Global Anglophone / American/Diaspora

Virtual Only: All presentations will be delivered via Zoom regardless of whether the presenters are in-person.

Dorisa Costello (William Jessup University)

If Empire thrives and even conquers through written text—codification of laws and bureaucracy, cartography of territory, travelogues of the exotic Other—it equally seeks to suppress oral indigenous knowledge of the vanquished. Yet orality can also be the site of resistance and community identity for just such a reason. This panel seeks proposals that investigate how orality of form and/or content in Anglophone literature disrupts Empire and empowers community. The irony of pursuing orality in literature, which is historically written, is not lost on us, but also provides an opportunity for creative, resilient exploration.

Some possible ways of approaching this topic may include:

Accent and dialect

Pidgins, creoles, and contact languages

Translations and translators

Language and identity

Oral folk wisdom and stories

Glossaries and indices

Textual hybridity or multimodality

Literacy

This panel seeks proposals that investigate how orality of form and/or content in Anglophone literature disrupts Empire and empowers community. The irony of pursuing orality in literature, which is historically written, is not lost on us, but also provides an opportunity for creative, resilient exploration.