The Beats and Materiality: Bodies, Media, Matter — EBSN 14th Annual Conference (Online)

The Beat Studies Network Annual Conference, now in its fourteenth edition, convenes scholars working on the Beat Generation and related literary and cultural movements. This year's theme — materiality, bodies, media, and matter — invites exploration of the physical, embodied, and media-specific dimensions of Beat literature, art, and culture. Held online, the conference provides an inclusive, international platform for new approaches to Beat scholarship, including media studies, posthumanism, environmental criticism, and somatic readings of canonical and lesser-known Beat texts and cultural artifacts.

american literature film beat generation archival and material poetics

We invite proposals for papers and panels exploring the Beats through the lens of materiality, embodiment, media, and matter. Relevant topics include Beat literature and media forms (print culture, audio recordings, film), corporeal and somatic dimensions of Beat writing, ecological and posthumanist readings, the materiality of archival Beat collections, and the relationship between Beat aesthetics and contemporary materialist theory. Papers from emerging scholars and those working in non-Anglophone Beat traditions are especially encouraged.