International Shaw Society Panel at MLA 2013 (please post to CANDRAMA listserv)

[Lawrence Switzky]

Call for Papers
TOPIC: ?Other Islands: Shaw, Beckett, and World Literature? (MLA 2013)
Jan 3 - 6 / Boston, MA
Sponsored by the International Shaw Society

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. I wish to see the world.
ZOO. It is too big. You can see a bit of it anywhere.
Bernard Shaw, ?The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman? (1921)

?I wouldn?t suggest that G.B.S. is not a great playwright, whatever
that means when it?s at home.? ­ Samuel Beckett (1956)

Despite their considerable differences, Bernard Shaw and Samuel  
Beckett were born into an Anglo-Irish axis but envisioned worlds  
beyond it that incorporated and transfigured their national heritage.  
This panel seeks papers that address how Shaw and Beckett might be  
read together, particularly through new definitions of world  
literature. How do Shaw and Beckett envision modern drama as a series  
of parables or demonstrations of world creation and destruction; as a  
negotiation between the local and the global; or as the erasure of  
historical geographies in favor of flexible places (landscapes,  
theatres) and spaces (the past, the future, the state)? Papers might  
also address Shaw and Beckett?s shared Protestantism and  
Neo-Protestantism, their universalism or rejection of universals,  
their insistence on science fiction and fantasy as ramifications of  
realism, and their dramatization of engagements with and retreats from  
inner and outer worlds, among other related topics.

Please send a 300 word-abstract and CV to Lawrence Switzky at  
lawrence.switzky at utoronto.ca by March 1, 2012. Proposals and queries  
are welcome before the deadline.