CFP: The Lebowski Cult: An Academic Symposium
28-29 September 2006
Louisville, Kentucky
(NOTE: OK, this does not have much to do with libraries...or does it? Maybe the whole movie is the dilemma of bad information...See for yourself:
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Big-Lebowski,-The.html)
The aim of this small symposium is to invent a critical program equal to the task of interpreting The Big Lebowski (1998) and addressing the Lebowski cult that has quickly grown in its wake, both the legions of more or less public fans as well as the cultural politics, resonances, and after-affects of their fanaticism. The 5th Annual Lebowski Fest (http://www.lebowskifest.com/fests.asp) scheduled to follow the symposium, will be included in the conference registration.
The organizers invite papers ranging in approach from the theoretical to the documentary, from alternative historicism to cultural phenomenology. Intellectually rigorous approaches that avoid the familiar ruts of conference papers*inspired by the research methods of the surrealist project, for instance*are particularly welcome on Lebowski and the following topics:
Auteur Theory and Cult Film, the sixties and the nineties, Creedence and The Eagles, Bob Dylan and Kenny Rogers, Logjammin and Gutterballs, Fluxus and the Brunswick aesthetic, fans and audiences, the hard-boiled and the postmodern, nihilism and existentialism, the Port Huron Statement, Malibu, Busby Berkeley, Saddam, The Long Goodbye, Nixon, bowling, Tara Reid, The Big Sleep, Vietnam, hippies, the Jesus, language, citation, catch-phrases, cliche, coinage, dreaming, "smart" films, irony, the last Western, Los Angeles, or what-have-you.
An abstract of about 500 words as well as a brief CV should be e-mailed (in the body of the e-mail: no attachments) by March 1st, 2006, to both Aaron Jaffe, Assistant Professor of English, University of Louisville, a0jaff02@gwise.louisville.edu, and Ed Comentale, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University, ecomenta@indiana.edu.
As the symposium will be held in a local bowling alley, participants should arrange to bring appropriate footwear or be prepared to rent on site.
