International conference organised by the project Meritocracy and Literature: Transcultural Approaches to Hegemonic Forms (MERLIT).
For more information on the project, please visit merlit.vub.be
Full CFP: Writing Meritocracy 18_20Sept2025 Brussels
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This conference seeks to contribute to the field of meritocracy studies from a literary perspective. We propose to explore “how literature participates” – over time and in a variety of contexts across the globe – in the construction, circulation and critique of meritocratic thought (Cheah 2017). By assembling case studies that focus on a range of periods and literary traditions across the linguistic spectrum, we seek to approach meritocratic narratives through the lens of literature, and as a world-literary phenomenon. In order to better understand the reciprocal relations between meritocratic narratives and literary forms, we invite contributions that engage with meritocratic narratives as a theme, and formation, in literary works as well as contributions that investigate the impact of meritocratic narratives on the production and reception of literary works in a given context.
We accept proposals of papers offering close readings as well as overviews of a genre, period or specific context. While not excluding the current, contemporary situation and US/UK contexts, which are already receiving considerable attention, we are especially interested in proposals that consider the shapes meritocratic narratives have previously assumed and expand the debate across linguistic and cultural contexts. To allow for a focused exchange on meritocratic narratives as literary acts of worldmaking, we further delimit the selection of proposed examples to genres that involve writing as an integral practice/medium. How are narratives of achievement framed in plays, narrative and poetic texts? How are they shaped in specific ways as forms, e.g. with regard to character typologies, semantic fields, plot structures and other compositional elements? Which narratives of achievement, progress and entitlement are especially dominant in a given literary work, genre or context? How is a spectrum of such narratives presented and negotiated in and through literature? What is the role of literature in the perpetuation of meritocratic paradigms? And what of the position and role of individual authors (across the spectrum of gender, provenance, social strata) in projecting and enabling such paradigms? To what extent is literature as a cultural practice itself subjected to, and co-opted by meritocratic frameworks? Can it exist outside meritocratic frameworks? Can literature provide a space for unmasking and resisting problematically hegemonic concepts of valorisation? We look forward to receiving proposals that engage with these and related questions.
Deadline for applications: 15 March 2025
How to apply?
Please submit your abstracts and a biographical note via this form.
Selected participants will be notified by 30 March 2025.
Organisers: Eva Ulrike Pirker, Suzanne Scafe and Maria Pace Aquilina (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Contact us: merlit@vub.be