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Paris Ouest Nanterre la D\u00e9fense University<\/p>\n
Organizers: Claire Bazin, Alice Braun, Fabienne Moine, Marie-Claude Perrin-Chenour<\/p>\n
\u201cTERRITORY(-IES) AND ENVIRONMENT IN WOMEN\u2019S LITERATURE\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Having examined the inscription of the private sphere in women\u2019s literature, FAAAM will now turn its attention to the notions of environment and territory, two aspects of the public sphere that paradoxically contradict and complement each other. The concept of environment, unlike that of territory, is prior to human desire and serves as a broad-based sphere of inclusion. Depending on how it is defined, environment may thus refer not only to the ecosystem as an object of scientific study, but also to nature as a poetic construct of the human imagination, and even to the microcosm, the boundaries of which are only marked out by a feeling of belonging. Territory, on the other hand, requires demarcation and definition by human actors, social, political and intellectual influences, a desire to possess and to name. Territory divides and excludes, though it may also affirm and lay claim to roots and shelter: it both imprisons and emancipates.<\/p>\n Therefore, we will consider how gender is mapped out and how space is divided up in women\u2019s literature. We would, for example, welcome an analysis of the methods used by women authors to attain a position of power vis-\u00e0-vis their territories or to control their environment, or an analysis of the extent to which women authors work with their environment. Through various critical approaches (gender-based, ecocritical, ecofeminist, postcolonial, etc.), we will attempt to show how women\u2019s literature constructs gender within its environment or, conversely, how it uses territory to construct gender. The tension inherent in the relationship between woman author and the environment or territory that she deals with or constructs in writing will allow us to challenge essentialist attempts to identify similarities between woman and nature. An analysis of certain texts (novels, poems, essays etc.) produced by women will aim at showing that spatial division is a literary construct resulting from a gender-based perspective in order to account for a specific position regarding the environment (including both the organization and the appropriation of territories).<\/p>\n Possible topics for discussion:<\/p>\n \u2022 the construction of space or place<\/p>\n \u2022 the symbolic relation to space<\/p>\n \u2022 the concept of conquest<\/p>\n \u2022 appropriation and reappropriation<\/p>\n \u2022 nature, the public sphere, etc.<\/p>\n