2015 Midwest Modern Language Association Convention
Border(ing) Anxiety: Constructions of a Biopolitical Other
The force of biopolitics in contemporary society marks boundaries beyond geopolitical borders, inscribing otherness on bodies simultaneously necessary to the functioning of society, while abjecting them as dangerous to the very fabric of that society; an anxiety that reimagines and reproduces disciplinary power structures employed in the regulation, control, and subjugation of the collective, as well as individual, body. In this panel we seek to examine the material implications of the construction and bordering of such biopolitical otherness in our contemporary moment as imagined across multiple modes of literary and scholarly production. We welcome papers, creative prose writing, and digital projects, located at the intersection of art and science, that broadly interpret our theme.
Please send a 250-word abstract, a brief bio, and your institutional affiliation to the section chair, Francesco Levato (falevat@ilstu.edu), by April 14th, 2015.