European Beat Studies Network Annual Conference 

Paris Interzone: The Transcultural Beat Generation (Collaboration, Edition, Translation)

The European Beat Studies Network invite proposals for the 6th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network that will take place at the Chicago University Center in Paris on 20, 21 and 22 September 2017.

In the late fifties and early sixties, several writers and artists associated with the Beat movement made their home in Paris at the so-called Beat Hotel, 9 rue Gît-le-coeur. Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg and Gysin’s sojourn at the Beat Hotel has, of course, been a key moment in the development of Beat culture as a transcultural movement. Paris was an important port of entry: from the French capital the Beats travelled to Europe and Asia. Paris has also been a crucial springboard to publish writing that was controversial or banned in America, such as Naked Lunch (Olympia Press, 1959).

This year’s conference will honor and address the key role that the French capital and Francophone cultures have played in the transculturalism of the Beats, by welcoming submissions in both French and English and holding a plenary session on language barriers and translation issues in Beat Studies. For this session, the organizers will act as translators with the aim of opening a long-awaited dialogue between English and French academic cultures. We are also planning to exhibit unpublished documents establishing close connections between Beat authors and their French publishers.

We are open to all types of submissions, from papers and panels to roundtables and performances. Submissions can focus on any aspect of Beat creativity, but priority will be given to proposals in relation to under-studied Beat figures, Franco-American collaborations and publications, or translation of Beat works:

– Authors or artists still neglected in Beat Studies (Antony Balch, Elise Cowen, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Brion Gysin, Mohamed Hamri, Ted Joans, LeRoi Jones, Michael McClure, Mohamed Mrabet, Harold Norse, Claude Pélieu, Polyphonix, Ian Sommerville, Anne Waldman, etc.)

– Franco-American publishers (Jean Fanchette, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maurice Girodias) and/or publications (Evergreen Review, City Lights, Locus Solus, Paris Review, Olympia Press, etc.)

– The Francophone intertext of Beat literature (Baudelaire, Breton, Genet, Artaud) or the Beat intertext of Francophone literature (Julien Blaine, Nicole Brossard, Yves Buin, Alain Jégou, Lucien Suel etc.)

– The Francophone reception of the Beats (by philosophers, sociologists, the media)

– Textual analysis of Kerouac’s sporadic use of French or of his recently published French writings (Ma Vie est d’hommage, Boréal, 2016)

– Translation of Beat works: Arabic, Dutch, French (Mary Beach, Mohammed Choukri, Bernard Frechtman, Pierre Joris, Eric Kahane, Jean-Jaques Lebel, Claude Pélieu), Italian (Fernanda Pivano), Japanese, Turkish, etc.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: – Jean-Jacques Lebel (multidisciplinary artist, key intermediary between American and French Beat artists from the sixties onwards, and curator of the exhibition Beat Generation held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2016);

– Andrew Hussey (Cultural Historian, Biographer, and Director of the Center for Postcolonial Studies at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study).

Deadline to send abstracts: 15 January 2017

Responses and confirmations will be given by: 1st March 2017

You don’t need an academic affiliation to attend or participate in the conference, only to be a member of the EBSN (membership is free). For all enquiries, and to send abstracts of 250 words with a short bio, please contact the conference administrators: for proposals in English, Raven See (rsee11@elmira.edu), and for proposals in French, Anna Aublet (anna.aublet@u-paris10.fr). Papers will be limited to 20 minutes.