UNIVERSITé RENNES 2
One-day conference
"Dey don’t belong"
Exclusion and integration
in American interwar literature.
May 13th, 2011
amphi E3 (bât. E)
organized by: EA 1796 / Axe études Américaines
de l’unité de recherche ACE : Anglophonie: communautés, écritures
Colloque Gwenola
organisé
3874
organizers:
Le LIDILE
Bastard, EA
Maëlle
Picouleau, Anthony Larson.
www.univ-rennes2.fr
www.univ-rennes2.fr
CIREFE
« Dey don’t belong »1:
Exclusion and integration in
American interwar literature.
A
merican society in the aftermath of WWI is distinguished by an effort to define itself
resulting from a desire of emancipation from the then prevailing European model. All
over the country important transformations took place with industrialization and the
growing impact of capitalism or multiple immigration waves. on cultural and artistic grounds,
such an incentive can be exemplified by the emergence of new forms. furthermore, the
influence of modernism (epitomized for instance by The Armory Show of 1913), flourishing
cultural renaissances in the first half of the 20th century (such as the Chicago Renaissance,
the New york Little Renaissance or the Harlem Renaissance), the Little Theatre movement
(Washington Square Players, Provincetown Players) and the growth of the Little magazines
(Liberator, Dial, Seven Arts, Little Review, Broom), all came to signal a characteristic will to break
with established norms and standards. Inside the metropolis, communities were formed
beyond the margins of the Establishment. The metropolis can be seen as the locus of the
connection between, on the one hand, social and aesthetic divisions, and on the other, signs
of exclusion and rejection affecting some communities and which tended to become some
of the major concerns of literary productions during the interwar period. In New york for
instance, neighborhoods such as Harlem or Greenwich Village, were places of innovation and
creation, which provided these artistic, ethnic and cultural communities with an alternative to
normative values and gave birth to literary productions dealing with the theme of belonging/
exclusion, and aimed at integrating new forms out of preexisting ones.
from these observations, this one-day conference proposes to examine the tension between
artists’ marginal communities and the social mainstream, and the way this tension might be
linked to experimentation with new forms breaking with traditional ones, and with conflicts
related to the idea of belonging or exclusion dramatized in the literary productions of the
period. Are the issues of problematic belonging/assimilation – be they the result of a spontaneous break up with norms, or, on the contrary, the expression of rejection by others – to
be read as echoes of the conflict between new creative impulses and constraining norms?
In addition, how are these new forms and productions embedded in a process of rejection
in reaction to normative practices or to an authoritative discourse? To what extent, and with
what mechanisms, do they attest to a quest for belonging? Likewise, has one to belong to a
community to be given the right to tackle questions within it?
This one-day conference seeks to explore the theme of belonging/exclusion present in
interwar American literature, by analyzing the strategies deployed there and the impacts on
aesthetic, linguistic, ideological and discursive grounds. one might imagine a link between the
question of a compromised assimilation, as found in the literary productions of the period, the
marginal nature of the communities and the various renaissances ensuing from WW1, along
with the aesthetic rupture with mainstream norms, in order to show how these different
aspects reveal or come in conflict with the other two.
1 / Eugene o’Neill, The Hairy Ape, Scene 1
Friday, May 13th 2011.
Amphi E3 (Bât E)
9:30 > Registration and coffee
10:00 > Conference welcome
Introductory speakers Claire Charlot Professor in British civilization, Director of A.C.E., Gwenola Le Bastard and Maëlle Picouleau, Teaching Assistants.
10:30 > Staging Modernity:
the paradox of «belonging» in O’Neill’s
The Hairy Ape
Gwenola Le Bastard, University of Rennes 2.
11:00 > «Forget all rules, forget all restrictions:» William Carlos Williams and the
Reinventing of the American 1920s,
Neli Koleva, University of Rennes 2.
12:00 > Lunch at the Metronome, University of Rennes 2.
14:00 > Writing and belonging: the «passing»
plot from each side of the «color line»,
Maëlle Picouleau, University of Rennes 2.
14:30 > Beyond the Melting Pot: American
Jewish Fiction of the 1920s
Nadia Malinovich, University of Picardie-jules Verne.
15:00 > coffee break
15:15 > The Lesson of the Masters: Henry
Roth reading T.S. Eliot and James Joyce
Sostene Massimo Zangari, University of Milan
15:45 > «Foreigners in the land where we
were born»: the dialectical relationship
between exclusion and inclusion in 1930s
radical literature
Alice Béja, University Paris 8 Vincennes/ Saint Denis.
E
Organisation :
EA 1796 : Axe études Américaines
de l’unité de recherche ACE :
Anglophonie: communautés, écriture
Gwenola Le Bastard,
Maëlle Picouleau,
Anthony Larson.
renseignements :
Université Rennes 2
Campus Villejean (Rennes)
Place du recteur Henri Le Moal
CS 24307
35043 Rennes cedex
Tel : +33 (0)2 99 14 10 00
métro : Métro Villejean-Université
VISUEL : TREE fLAGS / jASPER joHNS /1958
CoNCEPTIoN : SéBASTIEN BoyER / SERVICE CoMMUNICATIoN / UNIVERSITé RENNES 2
IMPRESSIoN : IMPRIMERIE DE L’UNIVERSITé RENNES 2
www.univ-rennes2.fr