麻豆AV

As a prelude to聽The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald highlights in聽Winter Dreams聽(1922) the grotesque side of fantasy through Dexter Green, a young caddy with lofty goals. This short story explores the intersection of the real world and the realm of fantasy and illusion, depicting the often elusive and distorted nature of the American Dream. This image emerges as well in聽The Great Gatsby,聽in a valley of ashes inhabited by 鈥減oor ghosts鈥� where 鈥渁shes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air鈥� (30).

The US have crumbled in the last decades and their utopian potential has been challenged by the economic crisis, the political turmoil, the pandemic as well as by the environmental and military crisis, among others. The Dream has turned, on many occasions, into a nightmare. As Joel Best explains in聽American Nightmares: Social Problems in an Anxious World聽(2018), American Nightmares are the opposite of the American Dream, they are 鈥渇ears that middle America鈥檚 way of life is threatened鈥� (xvi). These nightmares are alive and as present today as they were in the last decades of the twentieth century, when fear of the so-called communist threat permeated much of the political and cultural debate of the time. As a matter of fact, as Best explains, current political campaigns have emphasized these ideas of American Nightmares, alluding to the different elements that supposedly threaten the American Dream聽 (xvii).

The dream and the nightmare are alive in America today. Between the dream and the nightmare, there is always room for the fantasy, a place inhabited by the realms of the imagination. Fantasy and science-fiction also mirror the American imagination, American rhetoric and American aesthetics, turning the myth-making of the American Dream into a shared and celebrated fantasy. American science fiction explores the subversion of the multiple versions of the American Dream and the 鈥淎merican Frontier鈥�, as Ursula K Le Guin observes in her classic essay 鈥淲hy are Americans afraid of Dragons?鈥� (1979). According to Le Guin, Americans 鈥渉ave learned to repress their imagination, to reject it as something childish or effeminate, unprofitable, and probably sinful鈥� (41).

In the last hundred years, the US has produced many new dreams, nightmares and fantasies that perpetuate or challenge the Foundational Dream. Examples of the wonders and the perils of the dream are easily found in literature, cinema, video games, TV series, music and other artistic forms both in high and popular culture. Rather than perpetuating iconic perspectives on the American Dream, we invite panels that challenge or expand the original American Dream or that focus specifically on new readings of聽The Great Gatsby. The theme of the conference intends to open new paths of research around the 鈥淎merican Dream鈥� and its counterparts, 鈥渢he 鈥淎merican nightmare鈥� and the 鈥淎merican fantasy鈥�.

The CFP is open until October 15, 2024.

Please visit our for more information.