From pre-Socratic cosmogonies and the mythical narratives of descent to late modern countercultural movements and the studies on contemporary subterranean architecture, humanity has always held a complex and creative relationship with the world beneath our feet. Subterranean landscapes also resonate with the abyss that lurks in the basements of the mind, a journey into our deepest-rooted fears and memories. Life below the surface is enticing, taboo, abhorrent, liberating and sometimes more appealing than the one up on the surface.
CLOSED
Theorising, representing and interpreting the underground involves thinking about how spaces are socially designed, lived in, and aesthetically mediated. This critical exercise also implies an engagement with the binaries which frame the underworld, from the mythical schemes of chaos versus cosmos and light versus darkness, to the political aesthetics of visibility versus concealment, compliance versus dissidence and normativity versus non-normativity.
In this conference, we invite comparative literature contributions that engage with the rich imaginaries of the underground, which may include reflections on:
- Theory of human spatiality in its relationship with the literary
symbols of the underworld (verticality and descent, spatial symbols of
regeneration and epiphany, zeniths and nadirs)
- Literary Urban Studies on subterranean cities (utopias, dystopias,
Atlantis), underground urban architectures (sewers, bunkers and bomb
shelters, catacombs, ghost metro stations, domestic undergrounds),
urban countercultures.
- Mobility Studies focusing on tunnels, underground portals, lifts, stairs,
escalators, excursions, rites of passage, transitions and borderlands.
- Migration Studies and literary rendering of journeys, hiding, exile,
trafficking, smuggling, GBV.
- Gender and Sexuality Studies on dissident sexualities and their
relation to the underground (sex parties, public sex, cruising, sex work
and prostitution).
- Night Studies dealing with nocturnal regimes and their aesthetic
representations of illegality, danger and the taboo.
- Necropolitics: burial grounds, inhumation/exhumation, mass graves,
ossuaries, mourning, subterranean genealogies, archives, ruins.
- Mythical approaches to hidden geographies and folklore of the
underworld (infernos, caves, labyrinths, cenotes, Aos sí, selkies).
- The symbolic underground and mental health from a Medical
Humanities perspective (depression, trauma, psychoneuroses,
paraphilias).
- Anthropocene and Capitalocene: ecocriticism, geological strata,
underground landscapes.
- Translation / Reception Studies that engage with censorship,
propaganda, underground rallies and protests, resistance movements,
underground networks and the dissemination of literature.
Submitting proposals:
The languages of the conference are Spanish, English and French (the languages of abstracts/titles/presentations will be the same as the delivery language).
The conference will be held in person at the Universidad de Alcalá but we offer the possibility of two online panels for scholars with limited mobility (precarious employment, caring responsibilities, disabilities).
We invite papers that adopt a comparative approach and analyse texts from two or more different literary cultures, languages, mediums (painting, film AND literature, for example) or disciplines (philosophy, sociology, photography AND literature, for example). We will also consider other non-standard presentations (action-research, performance).
Please submit your 3oo-word abstract + short bio to [email protected] before 4 November 2022.
THE CALL FOR PAPER IS CLOSED
Answer from the Organizing Committee: 2 December 2022.
