Standing Session

American / Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion

Jeffrey Gonzalez (Montclair State University)
gonz@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Papers in this session focus on American Literature from 1945 to the present. The category of “literature” includes imaginative works (fiction, poetry, drama) but also essays, memoirs, or creative nonfiction. This session investigates texts that are written by American-identifying authors, composed by writers in the US, or address American life.

Some papers may relate to the conference theme, "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion.” The postwar period offers a rich body of writing to consider relative to the theme, as a growing component of canonical and more marginalized writers challenged mainstream American narratives about the country’s past, and others used literature to resurrect or revisit forgotten components of national history. Additionally, American writers engage with questions of memory and forgetting on the global stage, and papers in this session may analyze these representations. Papers may also explore transience and remembrance on a personal scale.

Topics of particular interest include, but aren't limited to
--Literary recoveries of lost histories or depictions of erasure/forgetting
--The layering of micro- and macro-scales in representations of memory and loss
--The function of memory and loss in the creation of identity
--Evolutions in literary portrayals of memory and forgetting
--Forms of literary palimpsests (polyvocality, temporal play)
--Archives and archiving’s limits (or literature as archive)
--The marketing of public memory/the appeal of oblivion
--Memory and forgetting across media/genres
--Literary schools/literary history/literary canons as sites of memory/forgetting

All PAMLA presenters must be paid PAMLA members and have paid their conference fee. Please email the panel presiding officer/organizer, Jeffrey Gonzalez, at gonzalezje@montclair.edu with questions or concerns.