Department of American Literature and Culture, in cooperation with the Video Game Research Center, is organizing a two-day international conference “ExRe(y) 2018. Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture.”

We seek proposals for papers and panels that focus on the topic of exhaustion and regeneration in American and Canadian literature and visual culture (film, visual arts, video games, television, and others) of the last seventeen years, from the year 2000 to the present day.

Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

post-millennial literature of exhaustion and replenishment
psychological and emotional exhaustion and regeneration (mental disorders, breakdowns, burnout, psychotherapy)
disease and recuperation
environmental crisis and sustainable design
globalization as the agent of exhaustion and replenishment
scarcity and accelerationism
exhaustion of/with politics
apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios in texts of culture
the many faces of passing: longevity, death, immortality, the undead
religious/spiritual regeneration (revelation, resurrection and the afterlife)
the end of the human and post- and transhumanisms
abuse, war, and the im/possibility of regeneration through violence
(bypassing) communication and the aesthetics of silence and noise
exhaustion of traditional literary forms/new modes of literary expression (cybertext, hypertext, ergodic literature, digital and social media storytelling, interactive web fiction)
adaptations and metanarratives
dystopias of exhaustion and utopias of regeneration

Confirmed plenary speakers:
Prof. Marc Amfreville (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV)
Prof. Zofia Kolbuszewska (Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław)

Selected presenters will be invited to participate in a joint book project to be published by Peter Lang in 2019.

Titled abstracts of up to 250 words should be sent to Izabella Kimak and Julia Nikiel at exreyconference@gmail.com by 30 November 2017 (EXTENDED DEADLINE). All submissions must include a 100-word biographical statement.

The conference fee of 300 PLN/70 € covers conference materials, coffee breaks, and a wine reception.