Postgraduate Symposium
Desire, Literature, Culture
Department of English
University of Malta
Valletta Campus
29–30 March 2012
http://www.um.edu.mt/events/dlc2012
dlc2012@um.edu.mt
Thursday 29th March
8.30 – Welcome Coffee
9.00 – Welcome Address by Prof. Ivan Callus (University of Malta)
9.15 – Keynote Address: Dr Maria Frendo (University of Malta) – Bored to Death
Chair: Giuliana Fenech
10.15 – Coffee Break
10.45 – Panels 1 & 2
Panel 1 – Literature and Female Desire (10.45 – 12.15)
Chair: Daniela Brockdorff
Marilyn Mallia (University of Southampton) – Gothic desire in George Sand’s Lélia (1833)
Graziella Stringos (University of Malta) – Women, Desire and Monomaniacal Romantic Passion in the
Fiction of Popular Victorian Women Writers
Kim Dalli (University of Malta) – ‘And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire’: The Beyond of
Desire in Emily Brontë’s Poetry
Panel 2 – Bio-Political Desire (10.45 – 12.15)
Chair: Irene Scicluna
Emma Sophie Pickering (University of Leeds) – ‘Without desire I was dead.’ The Body, the Female Agent
and Queercrip/Cripqueer Consciousness in Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Earth
Aaron Aquilina (University of Malta) – Crime/Punishment in Franz Kafka
Tiffany Princep (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University) – Ought We to Dismiss Desire? Foucault’s
‘Perverse Implantation’: A Critical Reassessment
12.15 – Break for Lunch
13.45 – Panels 3 & 4
Panel 3 – Theorising Desire (13.45 – 15.15)
Chair: Aaron Aquilina
Marija Grech (Cardiff University) – Of Spare Parts and Appendixes: Desiring-Production in the Deleuzian
Subject
Irene Scicluna (University of Malta) – Lack of Desire: The Fear of Mathematics
Claudio Celis (Cardiff University) – Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: The ‘Historization’ of Desire
Panel 4 – Voicing Marginalised Desire (13.45 – 15.15)
Chair: Gillian Bartolo
Angelina Saule (Monash University) – Desiring the Oriental Other
Serban-Dan Blidariu (University of the West, Timişoara) – Unchained Desire: A Slave’s Quest for Freedom
Daniela Brockdorff (University of Malta) – Voicing Desire: JM Coetzee’s Foe and Toni Morrison’s Beloved
15.15 – Coffee Break
15.45 – Panels 5 & 6
Panel 5 – Screening Desire: Between Fantasy and Reality (15.45 – 17.15)
Chair: Giuliana Fenech
Maria Theuma (University of Malta) – More Real than Reality: Strange Truth and the Desire for Meaning
in Satoshi Kon’s Paprika
Charmaine Tanti (University of Malta) – Obsessive Desire and Transformation: The Vampiric Subtext in
Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan
Jeffrey Rosenthal (Cardiff University) – Zombies and Survivors: of Desire, Threat and Individuation
Panel 6 – Literature and the Politics of Desire (15.45 – 17.15)
Chair: Renald Galea
Vasiliki Petsa (University of Peloponnese) – Explorations of Violence and Desire in the Literature of ‘Anni
di Piombo’
Reuben Zammit (University of Malta) – Economics of Demand and Politics of Satiety in the World State
Andre Delicata (University of Malta) – Textual Desires
17.15 – End
20.00 – Optional Conference Dinner
Friday 30th March
9.30 – Welcome Coffee
10.00 – Keynote Address: Dr Arthur Bradley (Lancaster University) – Unbearable Life: Literature,
Theology, Biopolitics
Chair: Mario Aquilina
11.00 – Coffee Break
11.30 – Panels 7 & 8
Panel 7 – Geographies of Desire (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Andrew Engwall
Gabriele Costa (Università degli Studi di Macerata) – The Atlas by William T. Vollmann: A Geography of
Desire, an Atlas of Jouissance
Katrin Dautel (University of Malta) – Aimless Desire and Sex in the City: Contemporary Short Stories by
Two Female German Authors
Filippo Mariano (Scuola Normale Superiorie Alumni, Pisa) – Difficult Loves in Invisible Cities: Desire and
Italo Calvino
Panel 8 – Gendering Desire in American Fiction (11.30 – 13.00)
Chair: Claire Ellul
Veronika Pituková (Masaryk University, Brno) – Clash of Desires: Detective vs. Femme Fatale
Lee Anne Sittler (Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus) – 'Rinehart Keeps 'Em Running': Rinehart As
Drag Performative in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
Evgenia Iliopoulou (University of Zurich) – Desire: Between Fantasy and Anxiety
13.00 – Break for Lunch
14.30 – Panels 9 & 10
Panel 9 – Literature and the Arc of Desire (14.30 – 16.00)
Chair: Filippo Mariano
Diahann Harmsworth (University of Malta) – Desire in Petrarch
Christine Farrugia (University of Malta) – Childhood Desire for the Parent: A Glimpse of the Oedipus and
Electra complex in Italian literature of the late 19th century
Sarah Borg (University of Malta) – Sensing the Void: In Search of Desire amidst Affluence
Panel 10 – Desire Between Life and Death (14.30 – 16.00)
Chair: Kim Dalli
Janice Sant (Cardiff University) – Beckettian Stasis: How to Desire at 0 mph?
Francesca Mangion (University of Malta) – Lautréamont and Ducasse: Desire and Death as Literary
Experience
Andrew Engwall (University of Malta) – Historiopoetics and the Contemporary Elegiac Form
16.00 – Closing Address & Thanks – Dr James Corby (University of Malta) and The DLC Team
16.30 – End of Symposium
17.00 onwards – Optional Post-Conference Drinks and Discussion