CFP: American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, April 8-11, 2021 - Fables and Facts of the Silk Road

This seminar hopes to bring together scholars investigating the cultural articulations of Eurasian connectivity represented by the Silk Road. Coined in 1877, Seidenstraße (Silk Road) reminisces on historical Afro-Eurasian communication and envisions possible reincarnations of exchanges among over a hundred countries and areas in Afro-Eurasia. Today, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, framed as a ‘revival’ of the Silk Roads for the 21st century, exemplifies how political rhetoric can romanticize, distort, and fabricate history to legitimize and depoliticize specific agendas. But if the Silk Road is one of the most compelling geocultural imaginaries of the modern era, does its appropriation merely represent a new chapter for a fabled narrative of history. Today we are seeing a Silk Roads cultural industry emerge in large part driven by the demands for strategic international connectivities. To better understand the role of the Silk Road across different contexts, we welcome discussions that employ interdisciplinary methodologies and propose questions such as: To what extent is the concept of the Silk Road visible to transcontinental audiences? When do cultural products celebrate, suspect, or rebuke messages delivered by old and new images of the Silk Road? How are the geographies and themes of the Silk Roads evolving through cultural industries? How can aesthetic strategies, whether in literature, media, or cinema, museums, enrich our understanding of Silk Road studies?

Organisers: Tim Winter and Baoli Yang

If you would like to apply to be part of this seminar, please visit the ACLA virtual conference platform.

Deadline for proposals: October 31st, 2020

Conference Details

Our April 8-11, 2021 conference, originally planned as an on-site conference at the Palais de Congrès convention center in Montreal, will now be fully virtual. We ask for your understanding and your cooperation as we host our first annual meeting in a digital environment that will include the same familiar features: pre-conference workshops, keynote panel, awards ceremony, the usual three days of seminars, networking opportunities, and a book fair that will feature academic presses.

To that end we are also lifting our restrictions on graduate student participation in a seminar. The requirement that all seminars have no more than 50% of graduate students is no longer valid for 2021. We urge organizers, faculty, and students to ensure that a seminar has representation across ranks so that we mutually benefit from energetic, illuminating, and stimulating papers and discussions.