10th SAAS CONFERENCE

“The Backyard of the U.S. Mansion: Critical readings of poverty and wealth in the United States”

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).  April 14-16, 2011

 

3) Literature from the Golden State: California as a Land of Wealth and Poverty

Panel Chair: Eusebio De Lorenzo
Institution: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
E-mail: delorenzo@filol.ucm.es

For two centuries the American unconscious has equated California with a land of opportunity. The most desired destination of the westward journey, California has always been accorded the status of western haven, where travelers begin a new life of material gains or spiritual regeneration. This illusion has consolidated the American dream by holding up California as a land of quest, possibility, renewal, and plenty.

However, history and literature have shown that such a construct has an underside of squalor and injustice. Nineteenth-century westbound explorers featured the romantic quest for virgin territories as inextricably intertwined with fraud or hasty get-rich-quick schemes. In the twentieth century, immigrants’ memoirs revealed exploitation and violence as the pillars sustaining the California ideal. In the 1950s, the spiritual rebirth undertaken by the Beats in California was undermined by their political and social stigmatization. Even the lasting prosperity of Northern California or Los Angeles has found its foil in the moral degradation depicted by crime fiction, in which urban landscapes become ideal backdrops for both affluence and vileness.

This panel welcomes contributions on the literature of California as a testimony to the construct of the American dream. Of special interest will be deconstructive analyses and critical readings which question the validity of California as a paradigm for prosperity. Proposals for this panel may consider the following topics as related to constructions of wealth and poverty:

- travel and exploration narratives of California (e.g. Jack London, Mark Twain, R. L. Stevenson)

- Gold Rush stories

- landscape and nature as sources of wealth or renewal (e.g. John Muir, Gary Snyder)

- The Beat generation and their experience of California
- California Noir: degradation and materialism (e.g. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler,   
  James Ellroy)

- California as a site of counterculture

- Californian experiences of immigration

- Californian identity and the position of the other

 

 

 

10th INTERNATIONAL SAAS CONFERENCE
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 14-16 April 2011

THE BACKYARD OF THE U.S.A. MANSION: Critical Readings of Poverty and Wealth in the United States

Name:

Academic Affiliation:

E-mail:

Title of Proposal:

Panel:

Special requirements, if any:

Abstract (400-600 words):

Please, complete this form and send it, in electronic format (via e-mail), to the Chair of your selected panel. Deadline for sending proposals is October 29, 2010.