Images of San Antonio and the historic Sheraton Gunter Hotel, site of our 69th Annual Conference
Join us in San Antonio, Texas for our 69th Annual Conference!
"Death, Eros & the Literary Enterprise"
The 69th annual convention will be held in San Antonio, Texas from November 8-10 at the historic Sheraton Gunter Hotel on the River Walk. The theme will be “Death, Eros, and the Literary Enterprise.” Death and Eros, destruction and creation, decay and new growth are concepts that we find in antiquity through today, across the globe. For Freud Thanatos, the death drive and Eros, the drive toward life, are two opposing yet inseparable forces at play in the human psyche. The history of culture offers innumerable opportunities to explore these themes: third century BCE statues of winged Eros Thanatos on ancient sarcophagi tempered the harshness of death; Saint Theresa of Avila’s poetry is a death wish to unite with the divine spouse; doom and young erotic love reign in Romeo and Juliet; eroticized depictions of the temptress/murderess Salomé fascinated fin de siècle artists and writers; the sexualization of violence appears in many forms in international film, literature, and art of the 20th and 21st centuries, while moments of hope and renewal temper political turbulence in literature and media. We anticipate a wide range of original research on these concepts.