&Now 2019 Conference

Traditional critical approaches to reading and interpreting the work of nonwhite, marginalized writers and artists tend to focus on markers of social, cultural, and racial identity as a means to dismiss or undermine formal innovation. The so-called “literary vs. cultural” ideology historically embraced by the academy places the formally-experimental in opposition to politically-engaged work, deeming the former “avant-garde” or “purely literary” and dismissing the latter as “identity politics” or “politically correct.” Additionally, work by marginalized writers is often expected to conform to predictable, acceptable themes (e.g., assimilation, redemption) that do not challenge or disrupt existing structures of power. But as Dorothy J. Wang argues, reading minority writers with close attention to both formal concerns and the larger contexts that have shaped the work, can suggest new possibilities for meaning-making.

In this panel, we will present and discuss hybrid, multimedia, and interdisciplinary work in which the use of form is inseparable from the social, historical, and political contexts that produced the writer’s subjectivity. With the goal of challenging ingrained literary-critical categories and assumptions, we will consider and claim alternate literary lineages and critical frameworks that can more expansively accommodate the intricacies of our complicated social, cultural, and political realities.