Coming Up Conference Talks Oct and Nov 2023 on Jennifer Calkins, Christian Bök and Philippe Beck

 Please join me for 3 forthcoming conferences:

I) At this first, I will be addressing the geography and mapping of California in the work Fugitive Assemblage by Jennifer Caulkins (but also in terms of Eleni Sikelianos' The California Poem).

Borders in the English-Speaking World: Mapping and Countermapping 

Colloque international organisé par l’UR SEARCH

9-10 octobre 2023

Horaire : 9h-soir
Lieu : Université de Strasbourg, MISHA (Maison interuniversitaire des sciences de l’homme – Alsace)

FULL PROGRAMME at: https://search.unistra.fr/agenda/evenement/colloque-international-search-borders-in-the-english-speaking-world-mapping-and-countermapping

Abstract for my talk, which will take on OCT 10th at 10h30 in Session 4, in "Salle de la table ronde", at the MISHA

"De-or re-routing California in Fugitive Assemblage by Jennifer Calkins"abstract by Jennifer K Dick

MdC, Université de Haute Alsace, Mulhouse

Labo de recherche : ILLE, membre de SAES

Mapping loss, ancestral history and the self onto the backbones of California: the roadways, no-tell motels, tourist sites and natural landscapes that surround and are embedded in the body and history of the speaker, Fugitive Assemblage (the 3^rd thing, Washington, 2020) is a work both deconstructing and reconstructing self and geographic (s)place. What makes us whole? What tears and rends us? Calkin’s fragmented, collaged (including specific geographical maps) road-trip, which intended to go straight up the 105, takes a detour and thus maps, accidentally, the state onto the event haunting this story. Or rather, it is the map of place that makes this story about a rending from a whole. It asks what is native/who is native of a place? What is place over time? What borders are we allowed to traverse in what directions (north-south into and out of Mexico, south-north as a questionable return)? This talk will explore the intimate lineage of self and place as it is mapped and as the map is followed and detoured from in Calkin’s unusual “assemblage”. Is the author scrambling the maps of California, or rather, in her own search for clarity, straightening the lines and the lineages of space and place back into place? Can we map our way home? Are maps redrawn by personal trips and the order we follow the lines of a place? Where do navigation and mapping collide? This talk will be informed by select comparisons to Eleni Sikelianos’ book length work The California Poem (Coffee House Press, 2004) which is in its own way a topographical map of the state. These literary maps are a form of counter-mapping demanding exploration in the context of a conference on mapping and counter-mapping such as this one in Strasboug.

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2) I will be part of the Table Ronde on poetry (giving voice to authors such as Christian Bök and others) closing the "Microscopie Imaginaries" journée d'étude organised by JE at la Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III) on 24 Nov 2023: https://biocriticism.hypotheses.org/microscopic-imaginaries-conference

“Microscopic Imaginaries in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature”

Salle Athéna, Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais 24/11/2023

Organisers: Sarah Bouttier, Liliane Campos, Caroline Pollentier and Sarah Montin

9h Morning Session with:  Patrick Armstrong (Cambridge): “Micro-Modernism” , Emma Felin (Oxford): “Microscopic Modernism”  & Lisa Mullen (Cambridge): “‘News from the World of Neglected Dimensions’: War, fascism, and literature in Hugh Nicol’s Microbes by the Million (1939)”

Morning Round-table on “Microscopic Imaginaries in Popular Science”, with Cécilia Bognon-Küss (Sorbonne Université), Fleur Hopkins-Loféron (Sorbonne Nouvelle) and Liliane Campos (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

12h45 Lunch

14h15 Afternoon Session with: Teun-Joshua Brandt (Groningen): “Seeing the Unseen: Deep-Sea Microbes and the Ecological Imagination in Frank Schätzings Der Schwarm”, Rosalind Crocker (Cambridge): “Gothicising the Microbial ‘Other’ in Anne Roiphe’s An Imperfect Lens (2006)”, Shannon Lambert (Ghent): “Stuck in the Mud: Friction, Microbial Networks, and Citizen Science in Susan Gaines’ Accidentals (2020)”, Marco Caracciolo (Ghent): “Unraveling Bodies and Environmental Challenges in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction”

Afternoon Round-table on “Microbiology in Poetry”, with Sarah Bouttier (Polytechnique), Jennifer K. Dick (Université de Haute Alsace), Dorothy Lehane (Litmus Publishing) and Catherine Larose (Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement)

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3) I will also be giving an academic talk in French at "Philippe Beck, une autre clarté" qui aura lieu les 28, 29 et 30 novembre prochains à l'université Paris Cité.

Watch for more information on that 3-day conference.