第 12 屆英美文學學會
國際學術資訊 第八十二期
Contents
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
2
Conferences in North America
4
Conferences in Europe
30
Journals and Collections of Essays
45
1
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
BAKEA Symposium of Western Cultural and
Literary Studies on History
October 9-11, 2013
Due: April 30, 2013
BAKEA
bakea2013@gmail.com
GAZİANTEP UNIVERSITY
in collaboration with
Pamukkale University
invites you to the
3rd International
BAKEA
Symposium of Western Cultural and Literary Studies
9-11 October 2013
Gaziantep, Turkey
The BAKEA Symposium is a biennial symposium organized by Pamukkale
University. This year it will be organized jointly by Pamukkale and Gaziantep
Universities and hosted by Gaziantep University.
BAKEA welcomes papers and panel proposals from researchers in the fields of
English, American, French and German Cultures and Literatures
HISTORY
The relation between historical study and the practice and study of literature is a
tense one, with both disciplines existing symbiotically with each other and rejecting
and overriding one another: to historicise is to override literature, while to aestheticise
can be to ignore historical contexts and historiography. With this conference the
interdependent, interpenetrating and contradictory disciplines of history and literature
will be celebrated.
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This conference solicits proposals for papers by researchers and scholars in the fields
of English, American, French and German Cultures and Literatures that examine the
role of history in literature and the relationship between history and literature to be
presented at a three-day conference held between the ninth and eleventh of October
2013, at Gaziantep University in Gaziantep, Turkey.
The BAKEA Symposium welcomes papers and/or panel proposals that cover, though
are not limited to, one or more of the following topics:
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Contemporary history and the future of memory
The end of history
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Conflicting histories
Apocryphal history
Remembering vs. forgetting
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Biography vs. autobiography
Private histories
Metahistory
The conjunction of theory and history
Historicism and Anti-Historicism
History as fiction/fiction as history
Fiction and poetry as historiography
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Linguistic approaches to historical texts
Historiography and narratology
Any other issues relating to literature and history
Deadline for proposals:
30 April 2013
http://bakea2013.gantep.edu.tr
Proposals should be 250 words in length and should be sent, with a brief biography
and contact details, to bakea2013@gmail.com by the 30th of April 2013.
Accepted papers will be announced on the 6th of June 2013.
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Conferences in North America
New Directions in Critical Theory Graduate
Conference 2013: “Uncovering the Sublime: The
Infinite, the Material, and the Beyond”
April 5-6, 2013
Due: February 11, 2013
University of Arizona: Department of English
newdirectionsconference@gmail.com
Friday, April 5--Saturday, April 6
University of Arizona
The Sublime—the “beyond,” the moment when the ability to know, to express a
thought or sensation is defeated—has been labeled as “indescribable,” yet, as Philip
Shaw points out, the Sublime has been “debated for centuries amongst writers, artists,
philosophers and theorists,” and it remains a “complex yet crucial concept” that
stretches across many disciplines. From the awe-inspiring landscapes of the southwest
as articulated by writers like Terry Tempest Williams and Edward Abbey, to the
infinitely reproduced image of prophecies represented in the Ministry of Magic scene
in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the endless hall of drawers that Sam
Bell discovers in the film Moon, to the untapped potential of HAL 9000, the
supercomputer capable of billions of computations per second, the Sublime leaves us
with a sense of unease in confronting boundless possibilities. The Sublime can be “a
building or a mountain,” or “a thought, a heroic deed, or a mode of expression . . . a
state of mind.” It is the moment when fear and beauty become indistinguishable. At
the same time that the Sublime teases us to negate our notions of physical reality, it
draws us ever closer to “our actual material limits.” Yet a definition falls short of
words. The Sublime escapes us, frustrating the distinction between cause and effect.
Broadly reaching across disciplinary boundaries, this conference accepts submissions
from both national and international scholars at all levels with contributions from
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fields such as rhetoric & composition, history, literature, linguistics, philosophy,
science studies, theories of technology, theories of place, environmental and
sustainability studies, feminist, gender and queer theory, critical theory, as well as
comparative global studies, pop-culture and media studies, cultural geography, and
more.
A list of possible concerns that may engage the Sublime in direct or indirect ways
include, but are not limited to:
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In the constantly changing face of academia, what is considered sublime in
specific academic disciplines? How are current inter-, cross-, trans-disciplinary
work sublime?
What is the sublime in thinking about social and global problems? In
transcendentalist notions of nature and ecology? In resistance to hegemonic
notions of being and place? In gender identifications and representations? And
what can we do to overcome the sublime as such?
What are some manifestations in popular culture and media such as advertising,
digital and online spaces, or (post)apocalyptic, fantasy, and superhero narratives?
What are notions of the sublime as related to technology, computation, virtual
reality, game studies, and formations of the post-human?
We welcome submissions in any of the following formats:
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academic papers to be presented individually or as a panel;
research descriptions or findings;
creative works to be displayed or performed;
other non-conventional and experimental presentation formats that engage the
audience in new ways of meaning-making.
Please send 200-word abstracts of an individual work or 500-word group/panel
descriptions as a .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .rtf file to newdirectionsconference@gmail.com
by Friday, Febuary 11, 2013.
5
Renaissance Orientations: East and West, North and
South
April 19, 2013
Due: February 15, 2013
Annual Princeton Renaissance Studies Graduate Conference
renaissanceorientations@gmail.com
The cultural moment of the Renaissance can be characterized not only as a movement
in time - as artists and writers looked back to and marked a new sense of temporal
displacement from the cultural and political forms of classical antiquity - but also as a
set of real and imagined passages through space. These geographical transits often
seem to fall along the lines of the compass rose: we might think here of the movement
from East to West of Greek art, texts and intellectuals and its mythic-historical
corollary in the translatio imperii; or of the spread of cultural forms and discourses
northward from Florence, Venice, and Rome through the period.
“Renaissance Orientations: East and West, North and South” aims to bring together
graduate students from across the disciplines to explore and interrogate the usefulness
and importance of these conceptual axes for the study of Renaissance cultural space,
broadly conceived and at any scale, from the local to the global. We welcome papers
offering new perspectives on traditional lines of interaction, as well as those which
expand or destabilize prevailing structures of Renaissance cultural geography.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to
renaissanceorientations@gmail.com by Feburary 15, 2013.
6
Interface 2013: Creative and Critical Approaches in
the Digital Humanities
May 3-5, 2013
Due: February 25, 2013
Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture
interfaceconference2013@gmail.com
Call for Papers (Deadline: Feb. 25, 2013)
Interface 2013: Creative and Critical Approaches in the Digital Humanities
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
May 3-5, 2013
The digital humanities explores how emerging digital forms of scholarly inquiry and
new ways to assess and to organize knowledge transform the creative and critical
methods humanities scholars use to approach their objects of study. Thoughtful in play,
interdisciplinary in engagement, utopian in spirit, transformational in intent, digital
humanists “imagine new couplings and scalings that are facilitated both by new
models of research practice and by the availability of new tools and technologies”
(The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0).
The goal of this conference is to highlight the variety of digital approaches, both
creative and critical, praxis and theory-based, that scholars are bringing to bear on
traditional concerns across the humanities. In addition to traditional conference
presentations, organizers are planning a number of workshops on game development
and digital tool exploration. A selection of papers may be published in an edited
collection following the conference.
Possible topics may include:
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Game studies
Digital pedagogies
Collaborative scholarship
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Archive meets the database
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Digital circulation, content curation, and the “long tail”
Translation and remediation
Tool or project development
Hypertextuality and digital narratives
Social Media
Hacktivism
Surveillance and privacy
Software and platform studies
The spatial turn
Critically engaged artistic work
Keynote: Dr. Stephanie Boluk, Vassar College, Media Studies postdoctoral fellow
Interface 2013 Special Events:
 Rapid Game Development workshop featuring authorware by Brian
Greenspan of Carleton University’s Hyperlab, and David Mould at
Carleton’s Graphics, Imaging, and Games Lab;
 Workshop on Voyant with developer Geoffrey Rockwell of the University
of Alberta;
 Demonstration of the GRASAC Knowledge Sharing System.
Proposals
Please email a title and 250-300-word abstract to
interfaceconference2013@gmail.com with the subject “Interface 2013 proposal
submission.” Submissions should be in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich text (.rtf)
formats. Conference presentations should be no more than 15 minutes in length.
Deadline: February 25th, 2013
Please ensure that the following information is included in your proposal.
Page 1:
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Name, status, institutional affiliation, and email address
Paper title
Biography suitable for publication (100 words)
Brief description of technology requirements
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Page 2:
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Paper title
Abstract (250-300)
Up to six relevant keywords
**Please ensure all identifying information is removed from page 2**
Interface 2013 is part of an annual series of graduate student-run conferences
presented by the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture
(ICSLAC) at Carleton University. ICSLAC is an interdisciplinary culture studies
department that houses the PhD in Cultural Mediations.
This conference is supported by:
Carleton University’s Hyperlab, French Department, Center for Transnational and
Cultural Analysis, Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, the Graduate Student
Association, and the School for Studies in Art and Culture.
Contact: interfaceconference2013@gmail.com
Website: http://interface2013.wordpress.com
9
Dreaming Dangerously: Imagining the Utopian, the
Nostalgic, the Possible
June 21-22, 2013
Due: March 1, 2013
Simon Fraser University, English Department Graduate Conference
gradconf@sfu.ca
Nostalgia itself has a utopian dimension, only it is no longer directed toward the
future. Sometimes nostalgia is not directed towards the past either, but rather
sideways. The nostalgic feels stifled within the conventional confines of time and
space.
–Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia xiv
So where do we stand now, in 2012? 2011 was the year of dreaming dangerously, of
the revival of radical emancipatory politics all around the world. Now a year later,
every day brings new evidence of how fragile and inconsistent that awakening was.
-Slavoj Zizek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
In recent years, the act of dreaming has gained currency as the thoughts of individuals
and groups drift toward alternate versions of the world through nostalgic backward
glances at imagined pasts, utopian projections of impossible future spaces, and
inspiring movements grounded in the present.
Nostalgia is one version of this kind of dreaming. What is this desire called nostalgia
and what work does it do? According to Svetlana Boym, nostalgia derives from two
terms: nostros, or “return home” and algia, or “longing” (The Future of Nostalgia xiv).
Thus, it encompasses two contradictory impulses. Depending on which term you want
to accentuate, nostalgia can either involve the desire to restore some mythical unity
thought to be lost, or it can mean the opposite, the desire to maintain the distance
towards the past that Susan Stewart calls the “very generating mechanism of desire”
(On Longing 23). Here is the wager and the risk of political dreaming - the idea that
the dream might provoke action that attempts to change things or, conversely, that
dreaming will serve as a substitute for action itself. Along with other kinds of cultural
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and political dreaming (the utopian vision, the militant manifesto), perhaps nostalgia
offers alternative affective readings of history and the future, allowing us to think
otherwise about our present spaces, institutions, and interrelationships. Additionally,
to what extent does a conception of desire and nostalgia complicate or complement
the (im)possibility of successfully completing its Utopian impulse?
Where do we think we stood in 2008? In 1968? In 1871? Where do we dream about
standing in our various imagined futures?
The 2013 SFU English Department graduate conference, Dreaming Dangerously:
Imagining the Utopian, the Nostalgic, the Possible, which will be held on June 21st
and 22nd, asks that applicants consider some of the following in their papers:
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The dream and its relationship (or lack of relationship) to the political
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Dreams and dreaming across cultures and periods
The textual reimagining and reinterpretation of the past in order to help us
interpret the present (such as the Medieval and early modern use of Greek
histories, the Victorian use of medievalisms, etc.)
The potential of historical utopian projects and ideas
Countercultural communities, or counterpublics, as utopian spaces
Longing and desire
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Public memory and identity
Retromania and Kitsch
Alternative forms of thinking about the past or future that literature presents to us
in the present
The translation and transmission of ideas across genres and media
The effect of repetition and reiteration to either dilute or crystallize ideas about
possibilities (“First as tragedy, then as farce”)
Scientific and technological innovations that can reshape the possible or cause us
to idealize a pre-technological past (or fetishize an ideal future)
We enthusiastically invite applicants from a variety of different disciplines and
backgrounds to contribute to this conference. For a 15 to 20 minute presentation
(approx. 8 pages), please email paper proposals of no more than 250 words to
gradconf@sfu.ca by March 1st 2013. For a panel proposal, please specify the title and
include the THREE abstracts which make up your panel.
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Finally, the SFU Graduate Conference is proud to host a creative night on the final
day of our conference which invites poets, performance artists, short dramatic pieces,
video art, and musical performers to share their talents. Creative proposals ought to
include a brief artist statement and a sample of previous work. Ideally, your
submission will speak to some of the general concepts we are developing but all will
be considered.
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“The Kronstadt Moment - The Road to Damascus”
April 26-27, 2013
Due: March 1, 2013
Liberal Studies Department - The New School for Social Research, NY.
conference@kronstadt-damascus.com
"The Kronstadt Moment - The Road to Damascus" is an interdisciplinary conference
on conversion and disenchantment to be held on April 26th and 27th, 2013, at the
New School for Social Research in New York City.
Detailed information about the conference concept, keynote speakers, and submission
guidelines are available on the conference website at: www.kronstadt-damascus.com
The call for papers deadline is March 1st, 2013.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 350 words and a short biography to
conference@kronstadt-damascus.com. Group presentations are welcome. Be sure to
specify if you have any special multi-media needs.
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Repetition - with a difference?
May 9-10, 2013
Due: March 1, 2013
English Graduate Conference at University of Toronto
uoftgradcolloquium2013@gmail.com
Last year we heard Barack Obama say “Yes, we can” for a second time, and saw
Youtube viewers watch and re-watch Psy’s “Gangnam Style” for the billionth time
(really!): we live surrounded by repetition. As scholars embedded in a culture
obsessed with imitation, parody, and countless other forms of re- acting, we ought to
ask one another “what is the significance of repetition?” When is it a form of
questioning or deconstruction, and when is it simply re(in)statement or obsession? We
invite you to join us as we explore the ontological, political, ethical, and literary
implications of repetition.
Subjects of interest include, but are not limited to:
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Poetics, allusion, illusion
Psychoanalysis, madness, trauma, dreams, the unconscious
Obsession, compulsion, criminality
Family, inheritance, reproduction
Genre conventions, genre fiction, archetypes
Formalism, structure, refrains, schematic devices
Visual art, photography, iconoclasm, pop art
Imprinting, conceptual art, editions, paratext, digitization
Performance, gender, sexuality
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Writing back, mimicry, hybridity, orality
Nostalgia, memory, flashbacks
Pedagogy, rote learning, memorization
Existentialism, deconstructionism, différance
Labour, boredom, mass production, commodification
Adaptation, translation
Sequels, trilogies, fan fiction
Parody, satire
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Doubling, doppelgangers
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Journaling, life writing, biography
This conference is interdisciplinary: We welcome submissions from a variety of fields.
Send an abstract (of up to 250 words) for your 20-minute presentation to
uoftgradcolloquium2013@gmail.com, with your name and institutional affiliation.
Responses are due by March 1st, 2013
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EARTH PERFECT? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden
June 6-9, 2013
Due: March 4, 2013
EARTH PERFECT? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden; University of Delaware
earthperfect@art-sci.udel.edu
EARTH PERFECT? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden
Symposium June 6-9, 2013
EARTH PERFECT? Nature, Utopia, and the Garden is a four-day symposium
designed for an academic audience, garden professionals, and a general public
interested in the importance and meaning of gardens.
Call for Papers :
Abstracts and proposals for papers and panels due March 4, 2013.
This interdisciplinary event focuses on the importance and meaning of gardens in the
past, present, and the future, and that from a wide range of perspectives, including,
but not limited to the following disciplines: art, art history, architecture, anthropology,
agriculture, philosophy, literature, history, horticulture, botany, landscape architecture,
garden design, nutrition, and law, as well as earth and life sciences.
For instructions regarding submission of paper abstracts as well as proposals for
panels or roundtable discussions, visit:
http://www.udel.edu/ihrc/conference/earthperfect/call-for-papers.html
Please see the symposium website for more details regarding venues, programming,
lodging, and registration: http://www.udel.edu/earthperfect .
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Exile, Death, Sacrifice: The Poetics of Suffering in
Francophone Literature, MLA Chicago 2014
January 9-12, 2014
Due: March 10, 2013
Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA
lbourdeau@ucdavis.edu
The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals
for papers to be presented at the 2014 MLA annual meeting (Chicago, Jan. 9-12,
2014). Please send abstracts (ca. 300 words) on one of the following topics to Loïc
Bourdeau (lbourdeau@ucdavis.edu) by March 10.
Exile, Death, Sacrifice: The Poetics of Suffering in Francophone Literature
We seek papers that investigate the topics of exile, death, and sacrifice in
Francophone literature (19th to 21st century) with a focus on the writing of
“souffrance” (suffering) and its implications. These themes are in line with current
issues of mobility, otherness, identity and loss thereof, as well as sexuality and
violence and emotions. We invite graduate students from various disciplines to submit
proposals that may either focus on one of the topics or their interrelationship. We
welcome and strongly encourage a variety of methodological approaches and
comparative analyses, along the following themes (list not exhaustive):
cinematographic adaptation of suffering; writing exile; death, and/or sacrifice;
sexuality and otherness as pain; performativity of suffering; exile, identity and roots;
suffering and being; Orientalism and pain; reading suffering; (im)migration; writing/
reading violence; etc.
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Compromising, Negotiating: Being a Graduate
Student, MLA Chicago 2014
January 9-12, 2014
Due: March 10, 2013
Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA
lbourdeau@ucdavis.edu
The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals
for papers to be presented at the 2014 MLA annual meeting (Chicago, Jan. 9-12,
2014). Please send abstracts (ca. 300 words) on one of the following topics to Loïc
Bourdeau (lbourdeau@ucdavis.edu) by March 10.
Compromising, Negotiating: Being a Graduate Student
For this roundtable, we seek interventions from 6/7 graduate students who wish to
present on the following topics (list not exhaustive):
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How to be a graduate student (but not only)?
Being a parent, being a graduate student
Private life, privacy, and interacting with your peers: How much should you
reveal about yourself?
How to negotiate conflicts with your peers/professors?
How to deal with discrimination?
How to live heathy while being a graduate student? How to live on a budget?
Preparing for your exams, preparing for the market: negotiating priorities?
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What if being a professor is not for me?
We invite graduate students to submit proposals for short interventions (8 minutes)
that call attention to the aforementioned topics (not limited) so as to reflect on what it
entails to be in graduate school and find ways to make the experience less stressful.
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Pedagogical Approaches to Medieval and Early
Modern Studies
June 7, 2013
Due: March 15, 2013
UCLA Medieval and Early Modern Student Association & UCLA Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
memsa.ucla@gmail.com
The last two decades have seen radical revisions to curricula at universities and
colleges around the world. But have curricular changes been accompanied by
pedagogical developments? When it comes to teaching, graduate students often learn
by doing. By virtue of their experiments and their proximity to the undergraduate
curriculum, they are among the most innovative educators on their campuses. The
Medieval and Early Modern Students Association at UCLA invites graduate students
to share their experience at a conference on June 7 that deals with teaching Medieval
and Early Modern material in the undergraduate classroom. Papers may address, but
are not limited to, the following topics and lines of inquiry:
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Methodological approaches that lend themselves to Medieval and Early Modern
Studies
Classroom conditions (ideological, practical, technological, social/cultural,
financial, theoretical) that shape approaches and assumptions in literary study
Accessibility of older material to today’s undergraduates
Student-directed learning and the canon
The learning goals of an historical curriculum
Presentism and productive anachronism
Reception history and the critical heritage
Challenges and opportunities of teaching older material
Textual criticism and the literary archive
Digital approaches and 21st-century technology in the Medieval and Early
Modern classroom
Surveying the survey course
Transformative pedagogy and Medieval and Early Modern studies
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Creating dialogues across the curriculum
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Performance studies
Synthesizing research and reading with other undergraduate disciplines
Seminar learning vs/and lecture learning
Teaching writing in the Medieval and Early Modern studies
Translation and multilingualism (teaching in translations vs. original languages)
New Historicism and student learning
Politics and pedagogy (teaching race, gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality in
Medieval and Early Modern studies)
Theory in Medieval and Early Modern studies
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We welcome abstracts from a variety of fields within or adjacent to Medieval and
Early Modern studies. While specific teaching techniques are encouraged, we’d like
papers that include a broader theoretical and pedagogical scope. Abstracts of less than
500 words for 20-minute papers should be emailed to memsa.ucla@gmail.com by
March 15 with the subject line CONFERENCE ABSTRACT. Papers should be timed
to less than 20 minutes.
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21st Century Pedagogies, MLA Chicago 2014
January 9-12, 2014
Due: March 15, 2013
Stacey Lee Donohue/Modern Language Association
sdonohue@cocc.edu
Title of session: "21st Century Pedagogies"
Submission requirements: 250 word abstracts
Deadline for submissions: 15 March 2013
Description: Brief presentations that explore alternative teaching approaches,
innovative pedagogy, and English or Foreign language classroom best practices
departing from the traditional instructional model. Stacey Donohue
sdonohue@cocc.edu
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Other Archives, Other Souths, MLA Chicago 2014
January 9-12, 2014
Due: March 15, 2013
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
gcaison@gsu.edu
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature seeks paper proposals for a
sponsored panel at the 2014 MLA Convention in Chicago, January 9-12.
Recent southern literature has trended toward revisionist depictions of the historical
U.S. South, expanding our understandings of the numerous cultures that have created
the region as well as the boundaries of the region itself. How do southern writers use
alternative archival sources (oral, visual, print, etc.), and how do the recovered
histories that these sources reveal broaden representations of a multicultural south in
literature? How have authors challenged or expanded traditional considerations of
numerous souths, whether cultural, geographic, or otherwise? We welcome proposals
that address these issues in works by contemporary authors as well as papers that
consider earlier writers of the region.
Please send a 250-word abstract to Gina Caison and Stephanie Rountree, Department
of English, Georgia State University at gcaison@gsu.edu and slittle19@gsu.edu by
March 15, 2013.
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Native South: Past, Present, and Future, MLA
Chicago 2014
January 9-12, 2014
Due: March 15, 2013
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
gcaison@gsu.edu
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature seeks paper proposals for a
sponsored panel at the 2014 MLA Convention in Chicago, January 9-12.
The past few years have seen increased attention to the Native South. With both the
publication of the ground-breaking anthology _The People Who Stayed: Southeastern
Writing After Removal_ and a renewed focus on a diverse early south, southern
studies and Native American studies are finding new points of dialogue.
While this panel seeks papers that address any intersection of Native American and
southern literature, we are especially interested in proposals that address the perils and
possibilities for imagining the Native South as a field of study. What does a focus on
the Native American past, present, and future in the region allow us to imagine anew?
What are the dangers in calling upon the “south” as a discreet region that maps onto
long pre-existing Native nations and communities? Ultimately, what do southern
literary studies and Native American literary studies have to say to one another across
the deep time of the region?
Please send a 250-word abstract to Gina Caison and Stephanie Rountree, Department
of English, Georgia State University at gcaison@gsu.edu and slittle19@gsu.edu by
March 15, 2013.
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Courtly Literature and the Tangled Web of Text,
Image, and Culture, SAMLA 2013
November 8-10, 2013
Due: April 30, 2013
Michelle Golden / Georgia State University
michellelgolden@gmail.com
Courtly Literature and the Tangled Web of Text, Image, and Culture
This year’s International Courtly Literature Society panel questions how the
intersection of text, image, and culture serves to make meaning in courtly literature in
order to explore SAMLA’s broader 2013 theme of “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts:
Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds.” Possible approaches may
include investigating the affect of text(s) on culture(s), the influences of broadening
cultural awareness on texts, or the inclusion of images within courtly literature.
To be considered for the panel, please send the following information by April 30,
2013:
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Panelist name, title, and institutional affiliation
250-300 word proposal for an (approximately) 15-minute presentation
Title of paper as it will appear in the conference program
Brief panelist bio
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Reinterpreting Carson McCullers, SAMLA 2013
November 8-10, 2013
Due: May 15, 2013
Courtney George: The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians
(Columbus State University)
george_courtney2@columbusstate.edu
To inspire more work on Georgia writer Carson McCullers and her legacy, this panel
invites papers discussing innovative ways of analyzing texts related to McCullers,
whether biographies, literary works, or adaptations of either. These reinterpretations
might include discussions of McCullers’ works in the context of her contemporaries
(Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James
Baldwin, et al), film or dramatic adaptations of her work, or her contributions to
today’s southern gothic, Grit Lit, and/or Queer Studies. We welcome essays that
address the conference’s theme “Cultures, Contexts, Images, and Texts: Making
Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds” as related to studies of McCullers
(however, the scope of the panel is not limited by this theme).
Please e-mail abstracts (250 to 500 words) to Courtney George,
george_courtney2@columbusstate.edu, by 15 May 2013.
25
5th Annual Louisiana Studies Conference
September 20-21, 2013
Due: May 15, 2013
Louisiana Folklife Center / Northwestern State University of Louisiana
rasmussens@nsula.edu
The 5th Annual Louisiana Studies Conference will be held September 20-21, 2013 at
Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Conference
Committee is now accepting presentation proposals for the upcoming conference. The
theme of this year’s conference is “Preserving Louisiana.”
This interdisciplinary conference will be accepting proposals from the following
disciplines: American studies, anthropology, architecture, archival studies,
communications, craft, creative writing, criminal justice, cultural studies, cultural
tourism, dance, design, English and literary studies, environmental studies, ethnic
studies, fashion design, film studies, fine arts, folklore, gender studies, geography,
heritage resources, history, interior design, journalism, linguistics, museum studies,
musicology, music performance, philosophy, photography, political science,
preservation studies, psychology, queer studies, religious studies, Romance languages,
social work, sociology, theatre, and vernacular architecture.
Although we are especially interested in proposals that deal with Preserving Louisiana,
all papers, creative writing, and short performances (dance, music, or theatric) that
address ANY aspect of Louisiana studies are welcome. Proposals are being solicited
for fifteen minute presentations from scholars at all career stages as well as graduate
students. Creative work (creative non-fiction, short fiction, and poetry) is welcome.
Undergraduates are invited to submit, provided they are working with the guidance of
a trained scholar. Proposals for panels and roundtable discussions are welcome.
Registration for Conference attendees will be $40.
Abstracts (300 words max.) for scholarly proposals, creative writing, films, and short
performances (dance, music, or theatric) should be sent as e-mail attachments to Dr.
Shane Rasmussen, rasmussens@nsula.edu. Presentations should run no longer than 15
minutes. Briefly detail the audio / visual tools (laptop, projection screen, data
26
projector, DVD or VCR player, etc.) or space (the stage in the Magale Recital Hall
will be provided for short performances) your presentation will require, if any. Please
include a separate cover page with your name, affiliation, mailing and e-mail address,
and the title of your presentation. E-mails should be entitled: Louisiana Studies
Conference Submission. We will send an e-mail acknowledgement of having received
each abstract within one week of having received it. If you do not receive an
acknowledgment please resend your submission as we may not have received it. The
deadline for submissions is May 15. Accepted presenters will be notified via e-mail by
June 15, 2013.
Read broadly, consider the following possibilities for presentation topics relating to
Preserving Louisiana. (Note: The following list of suggestions is not meant to be
comprehensive.)

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Archaeology
Architecture (including Vernacular Architecture)
Archives
Art
Bridges and Structures
Built Environments
Cemeteries and Gravestones

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
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Churches
Conservation
Crafts
Cultural Heritage
Cultural Landscapes
Curation
Dancehalls
Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Farming and Agricultural Practices

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Film
Folk Industries
Folk Traditions
Folklife Apprenticeships
Gardens and Arboretums
Historical Landmarks and Sites
Historical Significance
History
27

Industrial Sites (cotton gins, fisheries, sugar houses)

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Language Preservation
Libraries
Main Streets
Material Culture
Monuments
Murals
Museums
Native American Sacred Spaces
Oral History
Photography

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Plantations
Preservation and Heritage Advocacy
Preservation and Heritage Education

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Public Art
Public Spaces
Roadside Attractions
Rural Life
Sculptures
Sense of Place
Signs
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State and National Parks
Theaters
Threats to Preservation
A selection of scholarly and creative work presented at the conference will be
solicited for publication in Louisiana Folklife, a peer reviewed academic journal
produced by the Louisiana Folklife Center, Northwestern State University, General
Editor, Dr. Shane Rasmussen.
Additional information is available on the website for the Louisiana Folklife Center at
Northwestern State University: http://louisianafolklife.nsula.edu/.
Dr. Lisa Abney, Provost, Vice President for Student and Academic Affairs, and
Professor of English, Northwestern State University (Conference Co-chair)
Dr. Shane Rasmussen, Director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and Assistant
Professor of English, Northwestern State University (Conference Co-chair)
28
The Conference is co-sponsored by the Folklife Society of Louisiana, the Louisiana
Folklife Center, and the NSU College of Arts, Letters, Graduate Studies and Research.
29
Conferences in Europe
Specters of the Author: 1st International Seminar on
Literature
April 6, 2013
Due: February 22, 2013
Faculty of Philology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
spectersoftheauthor@gmail.com
The fate of the author in the twentieth-century literature and literary criticism is as
complex as it is fascinating. Entwined closely with that of the subject, whose capital
punishment was pronounced by Ernst Mach in his famous "das Ich ist unrettbar", the
path of the author as the sole carrier of meaning in a literary text led finally to his
death at the hands of the structuralists, only to direct him back to life in the
disillusioning post-modern play. And yet, whatever his position within a text may be,
the existence of the author, of the person creating a literary work, is undeniable, even
though this presence might not be admitted, remaining merely a spectral manifestation.
It is these specters, as well as other forms of authorial presence in literature and
literary theory, we would like to focus on during our seminar.
We invite papers to one of the following panels:
1. (Auto)biography
2. Disillusion
3. Inscription
4. Return of the author?
Papers might focus on (but are not limited to) the following topics:
(Auto)biography
 explicit or implicit manifestations of (auto)biographical motifs in the literary
text;
 (auto)biographical plays with the reader;
 fictive (auto)biographies;
30

interlacement of (auto)biography and literary fiction.
Disillusion
 authorial presence in the literary text as an element of post-modern disillusioning
play;
 disillusioning literary devices;
 metafictionality and other metaliterary features;
 metalayers of literature;
 unveiling the writing workshop.
Inscription



signature as an act of granting meaning to the literary text;
pseudonyms, heteronyms, and other means of concealing/playing with identity;
ascribing the text to someone else;


topos of the found manuscript;
critical reading as an inscription.
Return of the author?
 authorship/paternity/maternity of a literary text;
 significance of the author in literary mystifications;
 return of the author after postmodernism;


ethical turn in literature and literary theory;
autofiction.
The full papers will be shared on our website before the seminar and discussed during
the panels by their authors. There will be no possibility of otherwise presenting the
papers.
Submissions should include the paper title; the delegate’s name, address and email; a
summary of the proposed paper (300 words); and a short bio (100 words). Also,
please indicate in which discussion panel you would like to participate. Please send
submissions by 22nd February 2013 to spectersoftheauthor@gmail.com. The
conference fee is 150 PLN and includes conference materials, coffee breaks, lunch,
and costs of publication.
Important dates:
22 Feb 2013: Abstract submission
25 Feb 2013: Abstract acceptance notification
31
31 Mar 2013: Full paper submission
6 Apr 2013: Seminar
For more information visit our website:
http://spectersoftheauthor.wordpress.com/
32
The Art of English
June 21, 2013
Due: February 28, 2013
Queen Mary, University of London
artofenglishconference@gmail.com
Faced with pressure to quantify and possibly to commodify our research and our
teaching through the narrow and potentially homogenizing parameters of concepts
such as ‘impact’, many researchers and teachers in English departments seem to
retreat from the challenge of affirming what it is that we value in the study and
teaching of English.
This one-day conference to be held at Queen Mary, University of London, aims to
meet this challenge by tracing and interrogating historical and contemporary debates
pertaining to English and English departments. Commencing from a suspicion of
certain rhetorical commonplaces, whereby the subject is discussed as something to be
‘defended’ or ‘protected’, we hope to keep in play an openness to the future(s) of the
work that we do, by considering the injunction to respond, ethically and imaginatively,
to our subject-matter’s indomitable capacity to surprise and alarm.
The day is structured as a sequence of three sessions, each featuring an address from a
guest speaker, followed by a panel of three shorter papers. We are delighted to
announce Professor Derek Attridge (University of York, Fellow of the British
Academy) and Professor Ben Knights (Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural
Studies in the School of Arts and Media at Teesside University) are confirmed guest
speakers. For the panel papers, we welcome abstracts from all scholars, including
postgraduates and early career researchers, to discuss questions such as:
The Past:
Guest Speaker: Professor Ben Knights.
Chair: Dr Peter Howarth.
33



The theorisation of literary and aesthetic study in the University from Kant,
Schlegel and Schiller through to Matthew Arnold, I. A. Richards, and F. R.
Leavis, and beyond.
The formation and history of English departments, their role within the university,
the theorisation of pedagogy in English departments and attendant questions of
canon and canonization.
The history of the relationship between research and teaching in the University.
The Present
Guest Speaker: Professor Derek Attridge.
Chair: Dr Andrew van der Vlies.


The role of theory today.
Interdisciplinarity.
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The archival turn and material culture.
Distant reading.
The ethical turn.
The usefulness or otherwise of such terms, ‘turns’, and terminology?
English departments and creative writing.
The politics of English studies, for researchers, teachers, and students, today.
The Future



Digital humanities.
The role of creativity in English research and teaching.
‘Post-criticism’.
Proposals, of a maximum of 300 words, including a short biography (maximum 100
words), for twenty-minute papers, as well as queries and comments, should be
addressed to: artofenglishconference@gmail.com.
The deadline for submissions will be Thursday 28th February 2013.
34
Picking Through the Trash
May 10-11, 2013
Due: March 15, 2013
York University Graduate Conference
tanya81@yorku.ca and jvandor@yorku.ca
Picking Through the Trash
English Graduate Students’ Association Conference at York University, Toronto
May 10th and 11th, 2013
“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.” – Ray
Bradbury
“I love trash!” – Oscar the Grouch
How many of us are willing to agree with Oscar, without any reservations? Even
when claiming a love of trash culture, many of us take care to emphasize that this
admiration happens at a distance. Phrases like “guilty pleasure” often accompany the
admission, for we are aware we might be saying too much about ourselves, or
aligning ourselves too closely with something whose main attraction might be its
ability to be consumed easily, rapidly, and in large quantities. Yet designating
someone or something as being trash or trashy reflects as much on the cultural
commentators as on the given object. In this sense, “trash” is a political term,
premised on notions of hierarchy and exclusion, even when we try to collapse these
through kitsch or camp reclamations.
Oscar, however, is undoubtedly speaking of literal trash, the broken and decaying
refuse of society. In this era of escalating environmental crises, our trash is creeping
up on us: we are faced more and more with the problems of reducing, reusing, and
recycling, and with the ever-political question of where exactly to pile our trash up.
Thus the explosion of discussions in urban planning, environmental studies, and other
disciplines on how to restore some form of balance to a world that has been
overwhelmed by the human ability to “trash” the planet.
35
These are just some of the topics that will be explored in the Picking Through the
Trash Conference, taking place at York University in Toronto on May 10th and 11th,
2013. We invite participants from across disciplinary borders to submit papers that
engage with any aspect of this highly mobile field of inquiry. Possible topics could be
inspired by, but should not be limited to, the following thematic concerns:


“Trashy” pleasures, in literature, film, television, and popular culture - Notions
of cultural capital and evaluation
Sorting practices, both cultural and literal - Found art and readymades
(Duchamp)- “Matter out of place” and the politics of location - Kitsch, camp,
reappropriation, and resistance

Eco-criticism, environmentalism, and urban planning - The abject, decay, and
decomposition -Hoarding and other “dirty” habits - Consumerism and appetite Deletion and destruction

Trash talking and insult culture
Please submit a 250–400 word abstract and a 100-word biography to both
tanya81@yorku.ca and jvandor@yorku.ca by March 15th, 2013. Results will be
announced the subsequent week.
36
Topographies of Popular Culture
October 25-26, 2013
Due: March 15, 2013
Unversity of Tampere, Finland
markku.salmela@uta.fi
The conference website has now been opened:
http://www.uta.fi/ltl/plural/topographies/. Please follow the link for information about
the conference venue, accommodation, registration, and travel.
From the venues of rock festivals and theme parks to the back alleys of Gotham City
and the cinematic version of Hogwarts, popular culture contributes to collective
perceptions of spatiality and recreates powerful imaginary topographies. Topographies
of Popular Culture offers a forum for multidisciplinary discussions of popular culture
and space in contemporary American, European and Russian contexts. The conference
seeks to explore representations of space as constructed in popular literary and visual
genres and digital culture. We invite presentations that examine how space and
various popular genres are mutually constitutive in producing "popular" places
(physical, social, and imagined) in the cultural and geographical settings of the USA,
Europe, and Russia. We are especially interested in discussions and comparisons of
"Western" and "Eastern" approaches to space as shaped by discourses of popular
culture. In this kind of analysis, space is to be seen as a social construct that still
exerts an active, emphatic influence: it both reflects socio-cultural processes and sets
conditions for emerging hierarchies, standards, and values.
Topographies of Popular Culture will focus on the relations between popular culture
and dynamic spatial practices. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the
following:



the formation of space(s) in popular culture
space as an interconnected field between popular culture and instances of power
(economic, political, symbolic, etc.)
geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and Occidentalism;
colonial, national and imperial space
37

gendered and queer popular spaces
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the spaces and places of popular production and consumption
interrelations between the local and global in popular culture
connections between literary topoi and spatial topoi in popular fiction
spatial categories in popular genres (e.g. the fantastic worlds of fantasy; exotic
worlds of romance; criminal spaces of detection; monstrous spaces of horror
fiction)
new sites of action in contemporary literary, visual and digital texts
the "internationalization" of space in popular texts
utopian and dystopian spaces
heterotopias and rhizomatics

the language and semiotics of space and place
The conference languages are English and Russian. Prof. Eliot Borenstein (New York
University), Prof. Birgit Neumann (University of Passau), and Prof. Shelley Streeby
(University of California, San Diego) will act as keynote speakers.
Proposals for twenty-minute papers in English or Russian are invited from researchers
working in cultural, literary, language and translation studies and other disciplines.
Please submit an abstract of 250–350 words as a Word file with the author’s name,
affiliation, and contact details by 15 March 2013. Contributors can expect
confirmation of their papers’ acceptance by 8 April 2013.
The organizers intend to put together a themed volume, in which selected papers will
be published as full-length articles.
Contact:
Arja Rosenholm (arja.rosenholm@uta.fi)
Markku Salmela (markku.salmela@uta.fi)
Irina Savkina (irina.savkina@uta.fi)
Organizers
Research program Spaces of Language and Literature
School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies, University of Tampere
Research group Empires of the Popular
School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies, University of Tampere
38
Research group Kult-tovary: Tendencies and Changes in Contemporary Russian
Culture
Russian Language, Culture and Translation, University of Tampere
Department of Contemporary Russian Literature, Herzen State Pedagogical
University of Russia, St. Petersburg
Faculty of Philology, Ural Federal University, Jekaterinburg
Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University
39
Advertising and Consumer Culture Conference
May 31, 2013
Due: March 25, 2013
Centre for Modern Studies Postgraduate Forum / University of York
cmods-pgforum@york.ac.uk
CALL FOR PAPERS: University of York Centre for Modern Studies Third Annual
Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium
Commercial speech – advertising – makes up most of what we share as a culture . . .
As the language of commercialism has become louder, the language of high culture
has become quieter.
– James B. Twitchell, Twenty Ads that Shook the World
Throughout the modern period, advertising and consumer culture have dominated
everyday life; moreover, the trappings of commercialism permeate much of supposed
‘high culture’. Commodities clutter the pages of novels from Dickens and Zola to Bret
Easton Ellis; works by Joyce and DeLillo are enlivened by advertising jingles and
slogans; brands and trademarks pervade the practice of artists from Picasso to Warhol
and the visualisation of consumer desire is appropriated and challenged in the work of
Richard Hamilton and Martha Rosler.
Whether celebrating or critiquing advertising and consumer culture, art reflects our
enduring fascination with them, despite research into the psychological effects of
advertising, concerns over the evils of consumerism, and the often sinister nature of
market research. The recent television show Mad Men, for instance, has revivified
interest and scholarly debate surrounding the power of advertising and the consumer,
as well as restaging debates around sexism, truth and the heteronormative ideal.
Meanwhile, sociology in the wake of Erving Goffman continues to explore
advertising’s uses and abuses of gender, identity and desire. Countervailing against
consumerism and advertising’s many critics, theorists such as Michel de Certeau and
the critical movement Thing Theory have endeavoured to examine advertising and
consumer culture from a standpoint that goes beyond the model of the ‘passive
consumer’ or Marx’s account of commodity fetishism.
40
We invite abstracts for 20 minute papers from postgraduate students and early-career
researchers working in the modern period (1850-present day) across the humanities
and social sciences. This conference aims to provoke interdisciplinary discussion
about advertising and consumer culture. We therefore welcome papers that address
these topics from historical, sociological, political or anthropological perspectives, as
well as papers that analyse advertisements themselves and the representation of
advertising and modern consumer culture in literature, film, television, theatre, and
visual art.
Topics for discussion may include but are by no means limited to:

The ways in which advertising and consumer culture intersect with issues of
class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity

Psychological/psychoanalytic perspectives on advertising and consumer
behaviour; how identity is created and reflected through participation in
consumer culture; the legacy of Freud and Bernays
How artists have appropriated the techniques of advertising, or have been
co-opted by advertising and commodity culture (Koons, Rosler, Murakami,
Kusama and Hirst)
Theorists who have engaged with advertising and consumer culture (Adorno,

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Barthes, Baudrillard, Certeau, Fukuyama, Goffman, Klein, Marx, McLuhan)
The use of music in advertisements
The formal innovations literature has adopted to create a poetics of
advertising/consumer culture
Shopping, the rise of the department store, brand names, and their representation
in culture
Histories of advertising agencies or ‘ad-men’
How the importance of advertising in art may challenge the boundaries between
high and low culture and/or modernism and postmodernism
Anti-consumerist movements (the Situationist International, Adbusters) and
strategies (détournement, culture jamming)
The recent transformations advertising has undergone as a result of social media
The advert as spectacle or ‘event’ (celebrity endorsements, Christmas advertising,
product placement, Pawel Althamer’s Real Time Movie)
Figures who have worked in advertising, either before or during their artistic
careers
(Fitzgerald, Rushdie, DeLillo, Warhol, Lynch)
41

Political advertising and the roles of politics in advertising
Abstracts for papers should be no more than 300 words in length, and submitted by
Monday 25th March 2013 to cmods-pgforum@york.ac.uk. We ask that applicants also
include a short biography. For further information about the symposium or the
CModS Postgraduate Forum, please contact us at this address, or visit
http://www.york.ac.uk/modernstudies/postgraduate-forum/
42
Panel “Women and Literature in the Americas”
December 4-6, 2013
Due: April 1, 2013
Institut des Amériques - CAER - LERMA (Aix-en-Provence, France)
dante.barrientos-tecun@univ-amu.fr ; anne.reynes@univ-amu.fr
On the occasion of the 11th Annual International Conference of the Institut des
Amériques (IDA), 4-6 December, 2013, Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence,
France, we invite paper proposals for panel sessions on “Women and Literature in the
Americas”
The panels provide an opportunity to examine the writing strategies of women authors
from different cultural, historical and spatial spheres so as to analyze how they
question notions of identity and space, how they revisit relations to body, corporeity
and embodiment, and how they advocate reconfigurations of social relations and
alternative ethics, politics and aesthetics. We are also interested in engaging with
women’s writing that investigate relationship to memory, and challenge the power of
official narratives and/or state discourse. Three sessions will investigate these topics –
including all periods and locations from the Colonial period to the present day. The
first invites original research into the notion and conceptualization of “transnational
women’s writing”. Proposals on the impact of immigration and memory on writing
strategies are especially welcome. The second focuses on writing the body in its dual
relationship to subjectivity and the community. The third examines women’s writing
today in terms of new genres and trends. Panel sessions:
1. Social, political and aesthetic dimensions of transnational women’s writing.
2. Subjectivity, identity, community: writing the body, desire and corporeity.
3. Women’s writing today: new trends, new genres.
Conference languages are English, French and Spanish.
Proposals should be sent to: Dante Barrientos (Aix-Marseille Université, Centre
Aixois des Etudes Romanes) dante.barrientos-tecun@univ-amu.fr and Anne
Reynes-Delobel (Aix-Marseille Université, Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur
43
le Monde Anglophone) anne.reynes@univ-amu.fr by April 1, 2013. They should
include a one page abstract and one page bio, including institutional affiliation.
More information on the conference website: http://femmes-ameriques.blogspot.fr/
44
Journals and Collections of Essays
Synthesis 7 (2014): Acting (on) the Text: The Case of
New Media
Due: February 15, 2013
Eve Kalyva
e.m.kalyva@gmail.com
Synthesis 7 (2014) Call for Contributions
Acting (on) the text: the case of new media
There is a tendency with new media technologies towards information exchange via
interaction. With applications such as hypertexts, pervasive games, and social network
sites, new media are characterised by flexibility in data morphology and manipulation,
including generating, structuring, storing, and sharing data. While the reader becomes
user (and often co-author) rather than recipient, new technologies not only transform
the materiality of the text as a container of information, but also the activity of reading
and writing and its theorisation in new (meta)spaces.
The rise of new media calls for reconsiderations of binaries such as author/reader,
producer/consumer, and source centre/periphery, the role of the participating audience,
and the nature of information exchange. Such re-articulation(s) could further be
situated in relation to the political impetus of technological developments and the new
ways of engaging and performing the world that these enable. Put differently, new
media alter the material applications and critical potential of the networks of
production and dissemination of information, as well as the communities within
which these operate and help create. As such, the activity of reading/writing in new
media becomes a particular material and social practice that can open up and create
new, more democratic spaces.
This guest issue of Synthesis invites a critical discussion of new media aiming to
re-examine the relations across information, user, and medium under a new paradigm
of interactivity, and the pressing questions of ethics and responsibility as a digital
divide persists in our globalised age. What is the social value of these new
45
reading/writing activities and the spaces that they create? What is the role of the user
from literary, cultural, and sociological perspectives? How does the dialectic between
materiality and virtuality affect our conceptualisation of literary and artistic practice?
With special focus on cultural, societal, and political implications, we invite
reflections on the modes, effects, and theorisations of acting (on) the text in new
media. As a practice, this leads to a new kind of collective: from collective production
to the enhancing and shaping of communities, and to collective action.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Digital cultures: reading/writing as a social activity and the rhetoric of


participation
Who owns the open text? Co-authoring, appropriation, and activism
The multimodal text: trans-media adaptations, sociological approaches to the






performativity of the text, cognition, and perception
Hybrid spaces across the private and public sphere: from information exchange
to social interaction
Pervasive games, augmented reality, and the societal impact of new technologies
Art’s social practices, community projects, and formulations of identity
Re-articulation(s) of the audience, medium, and the space of information
exchange, and their critical and political potential
The power of new media technologies as instruments of propaganda and control,
and the centre/periphery binary
Neoliberal virtualisation of ‘choice’: how real are the end-user’s choices?
Article proposals of 800-1000 words, including a biographical note of 300 words,
should be sent to this issue’s guest editor Eve Kalyva (e.m.kalyva@gmail.com) by 15
February 2013. Authors will be notified by early March 2013, and full articles of
6000-7000 words should be submitted by 15 October 2013. For further information,
including submission guidelines, see the Synthesis website, http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr.
46
Collection on Transgressive Women in Global
Speculative Fiction
Due: February 28, 2013
Valerie Guyant/ University of Wisconsin & Elizabeth Bowman/ University of Guam
guyantvl@uwec.edu and ebowman@uguam.uog.edu
The interconnection of speculative fiction, transgressions against social norms, gender
studies, and global perspectives is compelling because speculative fiction allows for a
unique approach to social critiques. The worlds that are created in science fiction,
fantasy, horror, and dystopian futures allow the genre to to explore new or imaginative
societies, detached from existing or historical social structures. Such an environment
of speculation has led many authors such as Joanna Russ, Angela Carter, Margaret
Atwood and Marge Piercy to utilize the genre to comment on women’s concerns.
Their works have, understandably been extensively critically examined as have works
by authors such as Ursula LeGuin, Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, and Stephen King.
While not denying the important works or the critical approaches that have previously
been explored, Dr. Bowman and I solicit critical approaches for our anthology that
examine female characters created by contemporary writers of speculative fiction who
are underrepresented in present scholarship, emphasizing the global reach of
speculative fiction. We specifically request essays that examine female characters who
operate outside social norms [either real world norms or those of their created cultures]
and whose transgressive behavior is potentially transformative and critically
interesting. We are especially interested in global perspectives and authors, including
Hiromi Goto, Marcela Sola, Irmtraud Morgner, Vandana Singh, Nalo Hopkinson,
Zoran Drvenkar, Rinsai Rossetti, Karen Lord, and Malinda Lo, although there are
many others as well. However, particularly engaging ideas about underrepresented
authors from any locale are encouraged.
We are NOT interested in well-known American and British authors who have already
been the focus of significant critical work.
Facets of transgression may include gender performance and breaking bounds of
gender normativity; issues regarding motherhood, reproduction, and other-mothers;
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enacted or experienced violence; non-heteronormative, monogamous sexuality; the
questioning or embracing of religion; and any behavior which breaks, bends, or
questions other social paradigms. Our intent is that this anthology will contribute to an
understanding of global uses of speculative fiction as a prism for examining the
intersectionalities and problematization of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality,
concentrating on characters who are interpreted as female by the readership.
The anthology will be divided into overarching themes of gender performance and
sexuality, violence and peace, identity formation and othering, and mothering,
reproduction, and other-mothering. While essays that engage any of these topics are
solicited, other considerations of transgressive female characters in speculative fiction
are welcome, as are email inquiries to the editors.
Having received strong interest in the collection from McFarland & Company, we
invite abstracts of 250-500 words, along with a CV or full list of credentials, to both
guyantvl@uwec.edu and ebowman@uguam.uog.edu by February 28, 2013. Editors
will invite contributors to submit completed essays of 4000-7500 words, with a
projected due date of June 1, 2013. We are eager to submit the collection for
publication review in August 2013.
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ongoing
Due: March 15, 2013
the quint: an interdisciplinary quarterly from the north
jbutler@ucn.ca
The quint’s seventeenth issue is issuing a call for theoretically informed and
historically grounded submissions of scholarly interest—as well as creative writing,
original art, interviews, and reviews of books. The deadline for this call is 15th March
2013—but please note that we accept manu/digi-scripts at any time.
All contributions accompanied by a short biography will be forwarded to a member of
the editorial board. Manuscripts must not be previously published or submitted for
publication elsewhere while being reviewed by the quint’s editors or outside readers.
Hard copies of manuscripts should be sent to Dr. John Butler or Dr. Sue Matheson at
the quint, University College of the North, P.O. Box 3000, The Pas, Manitoba, Canada,
R9A 1M7. We are happy to receive your artwork in digital format, PDF preferred.
Email copies of manuscripts, Word or RTF preferred, should be sent to either
jbutler@ucn.ca or smatheson@ucn.ca.
Essays should range between 15 and 25 pages of double-spaced text, including all
images and source citations. Longer and shorter submissions also will be considered.
Bibliographic citation should be the standard disciplinary format.
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IJRC, a journal of radical inquiry seeks papers for
Vol 02 No 02
Due: March 15, 2013
International Journal of Radical Critique
ijrc.editor@live.com
We are now reading for Vol 02 No 02. The deadline is March 15, 2013 with a tentative
publication date of March 30th. Submissions received after that date will be held,
most likely, for issues following.
Potential contributors should review these pages:
About: http://www.radicalcritique.org/p/symptom.html
Guidelines: http://www.radicalcritique.org/p/author-guidelines.html
Archive: http://www.radicalcritique.org/p/ijrc-archive.html
Best,
The Editors
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Literature and Pornography
Due: March 17, 2013
LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory
litjourn@yahoo.com
The dust may have begun to settle in the blogosphere, but M. L. James’s Fifty Shades
of Gray novels continue to dominate the bestseller list, impervious to the literary
outrage that greeted their remarkable success. In the wake of this phenomenon, LIT:
Literature Interpretation Theory invites essays on literary works that flirt with, dabble
in, or wholly embrace the pornographic. We are interested in scholarly engagements
with the history, theory, and politics of pornography, as well as studies of the
popularity, reception, censorship, and “literariness” of texts considered pornographic.
We welcome essays on both canonical and lesser-known works, from John Cleland’s
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748) to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1934) to,
yes, Fifty Shades of Gray. LIT welcomes essays that are theoretically grounded but
also engaging and accessible. Contributions should be from 5,000-10,000 words in
length.
LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory publishes critical essays that employ engaging,
coherent theoretical perspectives and provide original, close readings of texts.
Because LIT addresses a general literate audience, we encourage essays unburdened
by excessive theoretical jargon. We do not restrict the journal's scope to specific
periods, genres, or critical paradigms. Submissions must use MLA citation style.
Please email an electronic version of your essay (as an MS Word document), along
with a 100 word abstract, to litjourn@yahoo.com.
Deadline for submissions: March 17, 2013
LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory also welcomes submissions for general issues.
LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory
Editors: Professor Regina Barreca, University of Connecticut &
Associate Professor Margaret E. Mitchell, University of West Georgia
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Essays on Clarence Major for Proposed Book
Due: March 30, 2013
Gregory Leon Miller (CSU Bakersfield)
gmiller9@csub.edu
Call for Submissions for a Book of New and Collected Essays on Clarence Major
(fiction and/or poetry and/or painting)
Charles Johnson is writing the foreword.
Contributors to date include Nancy Bunge, Benjamin Carson, Adam Gussow,
Lawrence Hogue, Martin Japtok, William Nash, Linda Selzer, M.W. Smith and Joe
Weixlman.
Please no single-work articles on My Amputations, Dirty Bird Blues, or Myself
Painting; also, we do not need articles on detective/mystery motifs in Major’s fiction
or that focus exclusively on Major’s early fiction.
Proposals on all other topics are welcome.
Please submit abstracts by March 30, 2013 to gmiller9@csub.edu
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Excess: Special Issue of The Comparatist
Due: April 1, 2013
The Comparatist
zallouz@whitman.edu
Call for Papers: Special Issue, The Comparatist
Topic: Excess
General Editor: Zahi Zalloua (Whitman College)
We welcome contributions that examine the problematic of excess in comparative
studies and literary theory. What constitutes excess today? What does it name? Who
defines it? How do literature and art manage or register excess? How is excess
connected to the task of interpretation? Is excess still synonymous with transgression
and subversion? Have its connotations changed under the sway of neoliberalism?
Topics of interest could include:


Scarcity
Austerity









Economies of signification
The face of the Other
The body
The event
The carnavalesque
Irony and the surplus of meaning
Rhetorical excess
The sublime
Translation studies





Sexual difference
Queering
Trauma and the remainder of symbolization
Pedagogies of excess
Theories of excess and the excess of theory
Interested contributors should submit a 1-page abstract by April 1, 2013 to
zallouz@whitman.edu. Deadline for completed articles will be September 1, 2013.
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Vampire Diaries Edited Collection
Due: May 1, 2013
Dr. Margo Collins
supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com
Articles are invited for an edited collection on issues related to any element of The
Vampire Diaries (either the original books or the CW’s television series). The
following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:


Monstrosity
Fandom and/or Reception







Transformation and/or Adaptation
Gender
Race
Vampirism
Shapeshifters
Hybridity
Witchcraft









Heroism
Villainy
Adolescence
Desire
History
Memory
Domesticity
Power
Possession and/or Mind Control
What to Send:
300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be
submitted by May 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of
the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by October 1, 2013.
Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com.
Please include “Vampire Diaries Submission” in your subject line.
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CONTEXT: Journal of Literary Theory Vol. 8, No. 1
(2014)
Due: January 1, 2014
Journal of Literary Theory
jlt@phil.uni-goettingen.de
Journal of Literary Theory Vol. 8, No. 1 (2014)
CONTEXT
Submission Deadline: January 01, 2014
CALL FOR ARTICLES
›Context‹ is often regarded as a foundational concept among those humanities and
sciences that are concerned with texts. One could argue that every theory about texts
or literature has to – either explicitly or implicitly – make some assumptions about
what a context is. Assuming that contexts are, generally speaking, relations between a
text and states of affairs external to it (such as language, genres, other texts, culture,
society, or history), it is hardly imaginable that there is some theoretical enterprise
concerning texts which does not involve contexts. Consequently, models of textual
understanding as well as editorial or interpretative enterprises would have to take all
relevant contexts into account. Nevertheless, the notion has also been discussed
critically. It has been argued that it presupposes a specific conception of text which is
no longer tenable, and that it should therefore be replaced by alternative concepts. It
has even been suggested that the difference between text and context is obsolete and
should therefore be abandoned altogether.
Compared to other foundational notions (e.g. ›author‹), ›context‹ has not yet received
the adequate amount of attention by the text studies, given its importance. The
concept, though often used, is explained rarely. The discourse is mostly dominated by
a more or less non-technical usage of the term, which comprises various ways of
speaking. This situation calls for terminological clarification of the concept.
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A closer look at different textual and literary theories reveals a vast variety of
opinions regarding the question which contexts are relevant and provide fruitful
grounds for the interpretation of literature. Structuralists argue that texts are defined
by their systematic semiotic relations. Post-structuralists concentrate on discursive
and intertextual references and relations. Author-oriented approaches emphasize
contexts of production, such as authors’ biographies, other works, or facts that might
reveal information about their intentions. Reader-oriented approaches focus on the
cognitive capacities of readers and their aesthetic judgements. Those accounts
generally describe context as knowledge and capacities on part of the reader. Theories
that concentrate on society and culture have proposed models that relate context and
text to each other in terms of system theory, theories of action, or social field theory.
This list can easily be expanded. Consequently disagreement about the question which
theoretical foundation should be used to analyze text and context prevails. This
pluralism of theories calls for a critical survey as well as further reflection on the
concept, which would allow to go beyond the status quo of fundamental disagreement.
Furthermore, texts in digital media seem to pose entirely new challenges for the
humanities and their use of the concept.
Currently, a variety of contexts is factored into textual inquiries. However, it is rarely
made explicit which criteria guide the decision about which contexts to include, and
what follows from those decisions. Thus, it seems necessary to reflect
methodologically on the significance of contexts for literary and textual inquiries.
Possible topics and questions could include, but are not limited to:
What does ›context‹ refer to? What should it mean?
How is the concept to be distinguished from related concepts, such as ›cotext‹ or
›situation‹? What are the systematic relations between those concepts? What is the
relation between ›context‹ and ›discourse‹?
Is there an adequate way to classify the variety of states of affairs that are referred to
as ›context‹?
How should the relation between text and context be described?
Which facts constitute the context as the environment for a text?
What kinds of entities are contexts?
What is the role of contexts in textual understanding?
How can it be decided whether a context is adequate, relevant, or fruitful for a certain
56
text?
What role do contexts play in the formulation and verification of hypotheses about
texts?
What role do contexts play in scientific argumentation?
Is there a need for revised terminology as well as new methods, due to new media and
digital artifacts? How would those concepts or methods have to look like?
Is it possible to retain some notion of context despite the criticism that has been
voiced, or does it presuppose conceptions in textual theory that are no longer tenable?
How could the concept be replaced?
We encourage submissions from all language and literature departments as well as
other fields within the humanities and social sciences that consider texts as their
subject, such as philosophy, or history. Furthermore, we welcome submissions from
fields that concentrate on other artifacts, but face similar challenges, such as media
studies, history of art, or musicology.
Contributions should not exceed 50,000 characters in length and have to be submitted
until January 1, 2014. Please submit your contribution electronically via our website
www.jltonline.de under ›Articles‹.
Articles are chosen for publication by an international advisory board in a
double-blind review process.
For further information about JLT and to view the submission guidelines, please visit
www.jltonline.de or contact the editorial office at jlt@phil.uni-goettingen.de.
SUBMISSIONS THAT DO NOT FOCOUS ON ONE OF OUR SPECIAL TOPICS
CAN BE SUBMITTED CONTINUOUSLY VIA OUR WEBSITE.
JLT aims to publish work on fundamental issues in methodology and the construction
of theories and concepts, as well as articles on particular literary theories. Case studies,
i.e. studies on specific authors, works, or problems of literary history, are accepted
only if they adopt a predominantly systematic perspective, contribute to the
reconstruction of the history of literary theory, or pursue innovative methods.
Moreover, the Journal of Literary Theory contains work reviewing and outlining
trends of theoretical debates in literary theory and related disciplines.
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Please contact the editorial office for further details.
Hannes Worthmann
Assistant Editor
JLT - Journal of Literary Theory
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
37073 Göttingen
0049 - (0)551 - 39 – 7534
JLT@phil.uni-goettingen.de
www.JLTonline.de
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jlt
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