The Burroughs Century: Celebrating the Legacy of William S. Burroughs

The Burroughs Century is a 5-day festival that will be held in Bloomington, Indiana from February 5-9 to celebrate the 100th birthday of legendary artist and writer William S. Burroughs. Plans include a film festival featuring works made with or about Burroughs, an exhibit of Burrough’s literary archives, an exhibit of Burroughs’s paintings, musical performances, staged readings, and a costume ball. The celebration will culminate in a two-day symposium featuring scholars, artists, critics, and musicians who will discuss Burroughs, his work, and its influence on American culture and beyond. Conference organizers are seeking novel work devoted to Burroughs’s multi-faceted career as it extends from his early reporting at the St. Louis Post Dispatch to his late shotgun paintings, both in the States and abroad, and across media from print to paint to film and music. We are open to a number of different presentational styles, including papers, readings, performances, and panel discussions. Topics could include, but are in no ways limited to, the following:

- Burroughs and the Beat Generation
- The Cut-up Method
- Burroughs and Sexuality
- Burroughs and Drug Culture/Addiction Studies
- Burroughs in New York
- The Artist Abroad (South America, Tangiers, Paris, London, etc.)
- Burroughs and Science Fiction
- Burroughs The Actor/The Celebrity
- The Art of Collaboration
- Burroughs and Politics
- Burroughs and Technology/Cyberculture
- Burroughs the Painter

The festival represents a unique opportunity for Burroughs scholars and fans to gather together and explore--alongside original documents of the Burroughs archive--their shared interest in the Burroughs universe. The conference organizers seek stylish approaches that would appeal to popular as well as academic audiences; they plan to publish the best papers through the Year’s Work series by IU Press, which specializes in new scholarship on fan cultures and cultural objects.

Please send your proposals (no more than 500 words) and a C.V. to theburroughscentury@gmail.com by November 15, 2013. All proposals will be considered and responded to by December 1, 2013. Again, in observance of Burroughs’s own methods, we are open to a variety of ways to demonstrate his importance as a cultural figure whose legacy continues to this day.