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International Conference | Dream, Quest and Destiny


“Dream, Quest and Destiny”

The Seventh International Conference on English and American Literature

26-27 April 2019

Shanghai International Studies University 

Call for Papers

“Dream”, with its illusory texture, maintains a tenuous but pervasive connection with reality. “Quest”, mostly prompted by dreams, may lead to divergent “destinies” for the dreamers. It is strikingly evident that “dream, quest and destiny” have continuously fired writers’ imaginations in the history of English and American literature, and, to some extent, become subtle metaphors for their writings. If Medieval allegorical poems consciously express the poets’ moral pursuits through “dreams”, then Hamlet’s dream is not so much a sleep as an autonomous quest that ultimately leads to an apprehensive philosophical inquiry. To our knowledge, when dream was colored by social change, material pursuits and political demands in the New World, there occurred a collective rush of passion for success that rapidly hung over the “land of opportunity”. In a sense, the “American dream” is such a collective rush. It is first delicately conveyed in Franklin’s Autobiography, then squarely advocated in the frontier literature, and finally ruthlessly crushed in the stories of Sister Carrie and Great Gatsby. Also, the bewildering mind asleep in Finnegans Wake is a symbolic cosmic dream that develops in numerous puns a continuous expansion of meanings of human existence and destinies. Commonly nursed by a mixture of fiction and fact, dreams in literature are often vividly reflected through the mobility of their pursuers, whose unsteady and restless journeys may reveal the uncanny and complicated patterns of human destinies. Thus it is impossible to do justice to literature without acknowledging the fact that it has its immense capacity to turn “dream”, “quest” and “destiny” into an interwoven fabric of fascinating stories and proper themes.

We hereby inform the scholars around the world that the Seventh International Conference on English & American Literature will be held from April 26 (Friday) to 27 (Saturday), 2019 at Shanghai International Studies University (Hongkou campus). The conference invites papers that explore the themes of “Dream, Quest and Destiny”.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

1. Dream and Reality in Literature

2. Representation of Desire and Disillusionment in Literature

3. Representation of Human Predicament and Destiny in Literature

4. Teaching, Research and Translation of English and American Literature since China’s Reform and Opening-up

5. Interdisciplinary Studies of English and American Literature

6. Theories and Literary Criticism

Well-known scholars from home and abroad will be invited to deliver keynote speeches in the conference. The working languages of the conference are both English and Chinese.

Abstract Submission

Please send 200-word abstracts (title and key words included) to shisu2019@126.com by March 20, 2019. Papers submitted to the conference will be selected for publication in English and American Literary Studies (CSSCI).

Conference Registration

Registration for the Seventh International Conference on English and American Literature (SISU) is now open to scholars around the world. Please contact us via email for details of registration rates, accommodation and local transportation during the conference. If you decide to attend the event, please fill the Registration Form ( ”Dream, Quest and Destiny“ Registration Form.doc) and send it to us before the deadline (March 20, 2019).

Contact Person: Cheng XinMs.

E-Mail: shisu2019@126.com

Tel.: +86-21-35372433

Postal address:

School of English Studies,

Shanghai International Studies University

Dalian Road (West) 550, Shanghai

200083, P. R. China.

 

                             School of English Studies, SISU

                              Institute of Literary Studies, SISU

Center for English and American Literary Studies, SISU

The Editorial Board of English and American Literary Studies

 

 

 

 

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