Ofterdingen and Kropotkin: Boil 1.81

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

UPDATED DEADLINE: 3/10/06

Announcement and Call for Papers

The Lebowski Cult: An Academic Symposium

28-29 September 2006

The Executive West

830 Phillips Lane

Louisville, Kentucky

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.

scheduled to follow the symposium, September 29th & 30th, 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.