Critical Fidelity: A Society for Critical Exchange session at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

There appears to be great diversity among people who are scholars, critics, theorists, or other practitioners of the modern languages—that is, among professionals who write and speak about literature and the other arts, history and culture, theory and philosophy, and so on in language-focused disciplines. As members of this multiplicitous, indeed conflicted group, how might we think about what we are faithful to, or have faith in, or keep faith with? Texts, principles, history, people, culture, institutions, truth, language, rights, discipline, interdisciplinarity, the good, oneself, etc.? The question of fidelity itself is questionable, indeed, perhaps not meaningful, or fair, or germane, or even worth asking. Is there any way to generalize about the topic, or is it necessarily a matter of disunity? The purpose of this session, then, is to explore the question as well as its various answers, which involves seeking the conditions of possibility both for asking and for answering the question.

Abstracts for twenty-minute papers due 15 September 2006 to Scott DeShong, spdes@conncoll.edu (preferred) or alternatively Quinebaug Valley Community College, 742 Upper Maple St., Danielson CT 06239, USA.

Besides the abstract, a proposal must include the following:

Presenter's name and institutional affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any)

For the complete Call for Papers for the 2007 NeMLA Convention, please visit www.nemla.org. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA panel; however, each panelist can only present one paper at the convention (although convention participants may present a regular scholarly paper and also present at a creative session).