CFPs for potential French-focused discipline-representative-sponsored panels at the RSA in Toronto : 

1. Natural Contracts in the French Renaissance
(Proposed French Discipline Sponsored Panel)
Beginning with his discussion of Goya’s “Fight with Cudgels,” Michel Serres in his Natural Contract brings attention to “the marsh” into which the (purely human) struggle “sinks.” More generally, Serres’s text opens out onto a new emphasis on the “world of things themselves” and onto the proposition of negotiating not only a “social contract” but also a “natural one.” Paper proposals are sought for a panel of three papers on “Natural Contracts in the French Renaissance,” to take place at the RSA in Toronto (2019). The goal will be to foreground continuities (and productive tensions) between early modern France and specifically French éco-penseurs such as Michel Serres, to see how various texts of early modern France sketched out possible drafts of “natural contracts.” Participants might take up any genre of text, including but not limited to literature, botany, anatomy, etc. Please send a title, a 100-word abstract, and a short bio to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by July 15, 2018.

2. Critical Race Theory and the French Renaissance
(Proposed French Discipline Sponsored Panel)
Important work has been done to put Critical Race Theory (CRT) into dialogue with the early modern period. One thinks, for example, of the foundational work by Kim Hall (Things of Darkness), and of the recent exhibition (Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe at the Walters Art Museum), etc. Much less has been done to bring such critical (and critically important) vocabularies to bear on the texts and contexts of early modern France. Paper proposals are sought that would address this lacuna in the field. All approaches (literary, art historical, theoretical, meta-critical, etc.) will be considered.
Please send a title, a 100-word abstract, and a short bio to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by July 15, 2018.

3. New Work on the Poetry of Pierre de Ronsard
(Proposed French Discipline Sponsored Panel)
Paper proposals sought for a panel at the RSA in Toronto about Pierre de Ronsard. All proposals that offer new readings of and perspectives on Ronsard’s poetry will be considered. Particularly sought are proposals that (1) read well-known poems against the critical grain, (2) offer readings of poems that have received only limited critical attention, or (3) historicize the reception of Ronsard’s poetry over the centuries. Please send a title, a 100-word abstract, and a short bio to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by July 15, 2018.

4. The Francophone French Renaissance
(Proposed French Discipline Sponsored Panel)
Paper proposals sought for a panel whose origin is a strikingly simple question: does it matter that the “French Renaissance” happened/s (at least in part) “in French”? What are the stakes of writing in French in the period (as opposed to Latin, but also not in English or other vernaculars)? And, from a different perspective, what gets lost in translation (and/or what is gained) when authors such as Montaigne are read through their English translators or through English-language critical traditions? What of the French Renaissance remains invisible (or, for one reason or another, irrelevant) to the wider field of Renaissance Studies because of the Francophone-ness of its texts? All proposals on these and related questions will be considered. Please send a title, a 100-word abstract, and a short bio to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by July 15, 2018.

5. New Work in French Renaissance Studies
(Proposed French Discipline Sponsored Panel)
Paper proposals sought on all aspects of French Renaissance Studies. Please send a title, a 100-word abstract, and a short bio to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by July 15, 2018.