Explorations of Ezra Pound and Surplus (NeMLA)
Boston, MA
Organization: NeMLA
Event: NeMLA
Surplus is the keyword for the 2024 NeMLA convention, and the Ezra Pound Society, a new allied organization, seeks paper proposals for a panel devoted to the work of Pound and his fellow modernists, imagists, and vorticists. Pound fits many portrayals of the concept of surplus from his creative and critical presentation of economic theories and the influence of the Philadelphia mint on the Pound family to the very idea of surplus implied in his epic poem The Cantos. His imagist theories of verbal economy imply getting rid of surplus words in his appeal to use “no word that does not contribute to the presentation.” In his poems, he features monarchs building their own wealth by extracting excess from the workers and individuals alienated from their labor and surplus. We might even explore Pound’s surplus feelings as an excess of emotions as he weighed in on the political state of the world or conversely wrote about leisure or recreation as surplus time.
The panel seeks papers that explore any of these—or other—notions of surplus as relates to any aspect of the work of Pound and modernism, including writers or critics who have engaged with his work in a broader sense. Preference will be given to works that more directly address Pound, but proposers should feel free to explore Pound-adjacent topics as well.
Please submit abstracts of 250 words for consideration by September 30 through NeMLA’s submission portal at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/User/SubmitAbstract/20803
NeMLA 2024 will take place in person in Boston, MA on March 7-10, 2024. More information about the convention can be found on the NeMLA website (https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html)
https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/User/SubmitAbstract/20803
Jeff Grieneisen