Ritual & Tradition
“Tradition,—which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,—tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
Traditions are practiced on all levels of society, from the culturally-specific to the familial. Tradition is embodied in religious ceremony (e.g. attending Sunday Mass) and cultural practice (e.g. festival season in New Orleans). In this tumultuous moment, how do traditions connect us or make our differences evident? Many culturally-specific traditions have been suppressed, while other traditions have been deployed as a means of domination. Tradition promises to guide us through our lives down increasingly well-worn paths. Societies likewise cling to stable tradition and rituals of legitimation. Can tradition take a bolder form? In the words of T.S. Eliot, “if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, ‘tradition’ should positively be discouraged. […] Tradition is a matter of much wider significance.”
We invite prospective panelists to think about the ways rituals and traditions are both conservative and liberatory, constricting and engaging, harmful and powerful. This can include papers that celebrate tradition or declare a departure. Papers may also investigate the complexities of a given tradition or ritual. Why do some ceremonies persist across borders—both literal and abstract—while others fade because of time or distance? When thinking about preserving or abandoning tradition, what is at stake? How do ritual and tradition connect to legacy? How are traditions of one’s own culture depicted (in literature, film, etc.) or lived differently from those of other cultures?
We invite submissions from graduate students from any department. Papers that speak to ritual and tradition, of today and in the past, will be considered. Paper presentations should be roughly 15 minutes in length, with submissions in the form of a 300-word abstract, submitted by January 15, 2026. Please send abstracts to englcolloquium-ggroup@bc.edu as a PDF or Word document. Papers may interrogate any aspect of the theme in our title.
Subjects may include, but are not limited to:
Diasporic literature and history
Queer theory
Literary tradition & the canon
Indigenous studies
Ecocriticism
Postcolonial studies
Psychoanalysis & philosophy of psychology
Gender studies