第 12 屆英美文學學會
國際學術資訊 第一○三期
Contents
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
2
Conferences in North America
4
Conferences in Europe
46
Journals and Collections of Essays
77
1
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
The 8th Conference of the Taiwan Association of
Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies
October 24-25, 2014
Due: January 5, 2014
Sophia Li and I-Chun Wang
contact email:
TACMRS.NSYSU@gmail.com
Ideas of Rulership: Kings and Queens in Elite and Popular Cultures, to be held on
24-25 October 2014
Over the centuries monarchs wielded power and empire, whereas the rest of the
populace swayed the rise and fall of their civilization. From Julius Caesar to King
Arthur to Elizabeth I, their feats and portraits were disseminated in various forms of
representations that tell stories of different cultural imaginings.
Locating the ideas of ‘rulership’ in elite and popular contexts, the proposed
conference explores various ideational frameworks of kingship and queenship –
constructed, historicized, re-imagined, popularized, satirized – and their cultural
contents in mythological, biblical, philosophical, political, artistic, and social
traditions.
Topics for consideration include (but are not limited to):
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The making of monarchs
Transition of power and struggle
Ruler, land, and people
Imperial cult in court and folk cultures
Kings and queens in power, in exile, in prison, behind the throne, or elsewhere
Kingship/Queenship in drama, visual arts and performing arts
Philosophical discourses on rulership
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Iconography, royal symbolisms, and social realities
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Critical models and theories of gender and power
Kingship/queenship on film
TACMRS aims to foster research synergies by warmly inviting papers that reach
beyond the traditional chronological and disciplinary borders of Classical, Medieval,
and Renaissance Studies. Please send proposals to Sophia Li or I-Chun Wang
TACMRS.NSYSU@gmail.com by 5 January 2014.
3
Conferences in North America
Contemporary Lit Panel, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 1, 2014
Society for Contemporary Literature
kweekes@psu.edu
The Society for Contemporary Literature invites 300-word abstracts for presentations
at the annual conference of the American Literature Association. The program
committee welcomes abstracts on any aspect of American literature published in the
last 25 years.
We are especially interested in discovering significant new contributors to prose,
poetry, and other modes of literature. Starting points for discussion include the
following:
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Theoretical approaches/methodology
Lineages/influences/comparative studies
Genre blurring & theories of genre as applied to contemporary writers
Textual analysis
Ethnicity, gender, narrative identity
Post-9/11 literature: parameters, usefulness of this category
Literature of loss, unease
Developments in the graphic novel
Memoir, creative nonfiction, emerging genres
Please send 300-word abstracts and one-paragraph bio statements to Karen Weekes
(kweekes@psu.edu) by January 1, 2014; submissions should be sent via email with
the subject line “SCL ALA 2014 abstract.” Note that scholars are limited to one
presentation at this conference; notifications will be sent by Jan. 25, 2014, in order to
allow responses to the general CFP by its deadline.
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Teaching Contemporary Lit (Roundtable), ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 1, 2014
Society for Contemporary Literature
kweekes@psu.edu
The Society for Contemporary Literature invites 300-word abstracts for contributions
to a roundtable at the 25th annual conference of the American Literature Association
to be held in Washington, DC. The program committee welcomes abstracts on any
aspect of teaching American literature published in the last 25 years.
The roundtable format consists of several short (8-10 minute) presentations, with
discussion and Q/A for the remainder of the session. Sample syllabi, specific
approaches, and effective lessons are encouraged. Suggestions for teaching
undergraduate courses ranging from general education to senior seminars welcome.
Starting points for discussion include the following:
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Theoretical approaches/methodology
Principles of text selection
Integration of other media analysis (film, pop culture)
Lineages/influences/comparative studies
Genre blurring & theories of genre
Textual analysis
Ethnicity, gender, narrative identity
Post-9/11 literature
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Postmodern texts with integrated technology
Developments in the graphic novel
Memoir, creative nonfiction, poetry, emerging genres
Please send 300-word abstracts and one-paragraph bio statements to Karen Weekes
(kweekes@psu.edu) by January 1, 2014; submissions should be sent via email with
the subject line “SCL Teaching abstract.” Note that roundtable participation can occur
in addition to the single presentation allowed to individuals at this conference.
5
British Women Writers Conference
June 19-21, 2014
Due: January 1, 2014
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference
bwwc2014@gmail.com
British Women Writers Conference @ Binghamton University (SUNY): June 19-21,
2014
“REFLECTIONS”
22nd Annual Meeting of the British Women Writers Conference
June 19-21, 2014
Binghamton University, State University of New York
For the 22nd annual meeting of the British Women Writers Conference, we will focus
on the theme of “Reflections.” Cross-disciplinary in scope and implication, we invite
papers—as well as panel and roundtable proposals—to explore “reflections” as
broadly as possible, whether they are physical or metaphysical; individual or cultural;
social, historical or fictional; real or imagined; seen or unseen.
For paper proposals, please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio (in a single
attachment) to bwwc2014@gmail.com by January 1, 2014. For full panel or
roundtable/session proposals, please attach all proposals to a single email. Papers and
panels must address the theme and apply to long 18th- or 19th-century, Romantic or
Victorian women’s literature.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
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Reflective Objects and Spaces
 Imagery of mirrors in women’s writing
 Cemeteries, memorials, monuments; museums
 Ruins
 Shop-windows
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Fashion/clothing; consumption/consumerism; advertising
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Women in business/finance
Books (and readers)
Photography/photographs
Private spheres: homes/decor, women’s rooms, closets
Public spheres: public gardens, theaters, salons
Liminal spaces
Reflections of/on the Body
 “Beauty”/appearance; body image
 Youth/age
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Changes in the female body: internal and external; psychological or
physiological; perspectives and attitudes regarding adolescence and
maturation, menstruation and menopause, motherhood and childbirth
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Health/disease
Disability
Gender and sexuality
Body as reflection of the unconscious
Reflective Genres
 Women’s life writing; women writing about women; biographical
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or autobiographical reflection
Letters and journals; epistolary novel; transnational correspondence
Reviews/reception
Ekphrasis; reflections on/of visual arts (other arts) in literature
Histories/origins; the historical novel
Detective fiction
Travel writing
Medical writing
Metafiction; fiction about reading fiction; Romantic poetry
Textual Reflections
 Repetition in form/structure
 Doubling, doppelgängers; the uncanny
 Dreams
 Textual gaps or silences
 Revisions/retellings of original stories
 Creative Work: poetry, fiction, non-fiction inspired by BWWs
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Reflective Moments
 Epiphany
 Memory/remembrance; Erlebnis and Erfahrung
 Sensory reflection (smell, taste, sound)
 Self and identity, self-recognition/narcissism
 Death and (re)birth
 “The mirror stage”
 Desire/eroticism
 BWWs and travel
 Women’s rights/suffrage
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Distorted Reflections
 Repressed or displaced language
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Translations
Cross-disciplinary reflections
Abstractions
The Gothic
The grotesque
(Re)imagining the past and future
“Aura”/mass reproduction
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Madness, hysteria
Through the Looking-Glass
Reflective Possibilities
(Possible roundtables/special sessions)
 Digital Humanities & Research
 British Women & Health/Medicine
 British Women & American Women
 British Women in Pop Culture/Film
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British Women & Travel
British Women & the History of Women’s Rights
British Women & the Military
8
Energies: Through the Material, Theoretical, &
Textual
March 28-29, 2014
Due: January 3, 2014
University of Southern California Association of English Graduate Students
uscaegs@gmail.com
ENERGIES: THROUGH THE MATERIAL, THEORETICAL & TEXTUAL
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
March 28-29, 2014
Deadline for proposals: January 3, 2014 (EXTENDED)
Keynote Speakers:
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Fiction writer and essayist ROXANE GAY (Eastern Illinois University) is the
author most recently of An Untamed State (Atlantic/Grove) and Bad Feminist
(Harper Perennial).
Scholar URSULA K. HEISE (UCLA) is the author most recently of Sense of
Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global
(Oxford University Press).
This conference will explore the many ways that systems of energy facilitate
connection and exchange across borders and networks. As the world increasingly
searches for new forms of sustainable and renewable power of all kinds, energies
direct our lives on both macro and micro levels every day. In 2013, energy as an
umbrella term relates not only to the technology that saturates our day-to-day
existence — the forces that powers our cars, phones, computers — but also the
invisible forces that connect us to each other, to nature, to the world around us and
worlds beyond.
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The idea of energy crosses disciplinary boundaries and historical periods, but holds a
particular resonance for the questions engaged by the humanities. From the printing
press to the camera to the Internet, technological and mechanical energy has long
been integral to the way we communicate and create. Kinetic energy moves
performing bodies across stages and screens; creative energy pushes the artist to new
psychic spaces. Along with religion, art and literature have historically been primary
catalysts for the exploration of the ways that vital emotional and spiritual energies
surround and sustain — or destroy — us.
As a concept, energy also bridges a number of recent critical conversations. Ecocritics
investigate the relationship between literature and the environment with an aim
toward environmental praxis and a sustainable future, positing what Jane Bennett calls
a “vital materiality” that runs through the human and nonhuman alike to emphasize
the web of mutual affect that connects all bodies. The turn to phenomenology in queer
theory argues that understanding experience may depend on understanding the
energies that act on bodies as they move through the world. And, of course, the recent
push toward the digital humanities raises questions about in what sort of product we
should be investing our scholarly energies.
These are only a few of the many energies that we imagine coming together at this
conference. We invite submissions that explore the topic of energies from diverse
perspectives and fields, including:
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power, machines, science and technology studies
biopower, exploitation, state violence
labor, mass production, old and new materialisms
sex, intimacy, affect
pain, trauma, emotional exchange
reproduction, conception, replication, adaptation, extinction
creativity, the mind, poetics, narrative theory, media technologies
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sustainability, nature, the built environment
animals and animality
the supernatural, ghosts, the dead and dying, residual energies
speculative energies, alternative energies, science fiction, the cyborg
revolution, political organizing, radicalism
time, development, excess, decay
the live, theatre, performance, ritual
networks, archives, online communities, the digital humanities
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migration, border crossings, diaspora
For individual submissions, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words by
December 15, 2013. We also welcome panel proposals composed of three to four
presenters on a related theme. To propose a panel, please send a 300-word panel
abstract, and include all paper titles.
In addition, creative presentations relating to the theme of the conference, such as
poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, films, and performances, are enthusiastically
encouraged. In addition to an abstract of no more than 300 words, please indicate
technical requirements, as well as the estimated duration of the event, as allotted time
may vary depending on the proposed project.
Proposals are welcome from academics as well as independent scholars and writers —
this conference is not restricted to graduate students.
Send any paper and panel proposals as well as inquiries to uscaegs@gmail.com.
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Interventions in English Studies: Finding Our Places
March 29, 2014
Due: January 5, 2014
The University of Dayton
cfp.udayton@gmail.com
“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness -I
am nothing.” – Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Turn your semester's research papers into conference papers. In celebration of 50
years of graduate studies, The University of Dayton invites you to join us March 29,
2014 for a graduate conference devoted to an exploration of the space and place that
words create. How does space inform our identities as writers? How do we perceive
space, literally and figuratively, in literature? How does race or gender influence the
space we are given, or take, in society? Where is our place in the classroom and what
can we do with it?
We welcome papers from all corners of the discipline that seek to explore this theme.
We are interested in hearing from the emerging voices of scholars and writers. This
conference functions as a means for graduate students from varying fields of study to
share innovative work and thought pertaining to English studies. We hope to see
creative, critical, and theoretical approaches to the conference theme.
Possible Topics Include:
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Classroom spaces, teaching locales, other pedagogical places
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Creative approaches to space, created places
Literary settings, interiors, exteriors
Conceptual spaces, imagined places, psychological spaces
Intimate spaces, intimate positions
Social spaces, classed, gendered, sexed, or racial zones
Analogue places, digital spaces
Literacy and place, global or local concerns
Theoretical spaces, critical territories, contact zones
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Reading spaces, canonical or noncanonical spaces
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Lost places, found spaces
Proposals of no more than 500 words should be submitted by January 5, 2014, to
cfp.udayton@gmail.com.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
13
The Economies of Future Past: Redefining the
Space(s) of (Post)Memory
March 13-14, 2014
Due: January 6, 2014
English Graduate Students' Society at Université de Montréal
postmemory2014@gmail.com
Deadline: January 6, 2014.
In a world of instant news updates, Wikipedia, and Twitter, memory seems a thing of
the past. This instantaneity shapes the way we consider knowledge. In recent years,
the rise of digital technology and communication has generated debates around global
movements and this has shaped the way the past is recuperated into historical memory.
The recent turn to archival memory in both theoretical discourses and artistic practices
suggests a need to develop a new set of conceptual, literary, and aesthetic tools with
which to understand, interpret, and problematize notions of the past and of memory.
And what of “postmemory” (to use Marianne Hirsch’s term), where the “generation
after” bears the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before?
This postmemory speaks to the relationship of experiences we “remember” only by
means of the stories, images, and behaviours among which we did or did not grow up.
On a more personal basis, we document our daily lives and our social interactions
through social media, resulting in a global library of sorts available for all to consult.
Beyond simply participating in this process, we are looking to investigate the space
between the experience of the memory and its factual elements. How does the
immediacy or spontaneity of our relationship to the here and now shape our
consideration of the past? From a temporal perspective, how has our understanding of
memory as a historical and social artefact changed? How do we (re)construct memory
when we have no direct connection to the relevant historical event? How is memory
articulated as literature? In other words, how do our redefinitions of memory
reconceptualise forms of literature?
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We invite submissions in English and French from graduate students for individual
presentations, panels, and creative projects addressing the concept of (post)memory
from any disciplinary perspective. Topics may include:
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Representations of (post)memory in literature, performance, film, television,
music, visual arts
Aesthetics of (post)memory
Memoirs, testimony, and biography
Journals and travel narratives
Immigrant and minority narratives
Digital Humanities and the archives
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Oral traditions and modes of transmission of knowledge
Nostalgia, memorial, and remembrance
History and temporality
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Spatial narratives
Reconciliation and social change
Ideological appropriations of the past
Political violence and trauma theory
Translation theory
Ruins and urban decay
Please send your 350-word abstract, accompanied by a brief academic biography (of
100 words), to postmemory2014@gmail.com by January 6, 2014.
Three essay prizes will be awarded in the following categories: Best Presentation by
an MA student, Best Presentation by a PhD Student and Best Creative Work.
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Ezra Pound and Other World Cultures, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 10, 2014
American Literature Association Annual Conference/Ezra Pound Society
robert.kibler@minotstateu.edu and demetres@unb.edu
Call for Papers, American Literature Association, May 22-25, 2014 Washington DC
“All ages are contemporaneous,” Ezra Pound writes in 1910, especially in literature.
To be sure, his life work drew a vast array of other peoples, their worlds, their ideas,
into his own contemporaneous literary universe. We know the people, the places, and
the ideas drawn together. But it works the other way too, for Pound enters into
interpretive dialogues with other worlds understood not just as parts of his own vision,
but also as entities discrete unto themselves.
In this call for papers we seek scholars, artists, and even performers game to
undertake an examination, broadly considered, of other-world cultures engaged by
Pound. What various ends do his appropriations of them serve, and how is his own
literary universe co-opted, disrupted, rerupted, counterrupted or changed by the
exchange? We are in search of new meaning here, and fresh paths. Please send your
350 word abstracts as Word documents both to Robert Kibler, panel organizer, at
Robert.kibler@minotstateu.edu, and to Demetres Tryphonopoulos, Secretary, Ezra
Pound Society, at demetres@unb.ca, no later than January 10, 2014. Onward!
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The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 10, 2014
F. Scott Fitzgerald Society
mgf10@psu.edu
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society (http://www.fscottfitzgeraldsociety.org/ ) invites
proposals for papers to be presented at the 2014 American Literature Association in
Washington, DC, 22-25 May.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society invites proposals for papers examining any aspect of
Fitzgerald’s life and work that provides fresh insights.
Send 250-word abstract for a twenty-minute presentation, along with a brief CV, to
Maggie Gordon Froehlich at mgf10@psu.edu by January 10, 2014. Please title your
subject line ALA Proposal with your last name and include in your message your
preferred e-mail address along with any AV equipment needs.
The American Literature Association’s 25th annual conference will meet at the Hyatt
Regency Washington on Capitol Hill on May 22-25, 2014 (Thursday through Sunday
of Memorial Day weekend). The deadline for proposals is January 30, 2014. For
further information, please consult the ALA website at
www.americanliterature.org or contact the conference director, contact the conference
director, Professor Alfred Bendixen of Texas A & M University at
abendixen@tamu.edu with specific questions.
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Isms: An Exploration of the Invisible Barriers of
Classification
March 22, 2014
Due: January 13, 2014
Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi
sigmataudeltaiotachi@gmail.com
We welcome work that aims to dissect various “isms” of the past, present, and even
future, in order to examine their individual parts. How are these constructs created
and propagated? What controls their upkeep? Should isms be cultivated or avoided?
Do they isolate or unite, stigmatize or revolutionize? Can examining these structures
help us re-imagine what power can/should be, or will we merely be reconstructing a
new form of power?
We invite graduate and undergraduate creative and scholarly works that explore,
scrutinize, dismember, defend, or create the isms that affect us all in seen and unseen
ways every day.
Isms: An Exploration into the Invisible Barriers of Classification
A conference hosted by Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi Chapter and sponsored by the
CSUN English Department and the Distinguished Speaker Award.
Saturday, March 22th, 2014 at California State University, Northridge
Keynote Speaker: Dodie Bellamy: theorist, educator, author of Academonia and The
Buddhist.
Please send abstracts of no more than 350 words to sigmataudeltaiotachi@gmail.com
by January 13, 2014.
Thank you, we look forward to viewing your work.
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Identity and Culture: Engaging Interdisciplinary
Conversations
March 1, 2014
Due: January 14, 2014
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, English Graduate Student Association
uncg.egsa.gradconference@gmail.com
Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference: Identity and Culture
Saturday, March 1, 2014
For its sixth annual interdisciplinary conference in English studies, we at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro's English Graduate Student Association
ask you to join us as we work to build a community of graduate scholars.
Our conference provides forums for ongoing research in a non-threatening and
receptive academic environment. Additionally, the Identity and Culture conference
brings graduate scholars into contact with established professionals who can answer
questions about best practices and research methods for academic scholars. As you
present your work and honestly engage your peers’ work, you will participate in a
comfortable, open forum on issues of culture and identity, which affect our
scholarship, as well as our lives.
We welcome submissions in all areas of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
including, but not limited to, foreign languages; literature; theory; rhetoric and
composition; creative writing; women’s and gender studies; linguistics; anthropology;
psychology; cultural studies; the visual arts; theater; music; philosophy; and history.
Papers that address the conference theme are especially encouraged.
Abstracts submitted for consideration may include, but are not limited to the
following topics: gender, nationalism, regionalism, folklore, customs, education,
pedagogy, politics, religion, community, ethnicity, class structure, and popular culture
We invite the submission of papers to be considered for presentation. An abstract of
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no more than 300 words must be submitted in PDF or MSWord format by January 14.
In your email submission, please include the presenter’s name, institution of
affiliation, email address, phone number, and any audio-visual requirements for the
presentation. Please do not include any identifying information on the abstract itself.
Panel proposals should be submitted to the same email address by January 14 and
should include the following: panel title, organizer/moderator’s name and contact
information, names and contact information for panelists, a short description of the
panel topic, and abstracts of the papers included in the panel.
Registration Fee for presenters is $25.
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The Literature of American Real Estate, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
American Literature Association
lmansouri@berkeley.edu
American literature begins with real estate. Columbus’s and da Vaca’s travelogues,
Harriot’s and Smith’s advertisements to prospective colonists, and the Puritans’
disquisitions on God’s promises to their “plantations” all constructed America’s vast,
unexplored land as future property. However, for these and later writers, imagining
America as potential real estate required a fraught negotiation between the ideal
property and ideal futures they projected on to American space and the actual facts of
that space, which was indifferent or even hostile to the grand schemes of religious,
political, and financial speculators. This panel seeks papers from any period that
speak to how American literature has taken up the problem of American real estate.
How have works of literature negotiated the gap between our desires for real estate –
whether worldly or idealistic – and the material facts that constrain those desires?
How has American literature shaped and been shaped by particular modes of property
ownership, such as the slave plantation, the Land Runs of the 1880s and 90s, or the
20th century ideal of homeownership? What can the literature of American real estate
tell us about real estate speculation, past and present?
Please send a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to Leila Mansouri
(lmansouri@berkeley.edu) and Michelle Chihara (mchihara@whittier.edu) by January
15, 2014. Selected papers will be included in a proposed panel for the American
Literature Association’s 2014 Conference in Washington, D.C., May 22-25.
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Spirit/Theory/Thoreau, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
The Thoreau Society
kristen.case@maine.edu
American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, Washington DC
May 22 – 25, 2014
CFP for Roundtable Discussion sponsored by the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers
Spirit/Theory/Thoreau
Given the wealth of recent theoretical work on the nature of matter, what might we
learn from a new engagement with its Romantic complement, spirit? How might
contemporary developments in transatlantic studies, religious studies, critical theory,
and philosophy enrich our understanding of this central node of the American
Renaissance? How does Thoreauvian (and/or Emersonian) spirit relate to the
philosophical materialism of the 19th (or 21st) century? This roundtable discussion
will be in dialogue with the Thoreau Society’s panel discussion
“Nature/Theory/Thoreau.” Please send queries or one-page abstracts (for a 7-minute
presentation) by January 15, 2014, to: kristen.case@maine.edu.
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Nature/Theory/Thoreau, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
The Thoreau Society
kristen.case@maine.edu
American Literature Association
23rd Annual Conference, Washington DC
May 22 – 25, 2014
CFP for Panel Discussion sponsored by the Thoreau Society
Kristen Case and Rochelle Johnson, Organizers
Nature/Theory/Thoreau
In recent years, new approaches to the relationship between the human and the
nonhuman have yielded a rich theoretical vocabulary with which to reconsider the
category of “nature.” Posthumanism, new materialism, ecocriticism, animal studies,
object-oriented ontology, and reexaminations of the pastoral and “nature writing”
more broadly (see, for example, the 2013 anthology The Arcadia Project) offer new
ways of framing and engaging the questions central to Thoreau’s writing. This panel
wishes to explore what these new approaches may offer Thoreau studies, as well as
the ways that Thoreau’s own engagements with the nonhuman might enrich the
contemporary theoretical discourse. This panel discussion will be in dialogue with the
Thoreau Society’s round table discussion “Spirit/Theory/Thoreau.” Please send
queries or one-page abstracts (for an 18-minute presentation) by January 15, 2014, to:
kristen.case@maine.edu.
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H.D. and/or Her Circle, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
The H.D. International Society
rawalsh@ncsu.edu
The H.D. International Society will be sponsoring a panel at the American Literature
Association conference, May 22-25, 2014, in Washington, DC, "New Approaches to
H.D. and/or Her Circle." The genre focus or methodology of proposed papers is open.
Please send a brief paper proposal (250 words) along with a biography/CV to Rebecca
Walsh, rawalsh@ncsu.edu, no later than January 15, 2014.
Here is a link to the ALA site for more information about the upcoming Washington,
D.C. convention:
http://www.americanliterature.org
Best,
Rebecca Walsh and Celena Kusch,
Co-Chairs, H.D. International Society
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Shadow Ballers | Pitchin’ Men: Ralph Ellison &
Narratives of the Black Male Athlete, MELUS 2014
March 6-9, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Convention/Ralph Ellison Centennial
Celebration
mantonucci@keene.edu
Through its multiple vamps, riffs, and leitmotifs Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
delivers a vision of Black masculinity that includes a particular exploration of Black
male athleticism. Addressing notions of physicality and competitive spirit, Ellison
speaks back to a significant legacy of performance that had become evident to white
America through the sporting exploits of African American men by the novel's
publication in 1952. Moments such as the battle royal and the arena speech bring the
novel’s nameless narrator into conversation with a list of prominent Black athletes
including Jack Johnson, Jessie Owens, Joe Louis, and Jackie Robinson.
A round table discussion at the 2014 MELUS Convention/Ralph Ellison Centennial
Celebration in Oklahoma City will examine ways that Ellison articulates possibilities
for Black male voices deployed in twentieth-century sports autobiographies, including
those produced by Curt Flood, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, and
Muhammad Ali.
Recognizing Black male athletes as speaking an American vernacular, we recall that
Ellison finds vernacular a “dynamic process [where]…refined styles from the past are
continually merged with the play-it-by-eye-and-by-ear improvisations which we
invent in our efforts to control our environment and entertain ourselves.” In addition
to Invisible Man, participants may explore Ellison's narrative play with respect to
essays from Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory.
Send short 500-750 word abstracts for consideration by January 15, 2014
25
Making Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern
Culture
April 4-5, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
Making Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Culture Graduate Student
Conference
walkerkn@email.unc.edu
*Extended Deadline: Abstracts due January 15th, 2014 to
uncgradconference@gmail.com.
The literature and culture of the late medieval and early modern periods were
profoundly affected by the expansion of new artisanal and scientific
technologies—innovations and ideas that would lead to the production and
consumption of new forms of knowledge. In both periods, knowledge was
conceptualized across a range of intersecting disciplines, including natural philosophy,
astrology, mathematics, medicine, art, mechanics, and cartography, among others.
Literature embraced, criticized, or participated in these fields in diverse ways, often
examining how these new forms or categories of knowledge influenced the locus and
ontology of the individual and social self
Collectively, we will investigate the ways in which medieval and early modern
literature engages with scientific, technological and textual processes of making and
disseminating knowledge. In addition, we are interested in discussing the creation and
development of modern/postmodern technologies through and around medieval and
early modern texts. As such, scholars studying medieval and early modern texts,
performances, and art—or later reassessments thereof— are welcome.
This conference is part of a three-year collaboration between King’s College, London
and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Previous conferences include
“Shakespeare and the Natural World” at UNC and “Shakespeare, Memory, and
Culture” at KCL. “Making Knowledge” aims to continue this collaboration and
engage in critical discussion with graduate students from both institutions and from
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across the US.
Suggested topics include:
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Technology or science’s effects on gender, politics, religion, magic, nature and
preternature, economics, or epistemology
Scientific observation and innovation, taxonomies, and literary form
Transmission of texts
Mechanics in literature and performance
Medicine, technology, alchemy, humours and prostheses of bodies in texts
The position of the self within material, vitalistic, or atomistic conceptions of the
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cosmos
Boundaries between the human and the machine
Nature versus artifice
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The effect of modern and postmodern technologies on the dissemination and
evolution of medieval and early modern texts
Medieval, early modern and postmodern intersections of text and technology
Genre and technology
Dr. Pamela Smith, a cultural historian at Columbia University, will deliver the
keynote titled “From Matter to Ideas: Making Natural Knowledge in early Modern
Europe” on Saturday evening, April 5th. Dr. Smith’s publications include Merchants
and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, The Body of the
Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution, and Making Knowledge in
Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400-1800.
We invite papers on these and related topics. Abstracts of 300-400 words are due
January 15th, 2014 to uncgradconference@gmail.com. Participants will be notified by
February 15th.
“Making Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Culture” will be held at the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from April 4th-5th, 2014.
27
Poetic Genre and Social Imagination: Pope to
Swinburne
May 9-10, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
Nicholson Center for British Studies / University of Chicago
popetoswinburne@gmail.com
Call for Papers
Poetic Genre and the Social Imagination: Pope to Swinburne
A conference at the University of Chicago
May 9–10, 2014
http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/poetic-genre/
Scholars of English and American poetry have recently called for a new historical
poetics capable of analyzing relations between culture and poetic form (including
meter and rhyme as well as specific verse forms like the sonnet, ottava rima, the
Spenserian stanza, etc). Two approaches have dominated this conversation. The first
recovers lost ways of thinking about form—in prosody manuals, recorded
performance, private correspondence, newspaper reviews, and so on—and reads them
back into cultural history. The second historicizes poems from the inside out, making
evident social affinities and antagonisms in literary form by comparative description.
These approaches begin with different premises, but both demonstrate that the
conventions of twentieth-century formal analysis—foot-substitution prosody, for
example—have obscured the range of formal effects that have at different times been
available to poets and readers.
This conference proposes further consideration of these issues in terms of genre.
Genre was one essential feature of historical poetics when Russian critic Aleksandr
Veselovsky first used the term over a century ago, but its potential for a contemporary
historical poetics has not been fully explored. Our focus will be Great Britain during a
period of staggering poetic and social reinvention, between the ages of Pope and
Swinburne (roughly 1700–1900). We are interested in the development and
proliferation of genres (and subgenres) themselves, as well as the dynamics between
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formal and generic attributes. Most importantly, we aim to foster new ways of
thinking about how form and genre relate to the broader social imaginary. Special
priority will be given to papers that demonstrate this relation.
During daytime sessions, the conference will feature two-scholar panels organized by
topic or theoretical approach. These presentations will be followed by a third scholar’s
formal response, then by open discussion. Keynote talks by Simon Jarvis and Yopie
Prins will be held each afternoon. There will also be a poetry reading by Tom Leonard
and Simon Jarvis on Friday evening.
Please send brief proposals (no more than 300 words) for twenty-minute presentations
to popetoswinburne@gmail.com by January 15, 2014. Some questions that papers
may address include:
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How stable are the conventions of genre—the link between lyric and subjectivity,
for example, or between epic and empire—over time?
What can we learn about form and genre from discussions of these topics in the
period by both canonical critics (Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt) and the popular
press?
What is the significance of imitation and translation exercises in the schools for
thinking about form, genre, and class in the period?
How should we regard genres that are also metrical or formal designations (e.g.,
elegy)?
How do poets adapt prose genres, like the essay or the novel, for their poetic
purposes? And what about the inverse? What does the adaptation do to the social
or political potential of the original genre?
What does satire expose or conceal about its objects, and what are its deeper
social functions?
What influence did parallel developments of poetic genre in other European
countries have on genres in Great Britain?
Is nonsense verse an affirmation or a critique of poetic norms, and how (if at all)
does it relate to actually existing social conditions?
What is the special status of a genre located within another genre (lyric in epic or
novel; lyric or ballad in drama; epigram or epitaph in lyric or ballad)?
Is the “composite art” of figures such as Blake and Dante Gabriel Rossetti a
genre unto itself?
What can study of genres for child readers tell us about social life in the period?
What is the function of genre in poetic translation? How can we understand the
29
questions of genre that arise in the major poetic translations of the period? How
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should we understand the difference, especially in social and/or class terms,
between translation from classical and from modern texts?
Is the rise of coffeehouse and newspaper culture evident in the generic
innovations of Pope and his contemporaries?
Was poetry in the eighteenth century closer to conversation than poetry that
followed, as J. Paul Hunter has argued?
Are there unique formal features of erotic poetry (that of Swinburne, for example)
that suggest a clear relation to social norms?
30
Shirley Jackson: Beyond the Gothic, ALA 2014
May 22-25, 2014
Due: January 20, 2014
American Literature Association
leslie.allison@temple.edu
This panel seeks new interpretations of Shirley Jackson’s work that move beyond the
gothic.
Shirley Jackson was a prolific writer, writing in a variety of genres, publishing in a
plethora of venues, and addressing many different audiences. Yet, too often,
scholarship has been limited to a discussion on her contribution to the gothic. This
panel seeks new interpretations of Shirley Jackson’s work that move beyond the
gothic. Readings that situate her work historically in context of the Cold War, consider
her in comparison with other contemporary writers of the time, or address issues of
race, gender, and disability within her work are especially welcome. Additionally, this
panel seeks to devote interest to her lesser-known works. Please submit an abstract
between 150-300 words and a brief bio to Leslie Allison at leslie.allison@temple.edu
by January 20, 2014. Selected papers will be included in a proposed panel for the
American Literature Association’s 2014 Conference in Washington, D.C., May 22-25.
31
Twelfth National Black Writers Conference
March 27-30, 2014
Due: January 21, 2014
Clarence V. Reynolds / Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Creynolds@mec.cuny.edu
Twelfth National Black Writers Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS: “Black Writers Reconstructing the Master Narrative”
Thursday, March 27–Sunday, March 30, 2014
Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York
We invite faculty, independent researchers, scholars, and students to submit proposals
that examine the impact and representation of race, politics, culture, identity, and
history in the historical and contemporary narratives present in the works of one of the
following writers: Maryse Condé, Walter Mosley, Quincy Troupe, Derek Walcott, and
John Oliver Killens.
The Presentation of Papers will be held during the Conference on Thursday, March 27,
2014.
Interested faculty, independent researchers, and students should forward a
one-to-two-page proposal with literature references by January 21, 2014 to:
Dr. Brenda M. Greene
The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1650 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11225
718-804-8882
bgreene@mec.cuny.edu
Notification of acceptance will be sent to presenters by February 3, 2014.
For more information, please visit www.centerforblackliterature.org; follow us on
Twitter.com/NBWConference; and like us on Facebook at National Black Writers
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Conference.
33
2014 International Conference on Virginia Woolf
June 5-8, 2014
Due: January 25, 2014
International Conference on Virginia Woolf
Woolf2014@niu.edu
The 24th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, co-sponsored by Loyola
University Chicago and Northern Illinois University, will take place in Chicago, 5 – 8
June 2014. “Virginia Woolf: Writing the World” aims to address such themes as the
creation of worlds through literary writing, Woolf’s reception as a world writer, world
wars and the centenary of the First World War, and myriad other topics.
We invite proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, and workshops on any aspect of
the conference theme from literary and interdisciplinary scholars, creative and
performing artists, common readers, advanced undergraduate and graduate students,
and teachers of Woolf at all levels. Possible themes include but are not limited to:
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Woolf as a world writer, including reception and/or influence of her work
writing as world creation
the globalization of Woolf studies
feminist re-envisionings of the world
lesbian, gay, and/or queer worlds
living worlds
natural worlds
cosmology, physics, different kinds of worlds
geography(y)(ies) and/or mapping the world
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“First” and “Third” worlds
postcolonialism
the centenary of World War I
the World Wars
peace, justice, war, and violence
feminist writers of 1914 and/or suffragettes and WWI
pacifist and conscientious objector movements
class and/in Woolf’s world(s)
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writing the working class
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socialists “righting” the world
expatriate worlds
artistic worlds
inter-arts influences, including painting, cinema, music, and journalism
the publishing world transnational modernisms and postmodernisms
Woolf and/on international relations
imperialism and anti-imperialism
teaching Woolf in global contexts
teaching Woolf outside of the traditional 4-year college classroom
Woolf and the new global media
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Woolf and Chicago connections/reception
For individual papers, send a 250-word proposal. For panels (three or four papers,
please), send a proposed title for the panel and 250-word proposals for EACH paper.
For roundtables and workshops, send a 250- to 500-word proposal and a brief
biographical description of each participant. Because we will be using a blind
submission process, please do not include your name(s) on your proposal. Instead, in
your covering e-mail, please include your name(s), institutional affiliation (if any),
paper and/or session title(s), and contact information. If you would like to chair a
panel instead of proposing a paper or panel, please let us know.
Email proposals by attachment in Word to Woolf2014@niu.edu.
Deadline for proposals: 25 January 2014
For more information about the conference, including the keynote speakers, go to
www.niu.edu/woolfwritingtheworld/home/.
35
RCSC Annual Conference
June 7, 2014
Due: January 30, 2014
Renaissance Conference of Southern California
martine.vanelk@csulb.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS
Renaissance Conference of Southern California
58th Annual Meeting
Saturday, 7 June 2014
UCLA, Los Angeles CA
Keynote Speaker
Adam Knight Gilbert
Director of the Early Music Program
Thornton School of Music
University of Southern California
The RCSC, a regional affiliate of the Renaissance Society of America, welcomes
paper proposals on the full range of Renaissance disciplines
(Art, Architecture, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Science)
Please send a 400-word abstract (for a 20-minute paper) and a one-page c.v. to:
Martine van Elk (martine.vanelk@csulb.edu)
or by mail to:
Martine van Elk
English Department
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd
36
Long Beach, CA 90840
Deadline for submissions: January 30, 2014
The RCSC gratefully acknowledges the support of the UCLA Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
37
Contemporary Horrors: Destabilizing a Cinematic
Genre
April 25-26, 2014
Due: February 1, 2014
University of Chicago
contemporaryhorrors.uchicago@gmail.com
Contemporary Horrors: Destabilizing a Cinematic Genre
The University of Chicago, April 25-26, 2014
The turn of the millennium has witnessed a uniquely dazzling renaissance in
cinematic production within the horror genre. How do we account for the prolific
production and prodigious diffusion of horror film since the turn of this last century?
From thematic topoi to cinematographic style, horror cinema of the past 10-15 years
has witnessed numerous trends emerge, cross-pollinate internationally, and re-enter
the genre in cycles of repetition and transformation accelerated by digital production
and distribution technologies. And yet, the sheer proliferation and remarkable
diversity of vital horror filmmaking makes defining the genre perhaps more
challenging than ever before.
In the 21st century, as horror cinema has become more clearly than ever a global
genre, those films that find their way to U.S. movie theaters represent only a small
fraction of the total quantity made. Just as the vast majority of horror filmmaking now
occurs independently of major studio support, practices of distribution and viewing
have expanded and evolved with the internet making this impressive range of films
available to fans around the world. One is left to question how structures of global
information and capital (and strategies for evasion of such structures), affect the form
and function of filmic negotiations of horror. In other words: What delineates horror
as a genre in the 21st century? How have shock, fear, and the fantastic been defined in
recent horror productions? If horror has become somehow an almost “universal”
idiom of global experience, what unifies our senses of trauma? How are memory and
melancholy supplanted by obscenity and anxiety?
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To engage these and other questions, we welcome speakers who take diverse paths
toward contemplation of the contemporary horror film and the questions it raises as a
transnational cinematic genre. A panel of independent horror filmmakers will convene
to inaugurate the conference. Adam Lowenstein, Professor of Film Studies at the
University of Pittsburgh and author of Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma,
National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, will provide the keynote.
Topics that may be considered include but are not limited to:
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Gore and images of violence; body horror; torture porn/spectacle horror
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Auteurs and auteurist approaches to genre; alternative collaborationist
approaches
The significance of horror within contexts of national cinemas and the
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significance of national contexts for understanding international horror
Transnationalism and border-crossings (international co-productions, émigré
filmmakers, transnational influences)
Remakes and genre formulae; translating and transducing horror across cultures
and time
New forms/patterns of distribution and spectatorship; Methods of advertising and
publicity
Queerness and gender issues in horror; the legacy of Carol Clover, Linda
Williams, Robin Wood in horror criticism
The relationship of art-house cinema to genre (i.e. Haneke, Del Toro, Von Trier,
Denis)
Monsters and monstrosity
The “found footage” film (Paranormal Activity, [REC], Cloverfield, etc.); “home
movies” and the unheimlich
Media in horror and “haunted media”; outdated medial artefacts between
nostalgia and fear; the afterlife of formats
Models for independent production
The eroticization of the monstrous and the abject
Technologies of horror and horrific technics: instruments of para-transmission
Horrified psyches: anxiety, melancholy, depression, and affective models
Horror as Event
Speculative realism at the movies: the object’s ontology in the horror film.
Abstracts of a maximum of 200-250 words are due no later than February 1, 2014 by
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email to contemporaryhorrors.uchicago@gmail.com.
40
First World War Conference
September 11-14, 2014
Due: April 4, 2014
United States Military Academy (USMA), West Point, New York, USA
www.usma.edu/WW1Conference2014
September 11-14 2014 First World War Conference
“Literature, Memory, and the First World War”
Call for Papers
United States Military Academy (USMA), West Point, New York, USA
Co-Sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy, and the Department of
History
“I would read accounts of so-called battles I had been in, and they had no relation
whatever to what had happened. So I began to perceive that anything written was
fiction to various degrees. The whole subject – the difference between actuality and
representation – was an interesting one. And that's what brought me to literature in the
first place”.
Paul Fussell
The First World War resounds in our collective consciousness as if it ended yesterday.
We find it endlessly fascinating yet endlessly horrifying; it demonstrated both our
power and our powerlessness, our capacity for remarkable innovation and our
willingness to endure remarkable stagnation, and both our awe-inspiring humanity
and our incredible inhumanity. Since the first poets attempted to represent their
impressions of the war in 1914, scholars, poets, novelists, memoirists, historians, and
artists have also attempted to help us understand what the war was like and to explain
the way in which it transformed human character, altering our fundamental
understanding of history, national and international politics, and military philosophy.
Virginia Woolf famously recalls its impact in A Room of One’s Own when she notes
that “[e]verything was different” after the war. She claims that even the tone of
conversations was different in the aftermath of four years of violent struggle resulting
41
in 36 million casualties. Indeed, World War One seems to have essentially altered the
tenor of Western imagination and Western culture; it certainly changed the way
cultures recorded, narrated, and remembered war, and it fractured conventional modes
of aesthetic expression.
In this conference, therefore, we invite paper proposals that focus on the unique
literature, history, and memory inspired by the First World War. In this
interdisciplinary conference, we will consider how the war shifted the manner in
which we craft war’s historical narrative, and explore the ways in which the war
crafted our understanding of modern identity. Planned to coincide with and
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the emergence of the war’s most salient
feature—trench warfare, this four-day conference will allow us to reckon with the
Great War and its aftermath, and explore the ways in which we have remembered it.
Panels, Events, and Keynote Speakers:
For this interdisciplinary conference, we welcome paper and panel proposals from all
disciplines. Proposals should explain the paper’s concept and scholarly significance in
500 or fewer words. With your proposal, please submit a short biographical statement
in the 100-word range. Please forward proposals for individual papers or panels by
April 4, 2014 to www.usma.edu/WW1Conference2014.
In addition to an array of panels, conference participants will enjoy a program of
distinguished speakers (to be announced). Attendees may also participate in several
cultural excursions in the scenic Hudson Valley, including West Point tours and access
to the West Point Museum’s galleries on the history of warfare.
Paper topics might include, but are not limited to:
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Creative Memory and Imagined Histories in Post-WWI Western Culture
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Creating the war; the Great War’s narratives and histories
Statues and Monuments Everywhere: Memorializing War and the Place of Battle
War Poetry and the End of Idealism
Trauma and Memory
Machines and Modernism
Minorities and WWI
Nationalism and Memorialization
Casualties in the Public Eye
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Women and the Great War
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A Strange Space: Domesticity in the Muddy Trenches
Contemporary Representations of WWI
The Great War in the Arts: Cinema, Music, and Literature
What Was Accomplished? The Costs of Ending the War
Static Spaces, Static Thinking: Trench Warfare and Entrenched Thinking
Big Guns and Big Hearts: Courage in the Face of Battle
The Domino Effect: Origins of the First World War
Why They Fought: Soldiers and the Home Front
Imperial, Colonial & Postcolonial Perspectives
Rank and Class: Perspectives on Generalship, Leadership and Soldiering
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The GreatWar’s advocates: Policymakers and National Strategies
The Legacy of the First World War: Satire, Hyperbole and Sensibility
The Ethics of Memory
43
Second Annual FANS Conference
June 7-8, 2014
Due: April 15, 2014
Fandom and Neomedia Studies (FANS) Association
FANSConference@gmail.com
We are pleased to announce a CFP for submissions to the First Annual Fandom and
Neomedia Studies (FANS) Conference in Dallas, TX, on 7 and 8 June 2014. We are
privileged to have Gilles Poitras as our keynote speaker.
Fandom for us includes all aspects of being a fan, ranging from being a passive
audience member to producing one’s own parafictive or interfictive creations.
Neomedia includes both new media as it is customarily defined as well as new ways
of using and conceptualizing traditional media.
Ours is an interdisciplinary group, including historians, psychologists, geologists,
writers, and independent scholars. We welcome contributions from all disciplines and
from all levels of academic achievement. Submissions are welcome from professors,
students, and independent researchers. Topics may come from anime, manga, science
fiction, television series, movies, radio, performing arts, or any other popular culture
phenomenon and their respective fandom groups.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words must be submitted by 15 April 2014. Please also
include your CV. Authors accepted for the conference will be notified by 30 April
2014. Successful submissions to the conference will also be published in the July
edition of The Phoenix Papers, our quarterly peer-reviewed journal. If you wish to
submit a paper for inclusion in the journal but not for conference consideration, the
same requirements and deadlines apply. Please indicate your preference in your
submission email. Because conference papers will be included in our journal, they
must conform to our Style Guide. Presentations will be 20 minutes long with 10
minutes for Q&A sessions. The Sunday sessions will be given over to extended
discussion on the three most popular topics from the Saturday presentations and a
final “How Did We Do?” panel.
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The FANS Conference is hosted and sponsored by A-Kon, the longest continually
running anime and manga convention in North America. Conference registration
entitles you to the full enjoyment of A-Kon and its activities, including a chance to
study anime, manga, and gaming fans in their native environment. Our event will be
held at the Dallas Hilton Anatole Hotel. Conference pre-registration is $60 and
includes a Saturday luncheon. Pre-registration closes on 27 April 2014.
Pre-registration includes a full weekend pass to A-Kon 25, which will provide an
excellent opportunity for in-person research into anime and manga fandoms. On-site
registration will also be available for $70. All presenters must pre-register.
Information for the hotel and luncheon is being finalized as of this writing.
Please use our Contact Us page should you have any questions. All submissions
should be sent to fansconference (at) gmail.com.
Short URL: http://bit.ly/1hP9J6B
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Conferences in Europe
Modernism and the Moral Life
May 30, 2014
Due: January 10, 2014
University of Manchester
benjamin.ware@manchester.ac.uk; iain.bailey@manchester.ac.uk
Modernism and the Moral Life | Manchester, 30 May 2014
Keynote speakers:
Professor Jay Bernstein (New School for Social Research)
Professor Esther Leslie (Birkbeck College, University of London)
[CFP] No engagement with modernist works can fail to be struck be their ethical
intensity. Often considered solely in terms of a radical break with aesthetic norms and
existing socio-cultural institutions and relationships, modernism also demonstrates a
marked preoccupation with questions of how to live, the nature of the good, the status
of the subject and the social bond, and the relation between ethics, aesthetics and
politics. While recent years have seen a renewed interest in the relationship between
modernism and ethics, much of the work in this field has tended to (i) conceive of
ethics simply in terms of an openness to ‘otherness’, or (ii) suggest that modernism
signals an ‘overcoming’ of the ethical as such. While important work has been carried
out from these perspectives, this conference invites participants to radically rethink
the ways in which it is possible to understand the relation between modernism and the
moral life. We invite papers that investigate the multiple ways in which the struggle to
lead a human life is undertaken and articulated within modernist cultural production.
At the same time, we are interested in the ethical and political investments—whether
declared or presupposed—of modernism’s ongoing critical reception. Of particular
interest, therefore, are papers which reflect upon their own historical moment and
connections with current political, economic and ecological debates.
The conference is designed as an opportunity for rigorous interdisciplinary exchange
between the spheres of critical theory, cultural studies, philosophy, politics, literature,
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sociology, history, theology, the visual arts, architecture and music. We invite
proposals for papers from scholars whose work looks to analyse the connections
between aesthetics, ethics and politics in any and all of these fields. Topics of interest
include, but are not limited to:
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the relation between style, form and ethics in modernist cultural production
the extent to which ‘life’ entails or excludes the ‘moral’ in modernist thought
theory and/as ethics
ethics and langauge
modernism and revolution
utopia
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gender, ethics and critique
modernism, vision and ethics
violence and war
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after ‘otherness’
The limits of liberal humanist approaches to literature and ethics
perfectionism, authenticity, sincerity, bullshit, narcissism, hedonism, elitism,
virtue, duty, commitment, loss of sensitivity, happiness, loneliness, anxiety,
inequality, humanism and anti-humanism in the discourses of modernism
Proposals for twenty-minute papers should be directed to the convenors, Ben Ware
and Iain Bailey, at morallife@gmx.co.uk, by 10 January 2014. Participants will be
notified by 20 January. Additional information is posted at our conference website,
modernismmorallife.wordpress.com
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Colours of Memory: An International Conference on
the Writing of Geoff Dyer
July 11, 2014
Due: January 12, 2014
Birkbeck, University of London
geoffdyerconference2014@gmail.com
Papers are invited for the first academic conference dedicated to the writing of Geoff
Dyer—novelist, essayist, art and photography critic and travel writer. Dyer’s witty
subtle and experimental writing has won him critical acclaim and a broad literary
following but has received little sustained academic attention to date. The event will
mark a collaboration between the Centre for Contemporary Literature and the History
and Theory of Photography Research Centre, looking particularly at the place of
photography and of photographic criticism in Dyer's work. Geoff Dyer will be in
attendance throughout the day and for a Q&A session at the end of procedings.
Dyer is an interstitial figure: his blending of memoir, essay and fiction ('creative
criticism’) and use of intertextuality and sampling in his writing work together to
challenge established generic boundaries and cultural hierarchies. His interests take in
everything from film, photography, travel, jazz and Modernist literature to drugs,
doughnuts, rave music and the poetics of procrastination. His playful, personal and
sometimes meandering style expands our understanding of how criticism relates to its
subject, but also amounts to a commentary on the contemporary itself, specifically
questions of uncreativity, 'reality hunger' and exhaustion in the information age. This
conference aims to bring together scholars with expertise in this important author for
the first time, but also to use Dyer’s work as a way of accessing some of the most
urgent debates in literary and photographic criticism.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:



The photo book
Cinema and the avant garde
Remix culture
48

Conceptual writing and uncreativity









1980s and 1990s British fiction
Postmodern travel writing
The slacker generation and after
Anti-intellectualism and the place of the critic
Englishness and postcolonial melancholia
The poetics of boredom
Music in contemporary fiction
Retromania and nostalgia
Rave fiction
The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers or panels. We are open to
papers which, like Dyer’s writing, experiment with the established boundaries of the
genre. Submissions are welcome from both research students and academics.
Please send a title and 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper by 12th January.
Abstracts to Bianca Leggett, geoffdyerconference2014@gmail.com. The conference
will be held on 11th July 2014 at 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck, London.
49
Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis of Dalit
Literature
June 23-24, 2014
Due: January 30, 2014
Nottingham Trent University
Nicole.Thiara@ntu.ac.uk
The Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Nottingham Trent University, UK, in
collaboration with the research centre EMMA at the Université Paul-Valéry
Montpellier 3, France, is in the process of creating an international academic network
which will enable a multi-disciplinary dialogue on Indian literature produced by
Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables) by hosting a series of workshops and
conferences on the production, translation, dissemination and analysis of Dalit
literature. The international conference on “Contemporary Approaches to the Analysis
of Dalit Literature” is the first conference of the series.
Dalit literature is the most significant development in Indian literature in the last three
decades, which has received surprisingly little attention from academics outside India.
This conference seeks to bring together scholars in the field of literary and cultural
studies, postcolonial studies, South Asian literatures, history and cultures and
translation studies to discuss this fascinating corpus of literary texts.
We invite papers that explore and delineate the analytical methods that are currently
employed in the study of Dalit literature and point to areas that need to be researched
in greater detail or new theoretical and critical approaches that should be employed in
the analysis of the often experimental and innovative literary and aesthetic features of
Dalit literature.
Confirmed keynote speakers are K. Satyanarayana (English and Foreign Languages
University, Hyderabad), the co-editor of the two-volume anthology on South Indian
Dalit literature, No Alphabet in Sight and Steel Nibs Are Sprouting (Penguin,
2011-13), and M.S.S. Pandian (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi), the author
of Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present (Permanent
50
Black, 2007/2008) and co-editor of Muslims, Dalits and Fabrications of History:
Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, vol. 12 (Permanent
Black, 2005).
Please send abstracts of paper proposals of up to 300 words to Dr Nicole Thiara
(nicole.thiara@ntu.ac.uk) and Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak
(judith.misrahi-barak@univ-monp3.fr) by 30 January, 2014. Notification of
acceptance will be given by 30 March, 2014.
51
John Thelwall at 250: Medicine, Literature, and
Reform in London, ca. 1764-1834
July 25-27, 2014
Due: February 1, 2014
The John Thelwall Society
conference2014@johnthelwall.org
John Thelwall at 250: Medicine, Literature, and Reform in London, ca. 1764-1834
(July 25-27, 2014)
The inaugural John Thelwall Society conference
University of Notre Dame London Centre
1 Suffolk Street, London, England
July 25-27, 2014
Keynote speakers: Sharon Ruston (Professor of English, Lancaster University),
Penelope J. Corfield (Emeritus Professor of History, Royal Holloway, University of
London), and Sir Geoffrey Bindman, QC.
To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth in London of the reformer and polymath
John Thelwall (1764-1832), we invite papers and panel proposals on any aspect of his
diverse career, or on the medical, literary, or political life of London in his time. We
are particularly interested in generating further attention to the interrelations among
medical science, literature, and political culture -- a nexus to which Thelwall greatly
contributed. An outspoken advocate of democratic reform and prolific poet, novelist,
dramatist, journalist, and elocutionist, Thelwall was also a natural philosopher who, a
generation before John Keats, attended medical lectures and operations at the London
hospitals and presented innovative papers on vitality and cognition.
Contributions are welcome from all disciplines and need not focus expressly on
Thelwall. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

London culture, from the theatres to the debating societies to the taverns;
52

Radicalism and/or Westminster politics;

Medical culture, including the medico-political circles of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s
hospitals, and the Royal Humane Society;
Debates over quackery, the health of the poor, the politics of scientific
“performance,” and the dissection of criminal corpses;
Theories of life; the “vitality debates” of the 1790s and 1810s; emergent sciences
of the mind and brain;
Thelwall’s early London connections and activities (in the law, theatre, debating,
journalism, medicine, poetry, politics);
Thelwall’s life and career in London (including his political activism,
imprisonment and treason trial, literature, journalism, elocutionary theory and




practice).
The conference will also celebrate the formation of the John Thelwall Society and the
acquisition by the University of Notre Dame of eight rediscovered letters from
Thelwall to fellow reformer Thomas Hardy. Other highlights will include:




A visit to the Old Operating Theatre at Guy’s Hospital, with reception;
A 250th birthday banquet;
A pre-conference visit to the site of Thelwall’s elocutionary institute in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, the site proposed for an English Heritage “Blue Plaque” in his
honour;
A pre-conference excursion in the footsteps of Thelwall’s Peripatetic, led by
Judith Thompson (Professor of English, Dalhousie University).
Please submit titles and abstracts of 250-300 words to
conference2014@johnthelwall.org by February 1, 2014. Proposers can expect to hear
whether their abstract has been accepted by March 2014 and registration will open
soon afterwards. Graduate students are invited to apply for (limited) fee-waiver and
travel bursaries by including a brief explanation (250-500 words) of how their
research relates to the conference themes.
Questions may be directed to the organizers, Yasmin Solomonescu (University of
Notre Dame) at solomonescu.1@nd.edu and Gordon Bottomley (Lancaster University)
at g.bottomley@lancaster.ac.uk.
The conference is made possible through the generosity of the University of Notre
Dame's Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters,
53
Henkels Lecture Series; Nanovic Institute for European Studies; Department of
English; John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values; and History and
Philosophy of Science Graduate Program; as well as the British Association for
Romantic Studies.
54
Charlemagne after Charlemagne
June 26-28, 2014
Due: February 10, 2014
International Medieval Society (IMS-Paris)
ims.paris.2014@gmail.com
“Charlemagne after Charlemagne”
11th Annual Symposium of the International Medieval Society (IMS-Paris)
Call for Papers
Location: Paris, France
Dates: Thursday June 26th - Saturday June 28th 2014
Keynote speaker: Dominique Boutet
Deadline for submissions: February 10th 2014
The International Medieval Society Paris (IMS-Paris) invites paper proposals and
session themes for its upcoming symposium centered on “Charlemagne after
Charlemagne.”
A looming presence during the Middle Ages and beyond, this Frankish king and
emperor, who died in 814, had a cultural afterlife that far exceeded any other
medieval historical figure. The symposium for 2014 seeks to examine the medieval
reception (and representation) of Charlemagne on the 1200th anniversary of his death,
as he became a model sovereign, a literary personage, and a saint. The holy emperor
was venerated in a complex though limited manner, resulting in the elaboration of a
distinct hagiographical discourse and the composition of a liturgical office.
The literary fortunes of Charlemagne, highlighted as early as 1865 by Gaston Paris,
experienced multiple permutations. Latin and vernacular literature (French, Italian,
German, English, etc.), produced divergent associations and separate developments,
from historical works to chansons de geste. These literary representations went hand
in hand with visual portrayals in manuscripts, stained glass, sculpture, and
architecture. Charlemagne was also conjured as a figure of pilgrimage and a founder
55
(real or imagined) of monasteries, cities, and universities, attached to these institutions
through stories and forged documents to which his name was affixed. The figure of
Charlemagne served to construct and define an ideal, which was shaped and reshaped
by different eras according to their respective needs.
For its 2014 symposium, the International Medieval Society seeks to mark this
anniversary through a reevaluation of Charlemagne’s legacy during the medieval
period. Although the geographic area of France will be given priority, comparisons
with other regional ‘Charlemagnes’ are certainly possible. We invite papers that deal
with material from after Charlemagne’s death in 814 to the end of the Middle Ages.
Proposals of 300 words or less (in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be
e-mailed to ims.paris.2014@gmail.com no later than February 10th 2014. Each
should be accompanied by full contact information, a CV, and a list of audiovisual
equipment you require.
Please be aware that the IMS-Paris submissions review process is highly competitive
and is carried out on a strictly blind basis. The selection committee will notify
applicants of its decision by e-mail by February 26th 2014.
Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris web site. Authors of
accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel costs and conference
registration fee (35 euros, reduced for students, free for IMS-Paris members).
The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (French/English) organization that
fosters exchanges between French and foreign scholars. For the past ten years, the
IMS has served as a centre for medievalists who travel to France to conduct research,
work, or study. For more information about the IMS-Paris and the programme of last
year’s symposium, please visit our website: www.ims-paris.org.
IMS-Paris Graduate Student Prize
The IMS-Paris is pleased to offer one prize for the best graduate student paper
proposal.
Applications should consist of:
1)
2)
symposium paper abstract/proposal
current research project (Ph.D. dissertation research)
56
3)
names and contact information of two academic references
The prizewinner will be selected by the board and a committee of honorary members,
and will be notified upon acceptance to the Symposium. An award of 350 euros to
support international travel/accommodations (within France, 150 euros) will be paid
at the Symposium.
57
Authority and Its Discourses
October 19-21, 2014
Due: February 15, 2014
Lynda Chouiten/University of Boumerdès
chouiten_lynda@yahoo.fr
Call for Papers
Authority and Its Discourses
International Conference
Department of Foreign Languages, University of Boumerdès
October 19-21, 2014
What is authority? How does it manifest itself? We know, since Foucault, that it can
take different, and often subtle, aspects; we also know that it is inseparable from
discourse. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault explains that seemingly more or less
neutral institutions like schools, hospitals, and art make use of discursive mechanisms
to set norms and hierarchies. Authority is usually held by those who represent the
norm and occupy the highest positions in hierarchy; it seems, thus, to be inseparable
from order. Yet there is also a form of authority that one may term “subversive” or
“non-official”. One thinks, for example, of the fascination exerted by heroic outlaws
and, sometimes, by outright bandits. One also thinks of the status of saintliness
bestowed on fools and madmen in some cultures. On the other hand, “official”
authority may be contested, as when political leaders are caricatured or when teachers
and employers see their decisions questioned. The very concept of authority is
frowned upon in our “democratic” times. A more “horizontal”, that is, egalitarian
relationship, is encouraged in professional as well as pedagogic contexts; and social
markers are becoming obsolete.
The objective of the “Authority and its Discourses” conference is to reflect first on the
discursive strategies whereby authority is constructed, manifested, resisted, and
overthrown and, second, on the representation of authority in popular, literary, and
media discourses, among others. What role does authority play in political and social
organization? Should one plead for stricter or more flexible authority? Is authority the
waning, dated concept that it is thought to be or has it merely put on a new garb and
58
borrowed new discursive techniques? What are, precisely, the rhetorical strategies
deployed by authority holders all through history? And what similar or different
strategies of resistance come to overthrow these holders and replace them by new
authority representatives? These are some of the questions that the conference will
attempt to answer.
Whether their subject be authority in politics (election campaign speeches, for
example), in academia (the teacher/learner relationship), or in culture (patriarchal
authority), all proposals pertaining to the conference theme are welcome. Possible
topics include, but are not limited to:

Authority and politics:
 Authority and propaganda
 Authority and censorship





The discourse(s) of colonial domination
The discourse(s) of resistance
Opponents, dissidents, trade unionists
“The Empire Writes Back”
Authority and gender:
 The discourse(s) of patriarchy

The discourse(s) of feminism

Authority and literature:
 Representation of authority in literature
 The hierarchy of literary genres
 Literary canons
 Literary prizes and institutions
 Literary influence

Authority and academia:
 Knowledge and authority
 Quotations and authoritative argument
 The evolution of the teacher/learner relationship
Please send a 250-300 word proposal and a short bio-bibliographical note to
autoritediscours@yahoo.com by February 15th 1014. Notifications of acceptance will
be sent by March 15th 2014.
59
There is no registration fee. The organizers will provide meals and accommodation,
but participants will have to cover their travel/transportation fees.
The languages of the conference are English, French, and Arabic.
Scientific Committee (in alphabetical order):
ARAB Si Abderrahmane, University of Boumerdès
BENAOUDA Habiba, University of Boumerdès
BENGUESMIA Mahdia, University of Batna
BOUKERMA Fatima-Zohra, University of Boumerdès
CAREY Daniel, National University of Ireland, Galway
CHOUITEN Lynda, University of Boumerdès
DINE Philip, National University of Ireland, Galway
FORSDICK Charles, University of Liverpool
GUERIN Jean-Yves, Sorbonne Nouvelle University - Paris 3
60
Gender, Religion and the Atlantic World
May 15, 2014
Due: February 17, 2014
Janelle Rodriques
j.rodriques@newcastle.ac.uk
Gender, Religion and the Atlantic World
Newcastle University
May 15, 2014
The relationship between religious experience and gender remains underexplored in
academic scholarship. While it is largely held that the ‘victims’ of religion, in all its
manifestations, are female, and the ‘perpetrators’ male, the reality is clearly less
straightforward. This assumption does, however, beg further investigation into the
dynamics attendant upon religious experience and/or practice, and gender.
Religion, generally, as a mode of identity production, is currently understudied in
postcolonial studies (not least in its intersection with gender), and is richly varied in
its manifestations in the formerly colonised – and colonising – Atlantic World. This
symposium seeks to address this critical lacuna.
In 1937, Jamaican feminist journalist, poet and playwright Una Marson argued that
religion appealed more to women than to men; at the same time, a male colleague
lamented that Jamaican manhood was “not progressing as it should.” This symposium
will ask: is there is a connection between a perceived ‘crisis of masculinity,’
‘feminisation of culture,’ and religion? What is the nature of the intersection between
religious practice and gender identification? Furthermore, this symposium hopes to
explore how religion has been and continues to be used in processes of
masculinisation and feminisation, and in discourses of intimacy, sexuality and
affectivity, which have gained critical currency in recent postcolonial scholarship.
The dynamic between men and women, gender and sexuality, is often fluid and
unstable in religious expression. Often, praxis and doctrine are not equally aligned.
This symposium will explore the religiosity of everyday public and private life by
61
re-evaluating the role religion (in all its forms, canonical or otherwise) has in cultural
discourses of the once-colonised world, particularly highlighting its role in gender
identity production. It will encourage researchers from all disciplines and levels to
discuss questions raised by their own research in an informal atmosphere, suggest best
practices and foster networks of communication for further research.
Researchers are invited to present papers, not to exceed 20 minutes, on (but not
limited to) the following topics:


Masculinity and/or femininity and religion
Religion and postcoloniality



Religious syncretism
Evolution of religious doctrine
‘Cult’ vs. ‘Religion’





Histories of particular religious practices
Afro-religions/religious practices
Religion and gender(ed) identity
Religious affiliation and sexual expression
Queer religiosity/ies.
Please send short abstracts of no more than 250 words, plus a short bio of no more
than 100 words to Janelle Rodriques at j.rodriques@newcastle.ac.uk by February 17,
2014.
For more information, please see http://genderreligionatlantic.wordpress.com/
62
American Imperialism and Identity: National and
International Understandings of the United States
June 14, 2014
Due: February 20, 2014
Durham University (UK)
aii.durham2014@gmail.com
Throughout the twentieth century the United States has risen to the role of World
Power, with its political, cultural, social and economic influence stretching far beyond
its own borders. Can the United States’ actions abroad or even within its own borders
be considered imperialistic? To what extent has the United States throughout its
history and today been preoccupied with control and what role does the creation of
identity play within this? Do the recent NSA leaks and the involvement of the United
States in the Middle East come under the umbrella of a past of American imperialism
or how else can these be understood? How has the role the United States plays within
the world influenced identities and cultures within the United States? Do we simply
begin to understand these debates through United States domestic and foreign policies,
or can we look to its cultural output to reconfigure our ideas?
This one day conference aims to bring together research students from across the UK
to examine how the United States came to inhabit its role on the world stage, and
what influence that has had on the development of identities both nationally and
globally. Paper proposals are invited from, but not limited to, the following disciplines:
history, English, politics, philosophy, sociology, economics, art history, geography,
media studies and psychology. We also welcome proposals for creative presentations
or performances inspired by the conference theme. Presenters may address a range of
themes and topics, including the following:



defining American imperialism and the forms it can take
early American identities and the development of imperialistic thought in the
United States
Manifest Destiny and westward expansion
63







Narratives of imperialism and the representation of national identity in literature,
film, television etc.
US race relations and the intersections between national and minority identities
the Cold War and its influence on the idea of “Americanness”
cross-continental involvement and its effects on national and international
conceptions of Americans and the United States
economics and the role of capitalism in the expansion of American influence
the place of American identity and imperialism in creating a national literature
the rhetoric of identity in US political debates over involvement abroad
The deadline for submitting abstracts is the 20th of February 2014. Abstracts should
be no longer than 300 words and should include an additional personal profile of no
more than 75 words. Please e-mail all paper, presentation or performance proposals to
aii.durham2014@gmail.com. Registration for the one-day conference is free
(including lunch), but travel and accommodation costs will not be covered. More
information forthcoming on our website:
usimperialismandidentityconference.wordpress.com
64
East-West Cultural Passage Conference: Changing
Places
May 29-31, 2014
Due: March 1, 2014
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
karina.schneider@ulbsibiu.ro
EAST-WEST CULTURAL PASSAGE CONFERENCE:
CHANGING PLACES
29-31 May 2014
Keynote Speeches: Rubén G. Rumbaut, University of California, Irvine, TBA; Merritt
Moseley, University of North Carolina at Asheville, TBA etc.
In the changing social, political, economic, and cultural global landscape, such terms
as national, international, cosmopolitan, global, and ‘other’ need to be constantly
reinvented, redefined, reinterpreted, and reorganized. The spaces where identities are
negotiated, fraught as they are with social, economic, political, religious, and cultural
tensions and contradictions, are also culturally fertile contact zones. It is with such
changes that our annual conference will concern itself in 2014, as it interrogates the
impact of the changing global scene, increased staff mobility and the
internationalisation of the profession on various disciplinary and institutional aspects
of English studies.
The conference proposes to explore four strands: 1. Place, migration and changing
identities; 2. Language and change: the impact of global English on local cultures,
Englishes, and translation; 3. The Lodge connection: representations of change in the
campus novel; 4. The changing profession and institutional adjustments in the wake
of Bologna.
We invite participants to explore these changes from theoretical and/or text-based
interdisciplinary perspectives in individual presentations, panels, and/or workshops.
65
Topics might include (but are not limited to):








travel, tourism, migration
changing perspectives on global migration and cultural identity
new modes of social integration
literacy: spaces and practices
language and place, language and change, translation and cultural transfer
global perceptions in literature, language, art, and popular culture
fictional and non-fictional representations of the academe
interdisciplinary perspectives on history, politics, anthropology, and religion


the global impact of media and technology on education and sociology
reading practices: literary tourism vs. world literature, etc.
Presentations should be 20 minutes long, allowing for 10 minutes of discussion.
Please send an abstract (no more than 200 words), a list of 5-7 keywords, and a short
biographical note in word format. Proposals should include titles of papers/ panels,
name and institutional affiliation, mailing address, phone, and e-mail address.
A selection of the papers presented will be published in East/West Cultural Passage.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 1 March 2014
Please send proposals to: Anca-Luminita Iancu or Anca-Diana Tomus
Conference venue:
Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu
Faculty of Letters and Arts
Department of Anglo-American and German Studies
5-7 Victoriei Bvd.
Sibiu, 550024, Romania
Conference fee: 40 Euros for AASR members/ 50 Euros for non-members (to be paid
upon arrival). (It covers coffee-breaks, lunches and conference portfolios.)
For further details and updates, please visit us at
http://conferences.ulbsibiu.ro/eastwest/index.htm and on Facebook at
66
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Academic-Anglophone-Society-of-Romania/22161
3231184438
67
Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) 2014
June 20, 2014
Due: March 10, 2014
Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF)
crsf.team@gmail.com
Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) 2014
Friday 20th June 2014
University of Liverpool
With Keynote Lectures from:
Dr. Mark Bould (University of the West of England)
Prof. Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck University London)
Now in its fourth year, CRSF is an interdisciplinary one day postgraduate conference
designed to promote the research of speculative fictions, including SCIENCE
FICTION, FANTASY and HORROR; showcasing some of the latest developments in
these dynamic and evolving fields. CRSF attracts an international selection of
delegates and provides a platform for postgraduate students to present their current
research, encourages discussion with scholars in related subjects and the construction
of crucial networks with fellow researchers. The University of Liverpool, a leading
centre for the study of speculative fiction and home to the Science Fiction Foundation
Collection, will host the conference.
We are seeking abstracts relating to speculative fiction, including, but not limited to,
papers on the following topics:







Alternate History
Alternative Culture
Anime
Apocalypse
Body Horror
Consciousness
Cyber Culture
68

Drama










Eco-criticism
Fan Culture
Gaming
(Geo)Politics
Genre
Gender
Graphic Novels
The Grotesque
The Heroic Tradition
Liminal Fantasy



Magic
Meta-Franchises
Morality







Monstrosity
Music
Non-Anglo-American SF
Otherness
Pastoral
Poetry
Politics









Post-Colonialism and Empire
Proto-SF
Psychology
Quests
Realism
Sexuality
Slipstream
Spiritualism
Steampunk








Supernatural
Technology
Time
TV and Film
Urban Fantasy
Utopia/Dystopia
(Virtual) Spaces and Environments
Weird Fiction
69

World Building

Young Adult Fiction.
Please submit an abstract of 300 words for a 20 minute English language paper and a
100 word biography to CRSF.team@gmail.com by Monday 10th March 2014.
For further information email the conference team at CRSF.team@gmail.com or visit
our website:
http://www.currentresearchinspeculativefiction.blogspot.com
70
“Small World: Campus Fiction—Insular or Global?”
Seminar
June 5-7, 2014
Due: March 15, 2014
The English Department of the University of Bucharest, Romania/The Institute of
English, German and Communication Studies, Koszalin University of Technology
wojciech.klepuszewski@tu.koszalin.pl
"Small World: Campus Fiction – Insular or Global?" Seminar
Bucharest, 5-7 June 2014,
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Str. Pitar Moş 7-13, Bucharest
The aim of the seminar is to take a closer look at various aspects of academic fiction
with a particular focus on what is beyond the well-established canon. Thus, we invite
papers on a variety of themes, not entirely excluding British and American fiction, but
concerned predominantly with regional representations of the academy in literature
and/or the way the Anglo-American canon has influenced them. We invite diverse
approaches to the seminar theme, particularly welcoming papers dealing with:
1)
2)
examples of campus fiction in literatures outside what is sometimes perceived to
be its British and American “home territory”;
the success (or failure) of campus fiction (wherever it may come from) to engage
with issues in a wider world both socially and geographically beyond the
boundaries of its characteristically insular setting.
Possible topics include:






higher education system in transition: ideals and reforms;
debates, arguments, consensus in theory and practice;
multiculturalism and the spectre of (neo-)colonialism;
campus fiction and the postcolonial world;
internationalization of campus fiction & immigrant narratives;
feminism and post-feminism;
71

mysticism, prejudice, superstitions;



virtual campus of the digital age;
academe in film (adaptation);
campus in sub-genre conventions (campus murder mystery; conference novel;
memoirs; etc.);
A seminar organized as part of the 16th annual conference of the English Department
University of Bucharest, Romania, in collaboration with the Institute of English,
German and Communication Studies, Koszalin University of Technology, Poland*
Keynote speakers:
Prof. Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim, Gdańsk University
Prof. Ewald Mengel, University of Vienna
Prof. Merritt Moseley, University of North Carolina, Asheville
Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10
minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of
maximum 200 words in Word format. Proposals should include title of paper, name
and institutional affiliation, a short bio (no more than 100 words), and e-mail address.
Papers presented at the seminar may be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed
volume of proceedings.
Conference fee: 50 Euro (or equivalent in Romanian Lei)
(covering lunches and refreshments during the conference, including the opening
reception on 5 June, but not evening meals)
Please send proposals (and enquiries) to the following e-mail address:
wojciech.klepuszewski@tu.koszalin.pl
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2014
Further details about the Conference can be found at
http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php
We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest.
Lidia Vianu, University of Bucharest
72
Wojciech Klepuszewski, Koszalin University of Technology
* The seminar is part of a project which started in Vienna (Academic Fiction in
Anglo-American Perspective, 10-11 September 2013), and was continued in
Greifswald (Changing Places: Der (Post-)Moderne Universitätsroman in der
Anglo-Amerikanischen und in der Deutschsprachigen Tradition, 29 November-1
December 2013).
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Cognitive Studies of Culture
June 9-10, 2014
Due: March 15, 2014
University of Vienna
Christa.Knellwolf@univie.ac.at
Recent research in the cognitive sciences has inspired a wealth of new approaches to
the study of mind, consciousness and embodied experience. For researchers in the
humanities, the cognitive turn has challenged long-established definitions of what it
means to be human. This conference will scrutinise the implications of neuroscientific
research on the ultimately human capacity to create culture (literature, art, music, etc).
Confirmed keynote speakers:



Peter Schneck (Professor of American literature and co-convenor of the
"Cognition and Poetics" Research Centre, University of Osnabrück)
Alan Palmer (Independent Scholar, author of e.g. Social Minds in the Novel,
2010)
Peter Garratt (University of Durham, co-convenor of the AHRC Network
"Cognitive Futures in the Humanities")
For further details, please go to our website:
http://cognitive-theory.univie.ac.at/conference2014
SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS / DEADLINE
Please send us your abstract of approx. 250 words by 15 March 2014.
Contact email: christa.knellwolf@univie.ac.at
We will try to organise early confirmation of accepted papers for overseas participants
applying for departmental funding.
We look forward to hearing from you,
74
Christa Knellwolf King
--Prof. Dr. Christa Knellwolf King
Institute for English and American Studies
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 8
A-1090 Vienna
Website: http://cognitive-theory.univie.ac.at/
75
Roland Barthes at 100
March 30-31, 2015
Due: June 30, 2014
Cardiff University, UK
BarthesConference@Cardiff.ac.uk
To mark the centenary of Roland Barthes in 2015, the School of English,
Communication & Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK, will host a conference
entitled Roland Barthes at 100 on 30 and 31 March 2015.
Keynote speakers:
Diana Knight (Nottingham University),
Jürgen Pieters (University of Ghent),
Michael Wood (Princeton University).
Proposals for papers in English on any aspect of the work or legacy of Roland Barthes
are invited. Proposals should be no more than 200 words long and should be sent by
30 June 2014 to BarthesConference@Cardiff.ac.uk
Conference blog: http://RolandBarthesat100.blogspot.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Barthes100conf
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Journals and Collections of Essays
Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature
Due: January 10, 2014
Inquire Journal of Comparative Literature
inquire@ualberta.ca
Extended Deadline: January 10, 2014
Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature invites article submissions on
contemporary literature, culture and cinema of Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and
Turkey.
One of Comparative Literature’s primary imperatives is to break away from
Eurocentrism and Western canons of literature by opening intellectual spaces for
conceptualizations and analyses of literatures that are usually ignored by Western
Academia. Focussing this issue on Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Turkey, Inquire
seeks to provide a forum for dialogue on the cultures and cultural products of these
unique regions.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:


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

Alterity and Othering
Censorship, propaganda and the (non-)movement of texts
Cultural production in exile and diaspora
Fashion and clothing
Film, television and visual culture

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

Representations of gender and sexuality
Literature and art of Religious and Ethnic Minorities
(Post-)Modernity
Publishing practices and minor languages
Religion, fundamentalism and secularism
Representations of war, violence or oppression
Resistance, transgressing and complicity
Travel writing and the travel of texts
77

Trauma
As always, Inquire encourages comparative analysis, the study of texts in their
original language of publication, and critical approaches to textual analysis from
inside and outside the text. We ask that all articles be written in English with citations
that include both the original language textual quotations and an accompanying
English translation.
Inquire accepts article submissions by graduate students relevant to the current call for
papers until January 10, 2014. All submissions must meet the following guidelines:
original work not submitted elsewhere, complete articles in English, 5,000-7,000
words (including works cited list and endnotes), MLA formatting, 12-pt Times New
Roman, double-spaced, justified. Please include a separate cover sheet with name,
institutional affiliation, email address, and a short biography (max 60 words). Send
inquiries and submissions to inquire@ualberta.ca. Please check our website for
updates and information: http://inquire.streetmag.org/
78
The Films of Hal Hartley
Due: January 15, 2014
Steven Rybin / Georgia Gwinnett College
srybin@ggc.edu
Note extended deadline below.
I am currently accepting essay proposals for a new collection on the films of Hal
Hartley, tentatively titled HAL HARTLEY: AMERICAN FILMMAKER. An
academic press has shown strong interest in publishing this collection.
Hal Hartley is one of the celebrated figures of American independent cinema. His
early films, including THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, TRUST, SIMPLE MEN,
AMATEUR, and FLIRT, established Hartley as an American auteur engaged with the
poetics of cinema and the politics of American culture. While other American
filmmakers regarded as “independents,” such as Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith,
quickly assimilated into the mainstream film industry, Hartley remained a self-reliant
producer and director through his own production company, while also forging
relationships with distributors such as Sony Pictures Classics and Magnolia Pictures.
Shifting his focus from America to the globe in recent films, including FAY GRIM
and a variety of short works, Hartley’s output has also engaged new styles of digital
cinema. This collection will seek to explore the various themes, styles, and evolutions
of Hartley’s work from multiple perspectives.
Contributors are invited to write about Hartley’s work with passion and precision. The
question of writing is one of Hartley’s most important themes, and this book will seek
to find new ways of writing about Hartley’s films that evoke and engage with the
unique poetics of his films and his singular vision of the world.
Some possible topics include, but are not limited to:



Hartley as writer and the motif of writing in his work
Hartley’s eye – his framing, his cutting, and his mise-en-scène
new readings of Hartley’s celebrated films, including THE UNBELIEVABLE
TRUTH, TRUST, SIMPLE MEN, AMATEUR, and FLIRT
79

Hartley’s relationship to American independent cinema


the roles gender, sexuality, class, and whiteness play in Hartley’s cinema
the function of place and land/cityscape in the films, and the shift to a global
mise-en-scène in the recent work
Hartley’s various influences and predecessors, from Howard Hawks to Jean-Luc
Godard to Robert Bresson and others
Hartley’s relationship to both art cinema and Hollywood classicism as modes of
narration and as styles
the aesthetics and functions of performance in Hartley’s work
Hartley’s use of the Internet as filmmaker and producer, including his
maintenance of the Possible Films website






the relationship between HENRY FOOL and its 2006 sequel, FAY GRIM
Hartley’s most recent films, including MEANWHILE, and his return to NYC
filmmaking

representations of the working class in Hartley’s work, and the relationship of
these representations to his aesthetic ambitions
Hartley as a philosophical filmmaker, and the relationship of his films to current
debates in the film-philosophy subfield

Abstracts of between 300-500 words should be sent to srybin@ggc.edu by January 15,
2014 (deadline extended). Deadline for final essays is pending, but anticipated
deadline will be November 1, 2014. Accepted contributors will be advised about word
count limits upon acceptance of abstract.
80
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, “Connected
Writing”
Due: January 15, 2014
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal
praxisuwc@gmail.com
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal welcomes submissions on a wide range of topics
related to writing centers for its Spring 2014 issue. We also encourage submissions on
the issue’s theme: Connected Writing. Writing center practitioners often must
negotiate across various technologies, languages, and academic disciplines in order to
serve students, making the labor of connecting central to writing center theory and
practice.
“Connection” is a capacious term that could encompass interpersonal relationality as
well as the practical matters of Internet connectivity – both issues that become
important to writing centers with the increasing emphasis on multiliteracy in writing
center scholarship. How do these various senses of the word connection come
together in writing center theory and practice?
Articles might explore topics including:

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


Technological connections, networking, and Internet accessibility
Inter-disciplinary methods
Writing centers connecting with other writing centers
Face-to-face meetings between students and tutors
Intersecting issues of race, gender, sexuality, and ability


Communicating across multiple languages and literacies
Movement between various spaces, places, and locations
Recommended article length is 3000 to 4000 words.
Articles should conform to MLA style. Please submit articles online at
praxis.uwc.utexas.edu. For further information about submitting an article, the
81
journal’s blind review process, or to contact the managing editors, please email
praxisuwc@gmail.com.
The deadline for spring issue consideration is January 15, 2014.
82
Gender and the Posthuman: Genealogies, Evolutions,
Visions
Due: January 31, 2014
Double-Peer Reviewed International Journal “La Camera Blu”, University of Naples
“Federico II”, Italy
posthuman.gender@gmail.com
The specific focus of this issue is the relation between gender and the posthuman in a
comprehensive and inclusive way. On one side, we wish to analyze the crucial
contribution of Feminism and Gender Studies to the posthuman, emphasizing thinkers,
events and practices which contributed to the development of the posthuman turn. On
the other, we wish to reflect upon the significance of gender in relation, not only to
the present and to the past, but also to the close and far futures.
Deadline for abstract proposal (500 words) is: January 31th, 2014.
If accepted, the delivery of completed essays will be April 1st, 2014.
The Volume will appear in December 2014.
Genealogies In this section, we would like to focus on all the aspects which, generated
in the fields of Gender Studies, Women’s History and Feminism as a theory and a
practice, may be relevant to the posthuman. From its well known theoretical mothers,
such as Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles, to feminist artists, psychologists and
musicians who might have contributed to the development of a post-dualistic and
post-anthropocentric approach. We would also like to offer space for recognition to all
the unknown mothers of the posthuman: women have historically sustained
non-hierarchical approaches such as sister circles, oral sharing of collective
knowledge and cooperatives. Therefore, we invite participants to look for
genealogical paths of the posthuman, not only in hegemonic history, but also in
alternative traditions and archives of knowledge, such as dance, oral history, body art
and cosmetics, lived practices, everyday ethics, relational psychology and spirituality.
83
The Present and the Near Future The present offers a wide field of reflection on the
relation between gender and the posthuman. We would like to approach the different
ways gender might be perceived within the field of Posthumanism, Transhumanism,
Antihumanism, and New Materialisms. Papers focussing on such interrelations are
welcome. From a bio-cultural perspective, many points can be raised as well: from
female avatars, portrayed in video-games outside of any biological kinship, such as
menstruation or pregnancy; to emerging biotechnologies and the the multiplication of
maternal roles (from the egg donors to the gestational surrogates). Which kind of
approaches might a posthuman cyberpsychology develop? How can we pursue a
posthumanist education which includes an awareness of speciesism, together with
sexism, racism, ableism and heterosexism? What do diverse concepts such as
veganism, ethical banking, ecology and space migration, have to do with gender and
the posthuman? We welcome articles developing reflections on identity, interspecies
cohabitation, education and everyday practices in the posthumanist era.
Far Future The posthuman is sometimes seen as a further evolutionary development
of the human species. In this sense, what are the implications of gender, sex and race,
among other intersectional categories, to the embodiment of the posthuman? Will the
biology of the posthuman hold categories such as female, male and intersex? Could
some sort of hermaphroditism, for instance, be part the next evolutionary step? Let’s
now talk about artificial intelligence and the development of machine consciousness:
what does gender have to do with it? When approaching the notion of the far future,
we suggest to use a radical feminist and posthumanist imagination to develop
desirable visions. We also welcome articles which point out possible future risks, and
engage in a reflection on how to avoid them. Articles focused on such subjects could
relate to the rich field of feminist sci-fi, as well as bioethics and world mythologies.
GUEST EDITORS Dr. Francesca Ferrando (PhD in Philosophy, MA in Gender
Studies) Prof. Simona Marino (Universita’ degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)
SUBMISSIONS & DEADLINES Manuscripts are expected to follow standard
guidelines of the journal La Camera Blu and they will be peer-reviewed. Papers will
be selected and arranged according to related topics. Equal voice will be given, if
possible, to presentations from the arts, humanities, sciences, and technological fields.
Deadline for submission of proposals (500 words) is January 31th, 2014. Proposals
should be sent to these three emails:
PS. Note that, in the following email addresses, [at] means @ / [dot] means .
84
1. posthuman[dot]gender[at]gmail[dot]com
2. Dr. Francesca Ferrando francesca[dot]ferrando[at]gmail[dot]com
3. Prof. Simona Marino simarino[at]unina[dot]it
If accepted, the delivery of completed essays (between 3.000 and 6.000 words) will be
April 1st, 2014. The Volume will appear in December 2014.
This is the link to the published Call:
http://www.camerablu.unina.it/index.php/camerablu
85
Special Journal Edition: The Royal Shakespeare
Company’s 2014 Season
Due: January 31, 2014
Shakespeare
Kate.Wilkinson@shu.ac.uk
Proposals are invited for a special edition of a forthcoming issue of Shakespeare
which will focus on the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2014 summer season. This
will be a season of two halves: on the one hand, artistic director Gregory Doran will
continue his productions of Shakespeare's history plays (begun in winter 2013 with
Richard II) with the two parts of Henry IV and there will be a new production of The
Two Gentlemen of Verona. On the other hand, part of the season will consist of a
group of plays under the heading 'Roaring Girls'. These are rarely performed
Jacobethan plays and as such build on the RSC's previously successful 2002 and 2005
Jacobethan seasons. In 2014 the chosen plays will focus on transgressive women:
Arden of Faversham, The White Devil, and The Roaring Girl.
Proposals are invited for articles of 6,500 words.
Articles might focus on a production in the context of the play's performance history;
productions in the context of this specific season; or on productions in the context of
British and/or international Renaissance drama production.
Articles might address (but are in no way limited to) the following issues:



Exploration of the interplay between these Shakespearean and
non-Shakespearean plays which will be performed in different theatre spaces.
How the transgressive women of the plays in the 'Roaring Girls' section of the
season are interpreted and performed.
The RSC website states of the production of The White Devil that '[director]
Maria Aberg will take a bold approach to this bloodthirsty tale of murder and
revenge by John Webster'. On whose terms will this production be 'bold'? Will
this challenge what can be viewed as the conservatism of the RSC?
86




The 2013 RSC season also saw the performance of a violated woman and a
transgressive woman in Titus Andronicus. Where will these new productions fit
in the context of the RSC's history?
How will these productions respond to other more recent portrayals of femininity
on the British stage? This may cover both Renaissance and modern plays,
addressing where the RSC fits in Britain's current theatrical culture.
The histories are plays that Phyllis Rackin has called 'the least hospitable to
women' which would apply here to the Henry IV plays, but the collection of
plays given over to women in this season do not appear (on the surface) to
champion women either. How will the productions address this issue?
There are elements of history in both sides of this season: these Jacobethan plays
portray real personages and events in the 'Roaring Girls' season as well as in the
histories. How will history be treated in these plays which are proposed as
comedies and tragedies rather than histories? What effects will this have on the



performances of the women and their reception?
The Shakespearean plays being performed are Henry IV and The Two
Gentlemen of Verona. The non-Shakespearean plays are under the heading
'Roaring Girls'. Is it fair to view these productions along lines of femininity and
masculinity?
How these 'new' histories respond not only to historical and current contexts but
also how they specifically respond to RSC's theatre history.
The 2013 season may be viewed as a transitional period for the RSC between the
directorship of Michael Boyd and Doran. This 2014 season then represents
Doran's first full season as the new artistic director. These two years therefore
could be viewed as a period of looking forward but also looking back. How
might Doran's approach to the RSC, programming the season, and directing this
season differ from Boyd's (especially as Doran's histories, including Richard II
are coming only five years after Boyd's tour de force production of The
Histories)? What might this suggest for the RSC looking forward?
For consideration please send abstracts of 250-300 words to
Kate.Wilkinson@shu.ac.uk by 31st January 2014.
Accepted articles should be completed by 31st October 2014.
Also welcome are reviews of the productions making up this season.
87
Creative and Scholarly Essays on Mentoring
Due: January 31, 2014
Hilary Holladay / James Madison University
hwholladay@gmail.com
Mentors play crucial roles in our professional and personal lives, yet most studies of
mentoring take a "how to" or social sciences approach. It's time to take a different
look at this subject.
For my proposed essay collection, which I envision as a trade paperback, I seek
personal essays that explore the difficulties and awkwardness as well as the joys and
satisfactions of a mentoring relationship. You can write from the perspective of being
mentored, being the mentor, or even observing a mentoring relationship between two
other people. You need not write about mentoring within academia, though I'm open
to that. Empathy and humor are most welcome.
I'm also open to scholarly essays that describe and analyze mentoring relationships
between prominent writers (or between editor and writer), scholars, artists, scientists,
businesspeople. Please follow MLA style and keep citations and endnotes to a
minimum.
Suggested essay length: 3,000 to 4,500 wds.
Abstracts (200-300 wds.) due by Jan 31, 2014.
Deadline for completed essays: March 31, 2014, but preferably sooner.
I will respond as quickly as I can to submissions. Email me if you would like to run
an idea by me before submitting an abstract.
88
Culture under Neoliberalism/Neoliberal Culture
Due: January 31, 2014
Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies
j.m.lawn@massey.ac.nz
Over the past thirty years, it has increasingly become understood in cultural theory
that neoliberalism -- the extension of free market principles and corporate structures
into the wider social and cultural spheres -- has become a shaping paradigm of our
daily lives. Neoliberal tenets include the model of persons as rational economic actors
advancing their own interests under the banner of self-determination and choice; the
elevation of enterprise along with prudent risk management; the “freeing” of capital
from state control into corporate ownership; and the shifting of social responsibility
from state agencies to kinship-based forms of care.
While “society” has been depicted as a constraining force on commercial and personal
freedom, “culture” has been energised as a source of wealth formation: capitalist
economies pursue “creative” business solutions even as the state-funded arts have
been transformed into “creative industries,” and “cultural capital” is deemed to inject
distinctiveness and value into a wide range of forms of production, from the branded
commodity to the “job ready” individual offering their services to the employment
market. Such productive appeals to the mutuality of culture and economy have
preoccupied and, arguably, disarmed the academic left. In particular, in Aotearoa New
Zealand, the erosion of workers’ rights and income was accompanied by real advances
in the visibility and economic power of Māori iwi and business interests.
How might we characterise the complex relationships between neoliberalism, culture
and decolonisation now, in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008? Are new
cultural formations emerging that signal the waning of the neoliberal paradigm, or is it
“business as usual”? Are we in the grip of “zombie capitalism,” the “strange
non-death of neoliberalism,” and the renewed “spirit of neoliberalism,” as claimed by
Chris Harman, Stanley Crouch, and Manuel Aalbers, respectively; or are there
glimmerings of a new “cultural front” -- new conjunctions of social action,
particularly through global networks and digital technologies?
89
We welcome papers that address the implications of these contemporary
manifestations of neoliberal culture, as well as papers that explore interventions and
disruptions to the ideologies and practices that inform neoliberal culture. What has
been the impact of the contemporary global marketing of culture, and cultural identity,
on the cultures of the wider Pacific? In Aotearoa New Zealand, how have Māori
aspirations articulated to the Treaty of Waitangi been enabled by the practices and
policies of neoliberalism, and at what cost, both to those less well placed to participate
or benefit, and to the very possibility of living differently without being individually
or collectively pathologised or criminalised? What forms of social and mental habits
have become necessary to negotiate this culturalisation of the economy, and what
alternative models of exchange and value might be possible?
We particularly welcome papers that address the following issues:







Promoting culture as a resource
Culture for profit
Culture for sale
The ubiquity of branding
“MyCulture” and narrowcasting
The culture of apps
Mobile privatisation

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Enterprise culture
Cultural tourism
Post-settlement politics
Local interventions and disruptions to neoliberal rationality
Cultural policy and democratisation
“Cool capitalism” (Jim McGuigan)
Creative workers and the precarity trap
The labour theory of culture (Michael Denning)
Neoliberal culture as a structure of feeling (Patricia Ventura)






“Deworlding” (Alain Badiou)
“Cruel optimism” (Lauren Berlant)
Public things and the routine of privatization (Bonnie Honig)
Zombie capitalism
Neoliberalism in crisis
Neoliberalism as history
90
Sites seeks multidisciplinary perspectives on the study of societies and cultures of the
wider Pacific region. We welcome work from authors in the fields of anthropology,
cultural studies, indigenous studies, Maori studies, sociology, media studies,
communication, heritage studies, cultural policy studies, history, gender, linguistics,
and ethnomusicology.
Papers should be around 8,000 words in length, formatted in the most recent version
of APA style. Guidelines for submission are available at:
http://sites.otago.ac.nz/index.php/Sites/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
The editors welcome extended abstracts in advance if you wish to discuss your topic
prior to submission. Contact:
Chris Prentice, University of Otago
chris.prentice@otago.ac.nz
Jenny Lawn, Massey University
j.m.lawn@massey.ac.nz
91
ESSACHESS—Journal for Communication
Due: February 15, 2014
ESSACHESS
essachess@gmail.com
Call for Papers for volume 7, n° 2(14)/ 2014
ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies
www.essachess.com
How does Gender matter? Analyzing media discourses, media organizations and
media practices
Guest editors:


Margreth LŰNENBORG (Director of the International Centre of Journalism,
Free University of Berlin, Germany)
Daniela ROVENTA-FRUMUSANI (Head of the Department of Cultural
Anthropology and Communication, University of Bucharest, Romania)
Using the concept of gender as a crosscutting principle underlying all aspects of social
life (work, family, religion, migration, research, etc.) we intend to highlight the gender
dimension of social life, a major phenomenon ignored for a long time (some
researchers such as Marcel Mauss identified the division by gender as a fundamental
matrix even if most sciences: from sociology to medicine were gender blind). The
“liquidity of the modern society” (Bauman) also marked the concept of gender,
floating “between social sex”, “gender relations” or “gender difference” understood as
a socio-anthropological difference constructed and disseminated through standards
and customs both practiced by and distributed via media. Entered fully into the social
sciences (sociology and history in the first place), the gender is built conceptually in a
wide range of feminist theories (universalists, differentialists, Marxists, radicals,
deconstructionists, culturalists, queer) as a “differential valence” (Françoise Héritier)
which provides / prospects on "the genesis and transmission of inequality and gender
and sexual hierarchies" (I. Thery, 2010); gender is a relevant but not single dimension
of social and cultural inequality as discussed in the concept of intersectionality.
92
The approach in terms of gender represents a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense,
since it involves the radical transformation of social representations and collective
values and norms, transformation correlated with the democratization of societies and
promotion of the equality principle.
“Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes. It is the product of social relations
of sexuality. Kinship systems are based on marriage. They transform males and
females in men and women”. (Gayle Rubin, 1975/1998).
In accordance with feminist methodology breaking with the epistemic ideal of
“objectivity” to use the grounded theory rooted in the field, observation and data
collection in situ, we are interested in papers referring to the analysis of the gendered
structures and gendering practices of media images, media discourse and media
practices.
In the theoretical tradition of Luce Irigaray articulations and modalities of
communication distinguish male and female discourse. If speaking is never neutral to
resume Luce Irigaray, we think we believe that the issues related to the use of
discourse and media genres in the “feminine” media are as important as the presence /
absence of women in mainstream media, especially in the news. The findings are that
men and women do not use language in a similar way therefore demonstrates that
language is gendered. The feminist theorists assert that it would be possible to create
new forms of female thought, transforming the structures of the traditional way of
thinking, because “it is not enough to change certain things in the horizon that defines
human culture, but to change the horizon itself” (Luce Irigaray, 1992: 36). Yet these
changes of horizon include both the change in the message, change of media
production and obviously change the public.
Following Judith Butler’s concept of performativity of sex and gender (1990, 1993),
we need to go beyond the essentialist concepts of “femininity” and “masculinity”.
Thus distinctions between “male” and “female” writing, talking or reading are seen as
obsolete. How can we then analyse distinct concepts of writing, journalistic
production, public forms of articulation? How do we conceptualize the relationship of
gendered media practices, media images and social constructions of gender?
Angela McRobbie (2009) refers to the term “Postfeminism” when critically
discussing how originally feminist approaches to new gender relations have been
93
instrumentally incorporated into popular culture. Thus we need to ask how to analyse
the relationship of popular culture and changing gender orders.
Both Francophone and Anglophone approaches and concepts discussed in the field of
gender studies refer to distinct theoretical framework, but offer complex opportunities
for bridging academic cultures. We thus are interested in theoretical and empirical
work going beyond well-established concepts of explanation and interpretation.
Analyses can be addressed (without excluding other possible approaches and angles)
to:
i)
Gender / women’s issues as topics of the mainstream media (such as the
unemployment of women, female migration, female poverty, health etc.) and the
journalistic treatment of these issues: scientific, sensationalist or trivialized in the
print and online media;
the manner of articulating the iconic and verbal text in the case of the
representation of different sexes in the same referential area (sportswomen
fragmented and connoted in the mode of appearance: emotion, aestheticism
and sportsmen in the mode of being: prize, victory; in the field of politics
the gendered conceptualization of power and success, the representation of
political bodies etc.)
the impact of the message on the public;
ii) the thematic and organizational modes of discourse (narrative, argumentative,
descriptive) in the "feminine" media (correlated or not to post-feminism, to
backlash of feminism or to ordinary anti-feminism);
the hybridization of genres and types of discourse by intertextuality /
intersemioticity/ plurimodality.
iii) the gendered practices of and by digital media: modes of incorporation of media
practices into professional habits and routines as well as into ‘private’ lifeworlds;
the use of digital media in protest cultures (e.g. FEMEN).
The selected study corpus may be represented by all forms of media content including
press, audio-visual media as well as online communication (electronic journals,
personal blogs, professional blogs, etc.). Analyzing practices and discursive strategies
of media in their constitutive relationship to gender structures in society we propose
interdisciplinary reflections bringing together sociologists, political scientists,
anthropologists, linguists and semioticians, researchers from information sciences,
media and communication, interested gender images, actions and aspirations.
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The field of gender studies has been a work in progress for more than forty years not
only in Western countries, but also in non-European space. Gender studies develop
complex theoretical perspectives, innovative methodologies evolved into practices
(e.g. action research), and practices are used within and outside of academia. Our
volume participates in the global movement of de-westernization of research and
denaturalization of ‘gender hierarchy’ building a new reflexivity with the ultimate
goal of emancipation.
The analysis in the context of “situated knowledge” located at the intersection of
political, economic and social ‘redistribution’ (absent from the public debate) and the
policies of the specific claims of national or cultural minorities ‘recognition’ could
show how identity minorisation goes hand in hand with the socio-economic
discrimination in inertia of gender roles produced by the institutions of socialization.
As we are now in a century characterized by “fast and furious developments in media
products, technologies and institutions” (K. Ross, 2009) it becomes essential to
re-examine in a critical perspective the concepts of media representation, media
discourse, media practice bridging media culture and academy. We especially aim at
bringing together the Anglophone research as well as the Francophone research in the
field.
Important Deadlines




February 15, 2014: submission of the proposal in the form of an abstract of
400-500 words. The proposal must include a list of recent references;
March 30, 2014: acceptance of the proposal;
July 15, 2014: full paper submission;
September 30, 2014: full paper acceptance.
Papers should be between 6,000-10,000 words in length. Papers can be submitted in
English or French. The abstracts should be in English and French, max. 200-250
words followed by 5 keywords. Please provide the full names, affiliations, and e-mail
addresses of all authors, indicating the contact author. Papers, and any queries, should
be sent to:
essachess@gmail.com
95
Authors of the accepted papers will be notified by e-mail. The journal will be
published in December 2014.
References
Bem, Sandra, 1993 The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual
Inequalities,New Haven, Yale University Press.
Blandin, Claire & Méadel, Cécile (éditrices) 2009, « La Cause des femmes » dossier
thématique Le Temps des médias no 12, printemps-été.
Butler Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
London Routledge (trad.fr. 2005, Trouble dans le genre: pour un féminisme de la
subversion, Paris, La Découverte).
Butler, Judith, 1993 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” , New
York, Routledge Byerly Carolyn and Ross Karen, 2006 Women and Media. A
Critical Introduction, Blackwell.
Chabaud-Rychter, Danielle, Descoutures, Virginie, Devreux, Anne-Marie,Varikas,
Eleni, (sous la direction de), 2010, Sous les sciences sociales le genre. Relectures
critique de Max Weber à Bruno Latour, Paris, La Découverte.
Carter Cynthia, Branston Gill, Stuart Allen (eds), 1998 News, Gender and Power,
London, Routledge
De Bruin Marian and Ross Karen (eds), 2004, Gender and Newsroom Cultures,
Hampton Press, pp. 81-104.
Dorlin, Elsa (sous la direction de), 2010, Sexe, Race, Classe Pour une épistémologie
de la domination, Paris, PUF.
Gauntlett, David, 2008, Media, Gender and Identity, New York, London, Routledge.
Gill Rosalind, 2006, Gender and the Media, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Gill Rosalind and Scharff Christina, 2013, New Femininities. Postfeminism,
Neoliberalism and Subjectivity, Palgrave Macmillan.
Gubin, Eliane; Jacques Catherine; Rochefort Florence; Studer Brigitte; Thébaud
Françoise ; Zancarini-Fournel Michelle, 2004, Le siècle des féminismes, Paris,
Editions de l’Atelier.
Harding, Sandra, (dir.), 2004, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, New York,
London, Routledge.
Héritier, Françoise, 1996, Masculin, féminin. I. La pensée de la différence, Paris,
Odile Jacob.
Hirata, Helena; Laborie, Françoise; Le Doaré, Hélène; Senotier, Danièle, 2000,
Dictionnaire critique du féminisme, Paris, PUF.
Lazar, Michelle (ed.), 2005, Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis:Gender, Power and
96
Ideology in Discourse, Palgrave Macmillan.
Lünenborg, Margreth, Majer, Tanya (eds.), 2013 Gender Media Studies. Eine
Einführung, Konstanz, UVK.
McRobbie, Angela, 2009 The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social
Change, London, Sage.
Neveu, Eric, 2001, „Le genre du journalisme. Des ambivalences de la féminisation
d’une profession”, Politix, 13, 51, 2000, pp. 179-212.
Ollivier, Michèle, Tremblay, Manon, 2000, Questionnements féministes et
méthodologie de la recherche, Montréal, Harmattan.
« Review of the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in the EU Member
States :Women and the Media- Advancing Gender Equality in decision-making
in media organizations», 2013, Report realized by EIGE (European Institute for
Gender Equality), Luxembourg : Publications Office of the European Union
Robinson, Gertrude, 2005, Gender, Journalism and Equity: Canadian, U.S and
European Perspectives, Hampton Press, Communication Series, Cresskill, New
Jersey.
Ross, Karen, 2009, Gendered Media. Women, Men and Identity Politics, Rowman &
Littlefield Publications
Ross Karen, 2011, « Women and News. A long and winding road », Media, Culture
and Society vol.33, no 8, 99, pp. 1148-1165.
Rubin, Gayle, 1975 (1998), « L’économie politique du sexe. Transactions sur les
femmes et systèmes de sexe/genre », Cahiers d’études féministes, Paris,
CEDREF no 7, pp. 3-81.
Roventa-Frumusani, Daniela, 2009, Concepts fondamentaux pour les études de genre,
Paris, Editions des Archives Contemporaines.
Scott, Joan 1988) «Genre: une catégorie utile d’analyse historique », Cahiers du Grif:
le genre de l’histoire, no 37-38, printemps, pp. 125-153.
Saint-Jean, Armande, 2000, « L’apport des femmes au renouvellement des pratiques
professionnelles : le cas des journalistes » in Recherches féministes vol 13, no 2,
pp.77-93.
Thébaud, Françoise, 2003 « Histoire des femmes, histoire du genre et sexe du
chercheur » in Jacqueline Laufer, Catherine Mary, Margaret Maruani (dir.) Le
travail du genre. Les sciences sociales à l’épreuve des différences de sexe, Paris,
La Découverte,/MAGE, pp.70-87.
Théry, Irène, 2007, La distinction de sexe. Une nouvelle approche de l’égalité, Paris,
Odile Jacob.
Théry, Irène, 2010 « Le genre : identité des personnes ou modalité des relations
sociales ? » in Revue française de pédagogie, 171, avril-mai-juin, pp. 103-117.
97
Van Zoonen, Liesbet, 2002, Feminist Media Studies, London, Sage Publications.
98
Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary
Journal
Due: February 15, 2014
Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal
ageculturehumanities@coastal.edu
Submission deadline for Issue #2: 15 February 2014
Graduate Student Essay Contest deadline: 15 March 2014
Age, Culture, Humanities promotes cross-disciplinary, critical investigations of the
experiences of age, aging, and old age, as seen through the lens of the humanities and
arts. The goals are to consider age as a category of identity, advance understanding of
the aging process and of age differences across the lifespan, interrogate cultural
articulations of aging and old age, and generate innovative, engaging scholarly
approaches to the study of age and aging in the humanities.
The journal invites the submission of scholarly articles on topics that investigate the
critical intersections of the arts and humanities with the aging process; scholarly
position papers on these topics; brief pedagogical essays; and reviews of recent
academic book publications as well as of recent fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry,
drama, film, performances, and art exhibitions relevant to aging or old age.
Age, Culture, Humanities is edited by Cynthia Port and Aagje Swinnen and published
by the Athenaeum Press of Coastal Carolina University. The journal is affiliated with
the North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS) and the European Network
in Aging Studies (ENAS).
All manuscripts undergo editorial screening; scholarly articles are selected for
publication through a double-blind peer review process. The journal is published
annually, in both print and open access digital editions. Issue #1 will be released in
January 2014.
For more information and submission guidelines, please see
ageculturehumanities.org.
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Texts and Contexts: A Critical Companion to World
Literatures in English
Due: February 15, 2014
Department of English, Higher Teachers' Training College, The University of Maroua,
Cameroon
textsandcontexts2014
Texts and Contexts
Critical Companion to World Literatures in English
Eminent African critic and novelist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has noted that “literature is
given impetus, shape, direction and even area of concern by social, political and
economic forces in a particular society”, while Doreathea Drummond Mbalia has
concurred by noting that “from a materialist perspective, literature is a product of the
society in which it is produced, arising from and dependent on the material conditions
of the society”. This explains why works of fiction usually serve as windows into the
societies from which they emanate. New Historicists and cultural materialists have
emphasized over and over again the interplay between literature and the society. This
has often resulted in an over-simplification of the relationship between texts and their
contexts, limiting criticisms to the material evidence of the society; whereas this
relationship can sometimes be read in the current ideas of the time. This companion is
interested in essays which underline the ways literary texts are influenced or influence
the philosophical and ideological currents of the time of their production.
Contributions are therefore welcomed from critics specialized in literatures in English
from different epochs, cultures and locations which focus on the kind of dialogue that
exists between texts and the philosophical and ideological contexts. The following
areas are indicative but contributors are free to twist them to suit their topic:





Literature and Renaissance thought
Literature and the Environmental Imagination
Existentialist thinking in Literature
Postcolonialism and/in literature
Feminist tendencies in literature
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
Literature and Politics


Literature and -isms
Literature and theology etc.
Papers expected for this collection should be of a very high quality and engage highly
critical perspectives. Interested contributors should send an abstract of at between 350
– 500 words to the following address textandcontextcfp@gmail.com
For any inquiries contact:
Dr. Athanasius Ayuk Ako ayukako@justice.com
Dr. Blossom Ngum ngumbloss@yahoo.com
Important Dates
February 15 2014 – Deadline for acceptance of abstracts
March 30 2014 - Notification of acceptance of abstracts
June 30 2014 – Deadline for acceptance of complete papers
July 30 2014 – Publication of Essay Collection
Important Information:
The Collection is already under contract with Dignity Publishing in the UK
(books@dignitypublishing.com) and if many essays of a high quality are received, it
will be published in two volumes. www.dignitypublishing.com/?page_id=5175
Note:
Contributors whose papers are accepted are informed that they will have to pay a
processing and publication fee of $150.000 since we are self-publishing. Each will
receive two copies of the collection.
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Text in Context: A Graduate Student Journal
Due: February 28, 2014
Southern Connecticut State University
textincontext.southernct@gmail.com
Sex in Context
Our Spring 2014 issue will feature a selection of papers devoted to “Sex in Context.”
Papers submitted to “Sex in Context” should explore the role of sex and/or sexuality
in texts. Some potential questions papers may address include, but are not limited to:






How does a character’s sexuality influence his or her development?
How does attaining sexual gratification motivate characters or play a role in the
text?
How might sex affect the text’s reception by historical or current audiences?
What does sexuality mean in a particular text?
How does the text define “normal” and/or “abnormal” sex and/or sexuality?
What does the text say about cultural definitions of “normal” and/or “abnormal”
sex and/or sexuality?
As always, we welcome papers from a variety of fields, provided they relate to our
theme of “Sex in Context.” Please note that papers engaging with genders studies will
be considered for our “Text in Context” section.
Text in Context: A Graduate Student Journal
Text in Context is a graduate student journal published electronically by Southern
Connecticut State University. We seek submissions exploring the text itself and its
function(s) and implications both internally and externally—literary analysis, poetry
studies, critical theory, popular reception of a particular work, close readings,
historical relevance, etc. Though the journal primarily deals with English studies, we
welcome original papers from other disciplines, provided those papers focus on the
text and/or its context—pedagogy and instructional design, localization of language in
the brain, regional dialects and their origins, etc. We currently seek scholarly papers to
include in the publication.
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Submission Guidelines
The submission deadline for our Spring 2014 issue will be February 28, 2014.
Please send submissions electronically to textincontext.southernct@gmail.com as MS
Word email attachments, indicating in the body of the email if you are submitting to
our “Sex in Context” section. The editorial board reviews submissions anonymously;
thus, author name and contact information should appear in a separate file and not in
the manuscript itself.
Submissions should be no longer than 2,500 words in length, set in 12pt, Times New
Roman font, double-spaced, with 1” margins, and adhere to 2009 MLA style. All
submissions must be the author’s original thought and therefore must include a
complete works cited page also in MLA format. Please also include a short abstract
and third-person author bio, no more than 150 words each.
If figures, illustrations, and/or video clips accompany the submission, please present
them in separate files. The author has sole responsibility for any copyright
permissions and fees.
Requirements
Authors must be currently enrolled in a program of graduate study at an accredited
university. Submissions must be previously unpublished, but the author retains future
publishing rights.
Editorial Board
Nicole Lowman
Jennifer Garcia
Chelsea Dodds
Katie Sutton
Please direct any further inquiries to textincontext.southernct@gmail.com
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Edited Collection on Biopolitics and Utopia
Due: April 1, 2014
Andrew Byers and Patricia Stapleton
utopianbiopolitics@gmail.com
We are seeking chapters that address and explore approaches to utopia and biopolitics,
both very broadly conceived. Scientific progress in “improving” the human body and
experience has provoked ethical, moral, and policy considerations regarding both
intent and results. This edited volume seeks to address questions of utopian drives and
desires in these modern advances, as well as the idea of governmental and other
institutional interventions into the human body.
The primary aim of the volume is to serve as an interdisciplinary reader on utopian
studies and biopolitics. We are interested in contributions both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary from across the range of theoretical, methodological, and critical
frameworks within the fields of political science, history, sociology, philosophy,
bioethics, and public policy. Essays should demonstrate clear links between
biopolitics and utopian studies themes.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:





Biometrics: The use of biometrics or biometric authentication technologies and
concepts, physiological identification, as well as biological surveillance issues
more broadly.
Environment: Social movements that target environmental concerns;
technological advancements offered to mitigate the effects of environmental
degradation; or the social and economic impacts of environmental problems.
Food: Contemporary agricultural practices like genetic modification or the use of
technology in food production. Other topics may address food movements in
urban agricultural, localism, or organic practices.
Gender: Gender as an apparatus of biopower; gender-based oppression and
discrimination.
Medicine: Medicine and medical practices designed to “enhance” the human
body for therapeutic or non-therapeutic purposes, to include gene therapy,
cognitive science advances, and nanotechnology.
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



Race: Pseudosciences of race and racial hierarchies; biopolitical state racism;
may also be tied to eugenics and/or notions of empire and colonialism.
Reproduction and/or Eugenics: Practices in assisted reproductive technologies or
genetic testing.
Self: Utopian ideas and personal practices of the body affecting identity,
aesthetics/appearance, performance, and health, including body modifications,
weight management, and athletics, among others.
Technology and the Body: Biotechnology and its applications for the human
body writ large; theoretical frameworks exploring technological solutions for
ideas about the utopia of the body.
We also welcome other topics that show a clear connection with these themes.
Please send completed essays of 5,000 to 7,000 words, along with a brief (300 word)
biography and a CV, in either *.rtf (rich text format) or *.doc (MS Word document
format), to editors Andrew Byers and Patricia Stapleton
(utopianbiopolitics@gmail.com) by April 1, 2014.
Interested collaborators are encouraged to send 500 word abstracts to the co-editors
by January 15, 2014, if they would like their topic reviewed before completing a full
essay for submission.
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The Griot—Journal of Philosophy
Due: April 15, 2014
Griot - Revista de Filosofia
griotrevista@gmail.com
The Griot - Journal of Philosophy is receiving papers, reviews and translations for the
next volume that will be published in June 2014. The texts must be sent by email
(griotrevista@gmail.com) until April 15, 2014.
106
Trash Culture Journal: Volume 2, Number 1 (Winter,
2014)
Due: May 30, 2014
Siobhan Lyons, Trash Culture Journal
trashculturejournal@gmail.com
Call for Papers
Due date: May 30, 2014
A phenomenon that gained momentum in the 1990s, Trash Culture is often dismissed
and regarded as the detritus of culture and society. While works by Shakespeare and
Chaucer are deemed to be aesthetically and culturally ‘good’, hardboiled, pulp fiction
has often been considered culturally ‘bad’. What is popular is often deemed trash. Yet
Richard Keller Simon, author of the work Trash Culture: Popular Culture and the
Great Tradition, writes ‘many of the differences between trash culture and high
culture show only that storytelling adapts to changing economic, social and political
conditions.’ Thus Trash is constantly in a state of flux. What previously was popular,
or trash, may no longer be so, and cultural artefacts previously belonging to high
culture find themselves in the realm of trash.
But what is Trash Culture and how does it fit in with society? Various transformations
exist within the culture of trash: artefacts that have transformed from trash to higher
forms of artistic culture (The Rolling Stones, Comic Books), and artefacts that have
become trash (Britney Spears, The Simpsons). Not all trash exists within the same
institutional matrix. Using an image of the bin as an analogy, there is better trash on
the surface of the receptacle (Pulp/Hardboiled fiction), as opposed to the juicy
remnants at the bottom of the bin (90210, The OC, Glee). And then there is authentic
trash (Justin Bieber). All forms of entertainment and culture have a sizeable chunk of
trash, and it is this chunk that, contrary to common perceptions, is an invaluable
addition to the wider aspects of society. Without trash, both authentic and cultural
types, there would not be a higher culture with which to compare to lower forms of
culture.
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Trash Culture Journal is an open-access journal, and we are currently accepting
submissions for Volume 2, Number 1 (Winter 2014) on various aspects of trash
culture, including, but not limited to:






Cultural artefacts (television shows, bands and music, films, books, magazines,
celebrities, etc)
Politics of trash culture
Transformation of trash
The benefits of low brow culture and the problems with high-brow elitism
The dissemination of trash culture
Historical trash



The Philosophy of trash
Technological trash
Generational trash
Full papers (2,500 for short essays and 9000 max for long essays), along with a short
bio note should be sent to trashculturejournal@gmail.com by May 30, 2014
See our website trashculturejournal@wordpress.com for more information.
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