Seattle Metamodernism 2022 : Seattle AHRC Metamodernism Summit

We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for submissions to the Seattle Metamodernism Summit, to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Saturday, September 10, 2022.

This event is sponsored by the AHRC Metamodernism Research Network, an interdisciplinary network of scholars in literary, media, cultural, religious, and popular culture studies that has convened since 2018. Participants have come from the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as Finland, South Africa, Canada, Japan, Russia, Australia, Germany, China, Belgium, Sweden, and Poland. As part of its 2021-22 offerings, AHRC will host meetings in four of these countries. The Seattle event will bring together researchers from these areas of study, as well as independent scholars, artists/performers and cultural critics.

We will explore metamodernism as a post-postmodern cultural “structure of feeling,” observed in cultural products found in a variety of fields, e.g., visual arts, film, television, music, literature, poetry, video games, contemporary intersections of religion and popular culture, and more. Across all disciplines, metamodern artworks and artifacts can be understood as those that engage the conflicts between modernist and postmodern sensibilities, or that re-engage modernist sensibilities in a fresh, post-millennium way. As per an oft-cited passage from Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s 2010 essay “Notes on Metamodernism,” metamodernism “... oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.”

The Seattle AHRC Metamodernism Summit has as a specific goal of engaging the general public while providing scholars and other experts on metamodernism with a meaningful forum in which to share perspectives with each other.

The summit will consist of three parts:

- A symposium of papers, presented in a manner meaningful and useful to fellow scholars while being accessible and interesting to the general public
- A curated panel of poets and singer-songwriters, featuring performances co-mingled with observations and conversation relevant to metamodernism
- A dinner/meeting/open discussion for participants

We plan for this to be a hybrid event in the sense that remote/online participation will be possible. The timing of the panels and offerings will be designed with an attempt to accommodate European and other time zones as best as possible. However, should there be more submissions than we can accommodate, preference may be given to proposals from those who can present in person.

== Submission Requirements ==

Proposals for individual papers to be delivered as 15-20 minute presentations in the symposium, in the form of an abstract of 200-300 words, should be submitted no later than May 10, 2022. Please make clear in your abstract how your paper will advance the existing research on metamodernism and also how it intends to address a general audience.

Please state whether you intend to participate in-person or not.

Please also include a short biographical paragraph of no more than 150 words.

All submissions should be sent by email (in the body of the message) to: [email protected]

Authors accepted for the conference will be notified by June 10.

Greg B. Dember, Lead Organizer
Linda C. Ceriello, Kennesaw State University

AHRC Metamodernism Board:
Antony Rowland, Manchester Metropolitan University
Usha Wilburs, Radboud University
Dennis Kersten, Radboud University