2017 MLA Annual Convention
Philadelphia from 5 to 8 January 2017
Thursday, 5 January 3:30–4:45 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center
Melville's Taxonomies
(abstract download link below)
The panel will look into how Melville's works from Mardi on treat matter, fashioning terrestrial landscapes, oceanic milieus and vegetal life into agencies that revise what counts as a person. Topics: Melville and natural histories, persons and things, biological politics, taxonomies of the human, organic and the inorganic, extinction, vegetal and animal life.
Presiding: Branka Arsic, Columbia Univ.
1. "Moby Dick and The Ecological Thought," Paul B. Downes, Univ. of Toronto
2. "Insect Arrangement: Melville’s Untimely Taxonomies," Monique Allewaert, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
3. "Organizing Melville," Maurice S. Lee, Boston Univ.
Respondent: Elisa Tamarkin, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Friday, 6 January 1:45–3:00 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center
Melville and Black Lives Matter
(abstract download link below)
This panel addresses how Melville’s art both speaks to racial crises and mediates philosophical dilemmas, political unrest, concepts of history etc. Black writers (Ralph Ellison, C.L.R. James, Toni Morrison, George Lamming, David Bradley, and more) turned to Melville’s literary forms and provocative content to engage historical and political transformation in the Americas. What is it in Melville’s aporias, assemblages, and abstractions that we can continue to excavate for it’s relevance to social conflict—especially conflict where racial/ethnic/queer difference is performed, expressed, and/or represented?
Presiding: Christopher Freeburg, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana
1. "C. L. R. James and Herman Melville: Moby-Dick as an Antitotalitarian Novel," Gary Vaughn Rasberry, Stanford Univ.
2. "Melville, Mutuality, and the Matter of Black Lives," Christine Ann Wooley, St. Mary's Coll., MD
3. "'Sinister Eye': The Shrouded Women of Melville’s Benito Cereno," Brenna Casey, Duke Univ.
Respondent: Ivy Wilson, Northwestern Univ.