Celestial Timepiece

Excerpt:

… Oates’s critics, as well as the author herself, have often been tempted to use the word “feminism,” but they have failed to address its multifarious meanings and its gradual construction within Oates’s work. The conference to be held in Aix- en-Provence will seek to explore this by reconsidering Oates’s long writing career in relation to the various waves of feminisms and her very singular way of responding to feminisms in and through her work. We would like to invite participants in this event to build upon and update this established framework by looking into the notion of specters of feminism. The question is no longer simply whether Oates’s work exhibits feminist characteristics and treats feminist themes, but rather to examine whether or not notions related to feminism are present in perhaps less obvious ways and how her current outspokenness about these issues reflects back upon some, if not all, of her fictional texts. We invite paper proposals on any aspect of specters of feminism in Joyce Carol Oates’s work, including, but not limited to, those listed below:

• How is Joyce Carol Oates’s work haunted by feminist ideas, in which she is well-versed, though she does not want her fiction to be read as militant or serving the cause? (Wild Nights!; The Falls; Mudwoman; Black Dahlia & White Rose)

• How are feminist discourses passed on through her work, in intended as well as perhaps unintended ways? (Rape: A Love Story; The Gravedigger’s Daughter; Middle Age: A Romance)

• Are any of her characters constructed on ideas on feminism, or in reaction to ideas on feminism? (Blonde; Black Water; My Sister, My Love; Faithless: Tales of Transgression)

• Do her transgressive norm-breaking female characters do any disservice to the advancement of feminism? (The Female of the Species, Mudwoman, The Tattooed Girl)

• Is there something inherently feminine/feminist about Oates’s style? Particularly the elliptical, repetitive style of some of her mature work? (Beasts, I Am No One You Know, Little Bird of Heaven)

• Does Oates’s non-fiction writing shore up a particularly feminist vision of her artistic aesthetic? (essays on fellow woman writers; essays such as “(Woman) Writer: Theory and Practice” and “Pseudonymous Selves”)

• It might also be interesting to discuss whether the feminist qualities of Oates’s work mentioned above have remained stable throughout her career, or whether there have been additional evolutions of note.