V International Conference on the American Literary West: (Un)Charted and Nomadic West(s)

This international conference, organized by the research group REWEST (Research in Western American Literature), will focus on the different ways in which literary and artistic interpreters of the American West have shaped and reshaped traditional Western imagery and themes. We would like this conference to offer as diverse and rich a picture of current research on the literature and culture of the American West as possible. The conference will privilege transnational and interdisciplinary approaches aiming to understand properly a genre whose iconography has moved well beyond both national limits and literary borders, becoming an (un)charted, nomadic genre. We particularly invite specialists of Western American studies to consider the literary and artistic representation of the complex interaction between the mythic dimension of the West and its real, historical, social, and cultural features. This forum will also address other cultural and artistic manifestations that interact, overlap, and interrelate with Western writing in complex, often dialogic ways, as exemplified by television, music, photography, art, digital art, video-games, the internet, sports, comics and graphic novels, or translation.

Papers can address a variety of critical issues in the studies of the West:

• The influence of the cultural myths of the Old West and the Western in the present century
• The West as an exceptional region as opposed to the West as an inherent part of American culture
• Motion vs. roots in the American West
• The impact of urbanization and technology
• The interaction between identity and the Western landscape
• Changing interpretations of sense of place in the American West
• Migrations and diasporas in the West
• Minority Western narratives
• Environmental literature of the American West
• Voices of protest
• Reimagining women in the West
• Western masculinities
• The West and the LGTBQI+ community
• Border crossing/ genre crossing
• Western mythologies
• The American West in popular culture
• Transnational Westerns / The Western beyond the US
• Science Fiction and the Weird West
• Western American Music or Music and Western images
• The West in the Web
• Digital West
• Photography and the American West
• Western images in comics and graphic novels

Papers should not exceed 20 minutes’ delivery. Although English will be the official language of the conference, papers in Spanish or Basque will also be accepted.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Basque Country, in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

Please submit your proposal (300 words) plus a brief CV to the conference organizers by JUNE 15, 2022. Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to amaia.ibarraran@ehu.eus, david.rio@ehu.eus and/or angel.chaparro@ehu.eus, including in the subject line the heading REWEST2022.