CALL FOR PAPERS

FAILURE

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Harvard University
Sponsored by the English Department and the Humanities Center
Keynote Speaker TBA

May 12 & 13, 2000

Graduate students from all disciplines are invited to submit papers
contemplating failure.  Papers should translate into 15 minutes of
presentation time (7-8 pgs.).  Abstracts (200-300 words) are due by January
5 and should be sent via email to schoff@fas.harvard.edu or via regular
mail to Rebecca Schoff, c/o English Dept., Harvard University, Barker
Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138.  Please include your name,
contact information, institution, department, and status (i.e. graduate
year, postdoc, etc.).  Also indicate which of the prospective panels listed
below interest you as contexts for your work.  This list of panels is
preliminary and is subject to change.

PROSPECTIVE PANELS:

Obsolescence and Obscurity 
(technology, footnotes, canon formation, fads...)

Dramatic Performance 
("This is a farce!", fatal flaws, the unstageable, failure to perform...)

Bad Grades
( industrial grading, inspection/ evaluation/ judgment, going wrong,
shame...)

Narrative Failure 
(expectation, problems with closure, confusion...)

Failed Transmission 
(intention, adaptations and translations, goals of criticism...)

Unpopularity 
(commercial failure, failed books / failed art, failure enabling
success...)

Breakdown 
(failsafe?, mechanical failure, crisis in / transgression of form...)

Failed Gods 
(economic theories, master narratives, fallenness...)

Extinction 
(species, languages and dialects, academic disciplines...)

Break-ups 
(failed marriages, relationships / pairings / partners, unrequited
love...)

Interference 
(failure of language to mean, palimpsests, writer's block...)

Failing Bodies, Failing Minds 
(hangovers, impotence, forgetfulness...)

Losers in Literature 
(anti-heroes, self-pity, representing failure, characters who fail...)

False Starts 
(failed revolutions, big bangs, unfulfilled potential, frustration...)

Failure as a Rhetorical Mode 
(retractions, defenses, apologia, self-deprecation, false modesty...)

Failed Experiments 
(theories, sunk costs, testing...)