities.
Genealogies & Futures of Black Aesthetics (April 2019)
Investigated the relations of African American influence, resistance and identification across a range of aesthetic mediums, from film, music, visual culture, digital platforms and art, to literature and poetics.
The Body of Frankenstein: A One Day Anatomy (November 2019)
Scholarly centerpiece of the University of Maryland’s FrankenTerps celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
Forming Black Britain: Aesthetics, Itineraries, Diasporas (March 2017)
Placed writers, artists and critics in conversation to explore the term “Black British,” as a category influencing writers and critics, and networks and obstacles, in the United Kingdom and in the United States.
Women, Rhetoric, Writing (April 2017)
Surveyed shifts in feminist research, writing, editing and pedagogical practices over the last 30 years as it celebrates and honors the careers of Shirley Wilson Logan and Jane Donawerth.
In Play: Games, Aesthetics, Performance (March 2016)
Assessed play as the principle of innovation and experimentation that underwrites gaming, performance and other cultural, social and aesthetic activities.
SoundPlus (March 2014)
Reconceived the relationship between sound and text; considered soundscapes, audio technologies, acoustic ecologies and the sonic dimensions of literature.
Representing Complexity: Intersections of Art and Science (February 2013)
Asked how the challenges of representing complex phenomena—whether in language, film, computer modeling or other media—affect our understanding of it.
Race, Law, and American Literary Studies: An Interdisciplinary Conference (March 2012)
Broadened understanding of changing meanings of race and nation through the prism of legal and literary studies.
Perspectives on Writing & Rhetoric: A Symposium Honoring Jeanne Fahnestock (March 2012)
Honored the career of Jeanne Fahnestock with a survey of current trends in research and teaching of rhetorical studies and writing pedagogies.
Rethinking World Literature/Other World Literature
Redefined research, teaching, and conceptualization of categories surrounding “world literature”; introduced wrinkles and wrenches in the theorization of time and space of World Literature.
Bloodwork: The Politics of the Body (May 2011)
Explored how conceptions of the blood permeated discourses of human difference from 1500 to 1900 across histories, nations and literatures and contributed to ongoing debates about the “invention” of race.
Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities (November 2010)
Enabled a critical rethinking of the act of reading; brought together scholars working on the topic of comparative reading writ large.
Stanley Plumly and Poetry (October 2009)
Honored one of the foremost poets in the United States.