Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference -19-30 Oct 2009- Waste Studies ‐ A New Paradigm for Literary Analysis Something is Rotten in the Denmark of Beowulf and Hamlet Susan Signe Morrison Texas State University – San Marcos Abstract The field of Waste Studies emerges out of a conversation increasingly focused on filth, rubbish, garbage, litter — even excrement — all of which are central to how we see and treat the world and those who inhabit it. In a world in which material prosperity and life itself are inevitably linked to pollution and the production of waste, how can we humans ‐ ourselves sources of waste both bodily and in terms of all that we discard ‐ understand and cope with it? From the garbage‐filled moats of the Middle Ages to the overflowing landfills of today, waste has been and continues to be an enduring issue. In the Kuhnian model of scientific revolutions, paradigm shifts occur when there is an accumulation of too much superfluous matter (data/information) that cannot be explained or subsumed into or under the existing paradigm. This superfluous material is waste, until a new paradigm emerges into which the excess can be subsumed, processed, and thereby understood. Waste is everywhere; we need to understand how we theorize, manage, and are implicated in waste. The paradigm shift is now. Those who handle filth, literally or figuratively, become tainted by it morally and socially. If the scholarly action of analyzing references to filth and excrement is a suspect act, how can we talk about it? An inherently cross‐disciplinary approach, Waste Studies borrow from those writing on rubbish, garbage, and excrement to offer ethical and moral frameworks for us to pay attention to, understand, and act on bodily, cultural, and societal waste — material aspects of our world. There is a veritable canon of anthropological, archaeological, sociological, and theoretical works that address waste as a category. Waste Studies force us to confront our own ethics, ethical position, and subjectivity. Conference website: http://compassconference.wordpress.com