Redefinition(s)

Call for Papers: Redefinition(s)

Sponsored by the University of Virginia Department of French, March 26th-27th, 2027

A sense of redefinition appears to be taking shape throughout the French and Francophone world. Political boundaries are realigning across the political spectrum, from the tensions emerging in France’s electoral politics to a recent rejection of postcolonial paternalism in Francophone Africa and New Caledonia, alongside a renewed attention to matters of identity and difference in France and beyond. Ecological catastrophes have redefined previous understandings of what is and will become of our planet. Social movements (from BalanceTonPorc and to the Gisèle Pelicot trial) have led to increased attention to how gender and sexual-based violence is defined and understood, alongside attempts to revise longstanding definitions of gender and sexuality. Such redefinitions are, of course, not limited to contemporary concerns. Year after year, scholars offer new insights on canonical and littleknown texts alike, nourished by a host of new theoretical approaches and methods. Recent scholarship in Premodern French literature has explored how notions like consent, agency and race circulate in various geographic contexts. Developments from the environmental humanities, medical humanities, and digital humanities, too, have provided new terms and concepts with which we might read canonical authors (from Montaigne to Frantz Fanon) in new, more invigorating ways.

Redefinition, then, carries with it the traces of longstanding ideas that it aims to bring into new light. What traces persist? And what, ultimately, is left behind? How might we consider these various redefinitions against the weight of entrenched practices of our disciplines – for reading, theorizing, and studying French and Francophone cultures in their varied forms and historical contexts?

This conference invites contributions from advanced undergraduate and graduate students working within and around redefined issues, genres, and fields of study. We welcome submissions from a variety of fields within the humanities, including but not limited to literature, literary theory, translation studies, history, art history, religious studies, medieval studies, digital humanities, gender and sexuality studies, and post- and de-colonial studies. While our conference is centered on French and Francophone studies, we invite all proposals and papers that fall within the realm of redefinition(s). Specific topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Retellings and translations
• Intertextuality
• Queer interpretations: redefining sexuality, consent, and relationships
• Migration and movement: redefining borders, communities, and cultures
• Language evolution
• Literary experimentation, redefining genres
• Expansions and new explorations in the field of French and Francophone studies
• Technology and artificial intelligence
• Modernity and postmodernity studies
• Redefining artistic practices: evolution of artistic style, medium, technique, and expression
• Justice and legality
• Shifting morals and ethics
• Mental health, mental illness, and trauma studies

Papers can be in English or French. Presentations should last 15 minutes; panel presentations will be followed by 30 minutes of questions and discussion, shared between all participants on the panel.

Proposal deadline: January 15, 2027.