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The University of Wisconsin-Madison is excited to host the bi-annual conference of the Society for Novel Studies. The Society for Novel Studies exists to further the study of the novel as a genre and to examine the role of fiction in engaging, formulating, and shaping the world.
In May 2023, scholars at all levels are invited to join a conversation on the theme of “The Novel and the Archive.” The Center for the Humanities is a co-sponsor of this event.
Understanding the novel as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, as a genre continually open to change and experimentation, and as a national, regional, transnational, and global form, we will join together to ask: What is the relationship between the novel and the archive? What does the novel archive? And how does the archive manage the novel’s horizons?
Keynote Speakers:
- Sheila Heti, Novelist
- Professor Baidik Bhattacharya, Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
- Dr. Sandra Richter, Director Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
Call for Papers:
What is the relationship between the novel and the archive? Proposals are welcome for panels, papers, keyword seminars, and novel sessions that explore:
- global novels/global archives
- archival questions of visibility, accessibility, and digitization in the novel
- recovery of marginalized or excluded voices in novels as archival projects
- affective work of archival sites (museums, personal libraries, state archives) in novels
- role of the state and resistance in novels and archives
- status of the novel as document
- indigenous, postcolonial, decolonial, and living archives
- translation as archival practice
- memory work and the novel
- relationship of the archive, novel, and performance
- historicism and the theory of the novel / novel as counter-archive
- indexicality of the archive
- materiality of the novel form
- archiving the global north vs. the global south
Submit a proposal here. For any questions, please contact sns2023madison@gmail.com.
