---

Announcements

---

Call for Papers: Association for Japanese Literary Studies

The Seventeenth Annual Meeting of AJLS, on the theme of Parody," will take place August 19-21, 2008, at the University of British Columbia.

As defined by Linda Hutcheon and other recent literary theorists, parody is "imitation with a critical difference, not always at the expense of the parodied text" (A Theory of Parody, 7). Because of parody's perceived "critical difference," it has been elevated in Anglo-European literary scholarship above other, similar tropes that draw connections between disparate texts in terms of content or form, such as pastiche, allusion and simulacra, which are seen as playful and apolitical at best (as in Hutcheon's own discussion of pastiche), and politically dangerous at worst (as in Jameson's discussion of the simulacrum).

In the context of Japanese literature and art, much attention has been drawn to the frequency of allusion and intertextuality, but it remains largely unrelated to distinctions between simple pastiche, allusion, and/or parody in their critical senses. Consideration of the nature of Japanese intertextuality in various genres and time periods raises a host of questions:

• How can we determine whether what we read as simple allusion, such as honkadori in a waka, might have had true parodic force to its original audience? To what extent does the readers' horizon of experience determine what distinguishes (valorized) parody and (merely formulaic) allusion? Does a literature of parody (or some other kind of intertextuality) require a small, homogeneous, and contemporaneous audience to be appreciated?
• What is the relationship between form and substance in a work of literature or art, and does a parody of form (as frequently seen in Japanese examples) have the same function as a parody of substance? Does Japanese literature and art prize form over substance, as some critics have claimed, and, if so, does that change the way parody should be conceptualized in the Japanese case?
• How has parodic intertextuality been used in times of censorship or political oppression to produce subversive messages?
• Gender parody appears in the literature and art of many periods of Japanese cultural production. What is its function in different contexts? Does its meaning depend on the readership? Is it subversive or merely playful? How can we tell? What does such parody tell us about gender conceptualization?
• Can we consider parody in literary or artistic texts without reviving the idea of authorial intention?
• Does the ubiquity of intertextuality in Japanese literary forms indicate a lack of originality, and what value do we as critics place on the Romantic ideal of the artistic genius producing original work?
• Because tropes such as parody and pastiche are sometimes considered hallmarks of a postmodern aesthetic, what would an examination of Japanese literary and artistic parody suggest about definitions of the premodern, modern and postmodern in Japan?
• Is it only parody ("repetition with a critical difference") that should be valorized by critics looking for social/political significance in a text (as is largely the case in Anglo-European criticism), or does the Japanese literary use of multiple forms of intertextuality suggest other possible theorizations of the relationship between text and society?

Deadline for receipt of abstracts of no more than 250 words on these and other questions is April 1, 2008. We welcome individual submissions as well as three- or four-person panel proposals. Presentations will be organized in 3-hour time-blocks. The conference languages are English and Japanese. Papers and panels on both Japanese verbal and visual culture are welcome. Proposals should be submitted electronically to: ubcajls@gmail.com

All other correspondence may be directed to the organizers:
Joshua Mostow (jmostow@intherchange.ubc.ca) or
Sharalyn Orbaugh (sorbaugh@interchange.ubc.ca).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAPER/PANEL PROPOSAL FORM
"Parody"
DEADLINE: April 1, 2008
Title:

____________________________________________________________________________
Name and Status:

____________________________________________________________________________
Institution:

____________________________________________________________________________
Address:

____________________________________________________________________________
Telephone: Fax:E-mail:

____________________________________________________________________________
Please attach your 250-word proposal to this form and send to: ubcajls@gmail.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------