Undergraduate Shakespeare Conference of New England
“Shakespeare: The Natural, The Unnatural, The Supernatural”
Saturday, April 19th 8:30-5:00 Worcester State College, Worcester, MA
Papers may explore:
how Shakespeare and his contemporaries confirm, interrogate,and challenge sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury views of the natural and the unnatural.

how stagings, criticisms, films, and interpretations of works over time reflect changing perspectives on
what is natural or unnatural.

how the supernatural, especially, embodies views on what is natural or unnatural, what is the proper
order of creation.

how do Gods, (Christian and PreChristian), wise/holy men and women, mages, visions and visionaries,
demons, witches, and fairies embody or define conceptions of Self and Other, fears about gender, racial,
national or religious differences.

how does the supernatural represent the power of the imagination to serve as a conduit to the
transcendent or the demonic.
Proposals
• due March 8, 2008
• should run to 300 words
• must include contact information of student’s name, address, telephone number, school, and faculty sponsor
Papers should be geared for a fifteen minute presentation.
web site http://www.worcester.edu/shakespeare/
Worcester State College Contact: Dr. Sharon Yang, syang_at_worcester.edu;
(508)529-8711
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
A workshop exploring how life is managed, commodified and objectified
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Hart House at the University of Toronto
An interdisciplinary group of graduate students at the University of Toronto is organizing "Matters of Life and
Death" in order to grapple with key questions on the theoretical horizon in many disciplines: What constitutes life
and how is this life managed, commodified, and objectified? Is there a politics of life? Where does life stop and
death begin?
Building from, yet moving beyond, Foucault's biopolitics and biopower and Marx's materialist view of life within
the structures of labour and value, this workshop will grapple with questions that theoretically and materially
categorize 'life'. While a political project around death seems implausible, the definition of good, healthy, and
wealthy lives is always in continuous distinction from those who are allowed to die or suffer. Hence, life and the
politics of life is not easily defined or solidified into concrete expressions/formations/variables. As a result, we
welcome an expansive series of topics and disciplines and we hope to foster diverse, supportive, and critical
engagements with the politics of life and death. From populations to bodies, bio-capital to cyborgs, brine shrimp to
urban decay, resistance to regulation, immigration to securitization, inquiries will explore the politics of life.
We invite scholars who find the tensions and spaces between Marx and Foucault to be creative and productive areas
of exploration. Is Foucault's analysis of bio-politics materially sound? Can it help scholars theoretically and
empirically today? How can we view life both as a biopolitical project and as an expression of surplus value? Did
Marx purposefully bypass the problematic of governmental control of bodies? What current or historical sites,
objects or discourses can be identified that illuminate or embody these tensions?
Graduate students from a wide array of disciplines are invited to participate in this workshop. We especially
welcome those who seek to investigate a similar problem from divergent analytic perspectives. Life is not easily
categorized and thus academic approaches are not either. In bringing together different voices to explore the politics
of life we ask the following questions:
What constitutes life as the basis of a political/critical/progressive project?
What is the relationship between capitalism, regulation and the State?
What is the relationship between the macro/population and the micro/genetic?
How are illness, disease and natural disasters related to the control of populations?
How are developments in the life sciences related to the management of populations?
How is the value of life determined?
Abstracts of 250 words and a short CV should be submitted to
lifeanddeath2008_at_gmail.com by Friday, November 30, 2007.
We will get back to all applicants by January 5, 2008.
For more information please check out our website:
www.lifeanddeath.wordpress.com
Call for Papers
The Sixth Biennial International Auto/Biography Association Conference
Honolulu, Hawai'i
June 23-26, 2008
Abstract Deadline: EXTENDED TO NOVEMBER 15, 2007
Conference Topic: Life Writing and Translations
The Center for Biographical Research and the International Auto/Biography Association invite scholars from around
the world to attend the sixth IABA conference, which will be held at the East-West Center, next to the campus of
the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, in Honolulu.
Translation is central to all forms of representation; the theme for this conference is Life Writing and Translations,
in the widest sense of the term. We welcome papers dealing with the following kinds of translation, and others as
well:
 Linguistic-Accounts of language acquisition, and their relation to senses of identity, of relations with
others, of community, of separateness.

Immigrant life writing narratives. Indigenous peoples and life writing.

Poly-lingual texts. Polyphonic and heteroglossic texts. And of course, the translation of life writing texts
from one language to another.
Generic-Life writing texts often move from one literary, artistic, disciplinary, technological, or rhetorical form to
another. Papers can deal with representing peoples' lives in any medium--film, graphic text, writing, image,
performance. They can examine the adaptation of one representational form to another-from book to film, from film
to musical, from orature to literature, from page to stage to page, from popular confession to auto-ethnography,
from case study to gossip. Or they can look at multi-generic works-online life writing incorporating visual, aural,
and textual dimensions, or performance works combining presence and representation in several media.
Cultural-Cultural translation involves the vexed but necessary efforts to communicate central ideas, histories,
concerns, desires, needs, politics, identities from one cultural position or community to another. Translation is the
act that takes place in Mary Louise Pratt's contact zone, or on Greg Dening's beach, or at a Truth and Reconciliation
Committee hearing. Translation is often the negotiating of issues of gender, race, class, and disability (transnational,
transgender, transcultural). Translation, as movement between states or spaces- transits, transitions-also shapes
travel narratives. Translation, as a mediation between past and present, takes into account historical specificity.
And translation participates in the political and cultural dynamics between nations, and national groups.
For the conference, we're having four keynote speakers, each of whom will speak for 30 to 35 minutes. Philippe
Lejeune has agreed to come, and will be giving his keynote in French. To represent the Pacific, this conference's
region, I have asked Noenoe Silva, a Hawaiian political scientist and language scholar who recently published a
book with Duke University Press on language and resistance to colonialism in Hawai'i. Her current work centers on
writing the biographies and identifying the anonymous writing of the Hawaiian editors and writers for the
newspapers in the 19th century. Barbara Harlow, who works on resistance literature and life writing in such trouble
spots as the Middle East, South Africa, and Northern Ireland, will talk about the politics of translation and life
writing. And Alicia Partnoy, a survivor of the secret detention camps where about 30,000 Argentineans
“disappeared," is the author of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival, and of the poetry
collections Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, and Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana. She also edited
You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile.
Each day we will be holding general keynote panels, attended by everyone, with three or four scholars speaking on
a particular topic of strong interest to people in life writing. Some of the people who have already agreed to
participate are Julia Watson, John Eakin, Sidonie Smith, Leigh Gilmore, G. Thomas Couser, Margaretta Jolly, Zhao
Baisheng, Susanna Egan, and Bella Brodzki.
Because our primary concern will be striking up and sustaining conversations between conference participants,
papers should be limited to fifteen minutes in length, to insure time in all sessions for questions and full discussion.
Panels on a single topic and submitted together are welcome. (Panels and sessions will have three presenters.)
Given the theme of the conference, panels and individual papers may be conducted or delivered in the language of
the participant's choice- various arrangements will be made well before the conference to allow other conference
attendees to participate. All participants should also inform the organizers about media requirements for
presentations-DVD, live internet, visual projection, audio, and so on.
Abstracts for papers should be @300 words long. There should be an abstract for each paper in a panel presentation.
The deadline for abstracts HAS BEEN EXTENDED to November 15, 2007. Though e-mail is preferred, abstracts
can be submitted by mail or fax to the following numbers and addresses.
***
IABA Conference Call for Papers
c/o The Center for Biographical Research
Department of English
1733 Donaghho Road
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822
USA
Fax number: 1-808-956-3774
e-mail: biograph_at_hawaii.edu
We would be happy to answer questions. Contact the CBR at the same numbers and addresses. And please forward
this notice to other lists and individuals.
Craig Howes
Director, Center for Biographical Research
Co-Editor, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
Professor of English
***
For a special issue on “Gender and Age,” the multidisciplinary online journal “gender forum”
(http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de) seeks articles discussing age and ageing from a gender perspective.
Proposed topics include but are not limited to the different implications of ageing for men and women, age and
sexuality, the change of gender identity over different stages of life, the problems and/or opportunities of early or
late childbearing, gender and ageism/youth mania, as well as explorations of literary or filmic representations of
male/female age and ageing.
Completed manuscripts should be submitted via email to gender-forum_at_uni-koeln.de by January 15, 2008.
Articles should conform to the “gender forum” style sheet (available for download at http://www.genderforum.unikoeln.de/stylesheet.pdf) and should not exceed 8,000 words in length. Please include a bio-blurb of 5 to 10 lines and
an abstract of 10 to 15 lines. Use endnotes and fully documented references at the end of the article. For further
information on the journal, please visit our homepage at http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de or contact us via
email at gender-forum_at_uni-koeln.de.
A collection of essays is underway for a book exploring the complexities and cultural signatures of the Back
To the Future Trilogy (Dir. Robert Zemekis, Universal Pictures, 1985; 1989; 1990). I am seeking academic
essays on topics of cultural analysis exploring the intricacies, importance and endurance of these films, within (but
not limited to) the areas listed below. Please send proposals of 300 words (and short biography) or completed
essays between 5-7,000 words (with biography and full bibliography) to Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, School of English,
Trinity College Dublin, before December 31st 2007.
Suggested Topics:
-Characterisation in the Back To The Future Trilogy (Marty, Doc, George & Lorraine McFly, Biff Tannen etc…)
-The problems of Time Travel (Time paradoxes etc)
- The visioning of the future in Back To The Future Part 2.
-The cultural significance of each period explored in the trilogy in the American Psyche.
- Product placement in the Trilogy
- ‘Doubles’ and Doubling in Back To The Future parts 2 and 3
- 1980s teen cinema
- Music, Score and Sound in the trilogy.
- Roles and Role-Reversal in the trilogy
- Robert Zemekis as possible auteur.
- The West as represented in Back To the Future part 3
- Significant and repeated imagery in the trilogy.
- Technology in the trilogy
- Race, Class and Consumerism in the trilogy
- The DeLorean and its symbolism.
Suggestions for other proposed essays and topics are very welcome. Please email all proposals and papers to
nifhlais_at_tcd.ie before December 31st 2007.