41: Politics, Literature and Film Section

Carol McNamara, Utah State University, carol.mcnamara@usu.edu

The Politics, Literature, and Film Section welcomes paper and panel proposals for the 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans, August 30 – September 2. The theme of the 2012 conference will be “Representation and Renewal.” When King Arthur dies at the conclusion of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the Yankee, Hank Morgan, seizes the opportunity to dissolve the institutions of the monarchy and the aristocratic class system to establish a republic. He calls upon “the British people to meet together immediately, and by their votes elect representatives and deliver into their hands the government.” Hank offers the oppressed people of Medieval England the opportunity for political and social renewal through the establishment of a government based upon their equal and free consent. Both the support and the resistance that Hank’s proclamation receives are reflective of the political events of our times. Representative institutions are at the core of liberal democratic government in the West and the demand for representation and renewal are at the heart of the demands of democratic movements across the globe. The APSA call for papers asks us to examine the nature of representation from every angle: its costs and benefits; when it is legitimate or illegitimate, just or unjust; what makes representation effective or ineffective.

We encourage contributions that reflect the unique approach that literature and film afford to explore the 2012 APSA theme of “Representation and Renewal,” as well as panels and papers that address the great questions of justice and human happiness at the heart of the study of politics in literature and film, both in the present and the past, in the United States and across the world.