Wastelands: 34TH EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR AMERICAN STUDIES CONFERENCE

Madrid 6-8 April 2022

The year 2022 marks the centenary of the publication of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. The title of the conference alludes to Eliot’s work and the main themes in it, expanding the idea of the wasteland to the study of the United States. Hence, the overarching theme of the conference is open to all kinds of reflections around the concept of “wasteland” and waste. EAAS 2022 invites proposals that address the concept of waste in U.S. culture, history, and politics.

Proposals may address (but are not restricted to) the following topics:

Wasteland in the anthropocene

  • Environmental waste (water, land, e-waste, etc.).
  • Anti-Waste: degrowth philosophy.
  • “Zero waste” movement and consumerism.
  • Food waste.
  • Wastelands as devastation of spaces.
  • Waste of resources (human, natural, economic, etc.).

The ethics of waste

  • Moral waste: deterioration of democracies and other values. Empty discourses (political, cultural, etc.).
  • Wasted opportunities (land of opportunities, American dream).
  • Waste as a “negative store”, as opposed to the archive; forgetting, destruction, and latent cultural memory.
  • Waste of information: useless and redundant data, technology, media, etc.

Corporeal waste

  • Illnesses and pathologies.
  • Age: The Growing Land.
  • Emotional wastelands: real or metaphorical
  • Pandemics and other physical threats.

Literary and cultural representations of Wastelands

  • “Wasteland” as an image of decadence, crisis, and postwar.
  • Barrenness vs. fertility, hopelessness vs. regeneration.
  • S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and its literary / cultural influence.
  • Literary representations of wastelands.
  • (Audio)visual representations of wastelands.
  • Ruins, trash, in painting, music, film, and other artistic representations.

Suggested formats:

EAAS 2022 accepts abstracts and proposals including individual papers, complete panels, workshops or talkshops. Paper proposals should be 300 words maximum. Individual papers should be 15 minute presentations.

Panel proposals should include a description of the panel as a whole and the abstracts of three individual papers. Full panels have 1 h. 30 minutes. Workshops or Roundtables of 4-5 participants with shorter statements and discussion on a given research topic or common theme.

Presentations for workshops will be uploaded one month in advance of the conference to encourage intellectual exchange.

Teaching talkshops: 3-4 participants discussing their various teaching experiences of a theme related to that of the conference. Workshop and Talkshop proposals should include a title and a brief description of the theme. Workshops and talkshops have 1 h. for questions or debate

We strongly encourage and will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, and institutional affiliation. We encourage the participation of scholars from different institutions and countries

Please visit cstonline.neteaas2022.com/ for further details & submission of proposals.

Contact: conference@eaas2022.com