第 12 屆英美文學學會
國際學術資訊 第一○一期
Contents
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
2
Conferences in North America
5
Conferences in Europe
24
Journals and Collections of Essays
44
1
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
The Afterlives of Pastoral
July 7-8, 2014
Due: January 10, 2014
University of Queensland
j.seaboyer@uq.edu.au
The Afterlives of Pastoral
Please submit a 250-word proposal together with a 100-word biographical note to the
conference organisers at pastoralafterlives@gmail.com.
http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=204907&pid=177854
Proposals for panels are welcome.
Keynote speakers: tba
Deadline for proposals: Friday, 10 January 2014
When: Friday 7 July and Saturday 8 July
Keynote speakers: to be advised
Organising committee: Xanthe Ashburner, Dr Victoria Bladen, Dr Ruth Blair, Richard
Newman, and Dr Judith Seaboyer.
School of English, Media Studies, and Art History,
Michie Building,
University of Queensland
St Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland 4066
Australia
Please direct inquiries to Dr Judith Seaboyer j.seaboyer@uq.edu.au or Dr Victoria
Bladen v.bladen@uq.edu.au
Registration details: tba
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Since William Empson published his landmark Some Versions of Pastoral in 1935, the
ancient mode that is pastoral has been re-visioned and re-analysed, and a range of
scholarly readings has confirmed there is no easy or comfortable way of pinning
down just how pastoral operates either in Virgil’s Eclogues or in the literature the
poem has inspired since the Renaissance. Annabel Patterson in her Pastoral and
Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (1987) focused on why Virgilian pastoral has echoed and
continues to echo through western literary history, arguing “it is not what pastoral is
that should matter to us”; what is far more useful is to consider “how writers, artists,
and intellectuals of all persuasions have used pastoral for a range of functions and
intentions that the Eclogues first articulated” (7; emphasis in original). In 1996,
pastoral scholar Paul Alpers referred to “a happy confusion of definitions,” and with a
linguistic nod to Empson, confirmed “there are as many versions of pastoral as there
are critics and scholars who write about it” and that “‘pastoral’ can still be a word to
conjure with” (What Is Pastoral? 8).
Over the last twenty-five years, there has been a resurgence of interest not only in the
theory and criticism of pastoral but in literature that in various ways is in dialogue
with the mode. For instance, Seamus Heaney self-consciously writes back to Virgil,
and Stanley Fish has noted telling elements of pastoral in Suzanne Collins’s
blockbuster trilogy The Hunger Games (2008–2010). Environmental criticism, too,
has found a dialogue with this tradition to be a productive way of thinking about the
human/nature relationships in which so many current environmental issues are
embedded.
This symposium invites a dialogue on the afterlives of pastoral. It is inspired by the
recent pastoral turn, by the questioning title of Alpers’s book, and by Patterson’s focus
on the pastoral as literature in action. As Alpers reminds us, the pleasures of nymphs
and shepherds and their herds are only ever the vehicle for a quite different, darker
discourse: “the very notion of pastoral . . . represents a fantasy that is dissipated by the
recognition of political and social realities” (24).
In this spirit, the organisers seek participants from a wide range of fields, including
literature, the performing arts, music and other forms of cultural discourse that engage
with the core of this ancient tradition.
Papers and panels might consider:
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Historiography of pastoral; how we might read the arguments of theorists of
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pastoral, including Paul Alpers, William Empson, Terry Gifford, Peter Marinelli,
Leo Marx, Annabel Patterson, Philip Tew, and Raymond Williams
Pastoral as a way of exploring melancholy, mourning, longing and love
The pastoral mode as intertext; pastoral parodies; pastoral and metafiction
Pastoral and ecocriticism; guardianship/custodianship, anti-pastoral;
counter-pastoral
Pastoral and the negotiation of concepts of ‘civilization’ and ‘nature’, the city
and the country
Pastoral concepts of dispossession and exile
Pastoral and the concept of the active versus the contemplative life; pastoral and
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reverie
Pastoral and its relationship to myth
Pastoral and the aesthetic: landscape, the sublime, the picturesque; pastoral and
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the garden
Pastoral and gender
Pastoral and anti-war literature
Pastoral and time
Responses to the mode by specific painters, composers, sculptors, dramatists,
poets, and novelists whose work takes up and produces versions of pastoral.
Some possibilities are Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Marvell’s “Upon
Appleton House,” Milton’s “Lycidas,” Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego, Watteau’s
The Shepherds of Arcadia, Streeton’s Australia Felix, Coetzee’s Disgrace,
Stoppard’s Arcadia, Roth’s American Pastoral, Lohrey’s Vertigo, Heaney’s
Electric Light; Kinsella’s Jam Tree Gully.
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Conferences in North America
Borders
March 29, 2014
Due: December 1, 2013
Abbes Maazaoui / Lincoln University
maazaoui@lincoln.edu
The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Lincoln University in
Pennsylvania is requesting proposals/abstracts for its annual conference, to be held on
March 29, 2014. The main conference theme is “Borders.” Approaches across a broad
range of disciplines are welcomed. The conference organizers are particularly
interested in papers that provide specific readings of borders as depicted in
anthropology, politics, religion, education, world literature, philosophy, music, visual
arts, and the media.
To explore the complexity of borders as a literary, political, social, cultural, economic,
ethical and aesthetic construct, the conference will feature papers, panel discussions,
and posters.
Topics include but are not limited to:
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Borders, fences, and frontiers across history, geography, and cultures
Borders, invasion, occupation, violence, nationalism, and war
Borders as a tool of exclusion / inclusion; political unions, (re)unification,
mergers, blocs
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Artificial borders
Crossing borders
Travelers, migrants, bohemians, exiles, and nomads
Cross-fertilization (between people, cultures, disciplines, genres, genders, etc.)
Diasporas and minorities
Representations of borders and migration in literature, film, theatre, the media,
and the arts
Borders vs. global village, cosmopolitism, multiculturalism
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Literary portrayals of the migrant and the outsider
Proposals/abstracts should be no more than 200 words. Please include with your
abstract your name, work affiliation (if any), the title of the proposal, and your full
contact information. Submission deadline: December 1, 2013. Please send your
proposal to Abbes Maazaoui, at maazaoui@lincoln.edu.
Important Dates
Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2013
Acceptance Notification: December 7, 2013
Conference Date: Saturday, March 29, 2014
A selection of papers (subject to the normal reviewing process and standards) may be
published in the Lincoln Humanities Journal. See
http://www.lincoln.edu/humanitiesconference/
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Interdisciplinary Arts: Retrospectives and
Future Visions
March 21-22, 2014
Due: December 1, 2013
School of Interdisciplinary Arts, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio USA
IartsConference2014@gmail.com
In celebration of its 50th Anniversary, the Ohio University School of Interdisciplinary
will hold an international conference on the past, present, and future of
interdisciplinary arts. Interdisciplinarity is based on the deep affinity of all branches
of knowledge and provides a site for exploring this affinity. In the dynamic current
world, as the boundaries between the arts become increasingly permeable, scholars
recognize the methodological importance of multidisciplinary scholarship to facilitate
our historical and critical understanding of the arts. This conference seeks to bring
together and encourage a dialogue among scholars, artists, and graduate students from
various academic disciplines and creative venues in order to examine the nature of
interdisciplinary arts.
Topics for consideration:
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Defining interdisciplinary arts
The historiography of interdisciplinary arts
Theoretical and critical framing of interdisciplinarity in the arts
Object-oriented approaches
Practitioners of interdisciplinary arts
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Cross-cultural perspectives
Pedagogy and interdisciplinarity
(papers/presentations that do not fall within these areas will also be considered)
Please submit an abstract (400 words maximum) and CV (3-page maximum) by
DECEMBER 1, 2013 for consideration. The twenty-minute presentations should be
interdisciplinary in scope and related to the arts.
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All submissions should be sent via e-mail to: IartsConference2014@gmail.com.
http://www.ohio.edu/finearts/interarts/index.cfm
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5th Annual Alabama Regional Graduate Conference
in English: “Poison and Love”
February 14-15, 2014
Due: December 2, 2013
University of North Alabama Department of English
englishgradcon@una.edu
Call for Papers:
The University of North Alabama English Department
Announces the 5th Annual Alabama Regional Graduate Conference in English
February 14-15, 2014
Poison and Love
“Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.” --George R. R.
Martin
Come join us Valentine’s Day weekend as we explore the themes of love, poison, and
(especially) the textual spaces where the two converge. The University of North
Alabama’s Department of English invites proposals for scholarly papers which
investigate any aspect of love or poison in language, literature, or other media. For
example, topics might include readings of toxic relationships between spouses
(Othello and Desdemona), lovers (“Rapaccini’s Daughter” or Fatal Attraction), family
members (Plath’s “Daddy), or even aspects of oneself (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
Following Jacques Derrida’s work on the pharmakon in “Plato’s Pharmacy” papers
might consider the characterization of language itself as a type of seductive poison.
Presenters could explore the canon as pharmakon (do lists of “great books” poison the
curriculum or keep it healthy?), texts as poison (The Name of the Rose), or adaptation
as poison (are the effects of adaptation toxic, or do they breathe new life into old
works?). Participants may also present topics which focus on the theme of love, such
as love and drugs, disease, or addiction.
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We welcome proposals from current students and recent graduates (within the last five
years) of MA or PhD programs at schools in the American Southeast. Papers should
be twenty-minutes in length and may explore a range of topics addressing our theme
in relation to literature, film, or other new media. Proposals that utilize audiovisual
presentations are encouraged.
Proposals:
Please send proposals of 250-300 words by December 2, 2013 to the Program
Committee at englishgradcon@una.edu. Suggestions for panels are welcomed;
however, each proposal will be individually evaluated on its own merits, and we
cannot guarantee that a panel will be accepted in its entirety. All proposals will
receive a decision on acceptance by December 31, 2013.
Travel Scholarships:
Requests for travel scholarships for out-of-town presenters must be made at time of
submission. Please email us for a copy of the travel scholarship application form or
visit the conference website. Presenters will be notified of travel scholarship award
when they are notified of acceptance.
Prize for Best Paper:
At the closing session of the conference, presenters will be asked to vote on the three
best papers presented at the conference. Following the conference, a panel of judges
will award first, second, and third place standing to these three papers with a cash
prize awarded to the top paper.
Information:
Further information the conference, the University of North Alabama, our department,
and the Florence area is available on our website: www.una.edu/englishgradcon.
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The Spaces and Places that Mattered: Our Literacy
Narratives, CSUF Acacia Group Conference
March 14-15, 2014
Due: December 4, 2013
Dr. Martha A. Webber
mwebber@fullerton.edu
The literacy narrative is a significant genre in the field of rhetoric and composition:
Linda Brodkey’s “Writing on the Bias,” Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory, and
Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary all work to demystify how these scholars came to
a range of literacies and found a place for themselves in the academy and ultimately
as professors of writing. At the same time their narratives demand readers to explore
larger considerations about the socio-economic and cultural components of literate
development and the valuation of English literacy in American society. Texts with
vignette format, such as Jacqueline Jones Royster’s article, “When the First Voice You
Hear is Not Your Own,” work to communicate important events or “flashes” in her
development and reception as a rhetoric and composition scholar. Ultimately the
literacy narrative works to resist dominant or totalizing narratives about education and
this panel will work to vividly capture the “spaces and places” that mattered to the
creative nonfiction readers who participate.
Email 150 word abstract of your literacy narrative to Dr. Martha Webber (include
your affiliation and 1-3 sentences about yourself) by Wednesday, December 4 by 5pm
PST
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Big Data, Big Questions
March 27-28, 2014
Due: December 9, 2013
University of Utah, Department of Communication
submissions@bigdatabigquestionsconference.org
Big Data, Big Questions:
Partnering Methodological Approaches to Utilize Large Data Sets
Graduate Student Conference
March 27-28, 2014
With Big Data THATcamp on March 29
University of Utah (Salt Lake City)
Keynote presentation by Dr. Joseph Cappella
Gerald R. Miller Professor of Communication
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Thirty billion content items were added to Facebook last month. Google’s book
digitization project has made it possible to quickly search for patterns in more than
500 billion published words. The CDC’s FluView report analyzes over a million data
points every week. From unbounded social networking to the “Internet of Things,” the
digital traces of human life on earth currently double every two years. But far from
just the accumulation of petabytes of binary strings, “Big Data” also connotes cultural,
technological, and scholarly trends that Communication scholars cannot ignore.
The Communication Department at the University of Utah is hosting a graduate
student conference March 27 – 28, 2014, designed to offer emerging scholars the
opportunity to present their work to respondents who are currently engaged in
research utilizing large data sets and who will provide guidance and mentoring during
a three hour seminar focusing on an area of communication scholarship: Media,
Health Communication, Environmental Communication, Organizational
Communication, Critical/Cultural Studies, and Science Communication.
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Interested graduate students should submit a structured abstract of no more than 750
words that includes the following:
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Project overview including research questions
Methods and data utilized to date
Explanation of how the project could be strengthened or expanded by using or
addressing a larger data set (i.e., additional research questions that could be
investigated, increased significance of the research, ability to collaborate across
disciplinary borders, etc.)
Note that proposals may but are not required to identify specific data sets or data
mining techniques that the researcher would like to utilize. There are no
methodological restrictions, but the project must clearly be able to benefit from
greater insight into the use of large data sets (but with no specific size restriction on
what constitutes “big data”). The conference welcomes both projects that would use
large data as a source of information for analysis and those that would critically
examine research practices surrounding large data.
Please send abstracts as an email attachment in a standard format to
submissions@bigdatabigquestionsconference.org by midnight on December 9, 2013.
No identifying information should be included with the abstract; however, the
accompanying email message should include your name, institution, department of
study and status in program (e.g., second year MA student, ABD, etc.), mailing and
email addresses, and (optional) the seminar you would like to be considered for
(Media, Health Communication, Environmental Communication, Organizational
Communication, Critical/Cultural Studies, or Science Communication).
If accepted, full papers must be submitted by February 1, 2014. Revised papers may
be considered for a future publication derived from the conference. There are no
registration fees for the conference.
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Eighth Annual EGSA Graduate Student Conference:
The Spectacular!
March 28-29, 2014
Due: December 13, 2013
Northeastern University English Graduate Student Association
thespectacular.conference2014@gmail.com
Keynote Speaker: Wendy S. Hesford, Professor of English, The Ohio State University
Faculty Speaker: Theo Davis, Professor of English, Northeastern University
As an adjective, the word “spectacular” hails the spectacle into being, materializing
the uncanny as it involves ordinary, unrelated bystanders in the unfolding of its
fantastical designs. As a noun, the spectacular may enact a situation, an idea, and/or a
(non-) relation of subjects and objects, whose unprecedented and hyperbolic nature
exceeds the parameters of ordinary life. In playing with our perceptive and
proportional devices, the spectacular complicates both the recognition and
representation of everydayness as well as the extraordinary, unsettling orderly
arrangements of sense, sentiment, scale, and space. Is the spectacular a mirage of
hyped-up mass sensations, a simulacrum of reality in excess? Is it a sensible
alternative to the same-old-same-old, a healthy resistance against conventionality and
cultural stasis? This conference, in short, hopes to attract inter-disciplinary
perspectives that more fully engage with different facets of the spectacular; that
examine its epistemologies, ethics, and eventness; that expound on cultural and
political practices of spectacle and speculation, through which some feelings,
identities, social relations, and larger embodiments of affiliation and membership take
on extraordinary dimensions, but not others.
The Northeastern University English Graduate Student Association’s (NU EGSA)
eighth annual conference invites a wide array of interpretations of the theme The
Spectacular! that sheds further light on its psychological, socio-economic, cultural,
and political dimensions. We welcome scholarly work that examines or engages with
historical or contemporary moments of spectacle at home or abroad, visual and textual
representations of essence and excess, the affective and ethical implications of
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spectacularization, and different methodologies and schools of thought in relation to
the spectacular. Our conference will consider papers from across the disciplines –
including, but not limited to, literary studies, visual studies, rhetoric and composition,
sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political science, the digital
humanities, gender and sexuality studies, religion, and cinema studies.
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to thespectacular.conference2014@gmail.com
by December 13, 2013.
Include in the submission your name, department, and university affiliation.
Possible questions to consider, but are not limited to:
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What sorts of power dynamics are involved between the subject doing the
naming/identifying of the spectacular, and that which being objectified as such?
What role does the spectacle play in structuring subject formations and
(non)ethical relations within the site of unfreedom?
What happens to our conceptions of the spectacle or spectacular moments when
juxtaposed more particularly against, in Ann Stoler's words, “the fierce clarity of
intimacies" of a private sphere? And what is at stake in this juxtaposition?
Can the spectacular be private, or does it require some outside witness? In other
words, is there such a thing as the 'spectacular' that exists within a private
reality?
How might spectacle/the spectacular be deployed in metropolitan and colonial
places, such that their invocations simultaneously demarcate sameness and
difference, the normalized and the unincorporated?
How might narrating lived experience within situations of the spectacular
(re)articulate identities and relations beyond the boundaries of the
commonplace?
How do spectacles call into question an ethics of witnessing? And how might the
spectacular create a platform for transformative witnessing to incite social or
political change?
Can a screen be spectacular? And if so, what can screen-mediated representations
of the spectacular do that text cannot?
How has the real-time immediacy of social media and digitally crowd-sourced
information altered the ways we experience the spectacular in the twentieth-first
century? (Is the spectacular still as spectacular when experienced
"second-hand"?)
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What tools and tropes come into play to activate the senses in prose as well as in
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verse? How does this impact the ways one understand spectacle?
How do digital humanities tools--and their particular
affordances--reveal/resist/relocate spectacularization?
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2nd Annual Illustration, Comics, and Animation
Conference at Dartmouth College
February 28-March 2, 2014
Due: December 1, 2013
Illustration, Comics, and Animation Conference at Dartmouth College
michael.chaney@dartmouth.edu
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What is the future of illustration studies?
What can comics scholars learn from animation studies and vice versa?
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Do illustrated books or graphic novels resist the supposed obsolescence of the
book? What do pictures want (now)?
These and related questions will be explored at the Second annual Illustration, Comics,
and Animation Conference at Dartmouth College to be held February 28 – March 2,
2014.
Scholars interested in the illustrated image in all of its mediated guises are invited to
participate in this interdisciplinary conference. Scholarship on illustrated or drawn
narrative ‘text’ is eligible for consideration, including:
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comics and graphic novels
cartoons and animated films
illustrated books and picture books
Given the uniquely plenary nature of the conference, which brings together
scholarship on static and moving illustrations, preference will be given to talks that
seek to bridge visual media.
POSSIBLE TOPICS MAY INCLUDE:
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Individual texts by prominent practitioners in the field
Identity, subjectivity, authority, ideology or culture in or more type of illustration
media
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The future of particular schools of criticism (psychoanalysis, critical race theory,
phenomenology, Marxism, feminism, queer theory, post-colonialism, formalism,
aesthetic theories, etc.) and one or more type of illustration media
Other questions which could become the germ for panels or papers:
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Can there be closure in animation?
How do digital technologies impact the comics image?
How do qualities of stasis, simultaneity, and sequence associated with the comics
image apply to animation?
In what ways do the word-image tensions of the illustrated book or picture book
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differ from those of a graphic novel?
What is the phenomenology of the contemporary graphic novel, illustrated book,
or animated film?
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How do these forms presage the future of the human or the humanities?
And finally, the location of the conference may also be a source of inspiration for
prospective participants. Not only does Dartmouth College lie in close proximity to
the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont, but it is also the
historic home of Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss, whose illustrated books continue to awe
and amuse.
Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send 300 word abstracts
and a brief bio no later than December 1, 2013.
Send all proposals and inquiries to
michael.chaney@dartmouth.edu
Like the conference on facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/IllustrationComicsAndAnimationConference
Official webpage for the conference is at:
http://sites.dartmouth.edu/illustrationcomicsanimationconference/
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American Literature Association Conference—25th
Annual Conference
May 22-25, 2014
Due: December 21, 2013
African American Literature and Culture Society
gregory.pierrot@uconn.edu; scm18@psu.edu
American Literature and Culture Society
American Literature Association
25th Annual Conference
May 22-25, 2014
Hyatt Regency Washington
on Capitol Hill
400 New Jersey Avenue NW
Washington DC 20001
The African American Literature and Culture Society invites abstracts (of no more
than 300 words) for presentations at the annual conference of the ALA
(http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/ala2/index.html). Please note that we can
only accept proposals for individual papers and will not be able to accept proposals
for entire
Inspired by our move to Washington, D.C. for this year’s ALA Conference, we will be
focusing on the theme of "Location.” We invite paper proposals that consider any of
the myriad intersections between African American literature and “location,”
understood in a broad context as geographical space, as social position, as
accumulation of historical events, as imaginative possibility, etc.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
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Places of the African American Literary Imagination: Continents, Countries,
Regions, and
Washington D.C. in African American Literature; Washington D.C.’s Literary
History
Sites of Black memory: Places of Black History in African American Literature
Sense(s) of Place in African American Literature
African American Literature in International Contexts
At Home in the Diaspora? African Americans Abroad
Global/Local; International/National
Dislocations: Middle Passage, Westward Movement, Great Migration,
Gentrification
While we welcome papers on the above themes and subthemes, we also encourage
submissions on any topic related to African American literature and culture.
Please send abstracts or proposals to Grégory Pierrot (gregory.pierrot@uconn.edu)
and Shirley Moody-Turner (scm18@psu.edu) not later than Dec 21, 2013. Presenters
must be members of AALCS by the time of the conference. Information about the
Society can be found at the AALCS website: http://aalcs.marygrove.edu/
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Traversing the Transnational
April 10-12, 2014
Due: January 15, 2014
University of Tulsa English Graduate Student Association
TUEGSA2014@gmail.com
Call for Papers
Traversing the Transnational
2014 University of Tulsa English Graduate Student Conference
April 10 – April 12, 2014
The prevalence of transatlantic and transnational perspectives throughout
contemporary literary studies is a testament to the evolving continual erosion of
national boundaries, identities, and cultures in our increasingly global society. As
recent economic crises attest, limiting socio-economic cause and effect to specific
national origins grows increasingly difficult as sovereign nations-states transcend (and
transgress?) traditional geopolitical borders under the guise of “globalization” and
“transnationalism.” Considered both threatening and essential to the formation of
American literary culture, the transnationalist perspective has received increased
attention throughout the past decade. Situated within American Studies, the
transnationalist scholar investigates the dynamic cultural energies running through
and from the United States. Extending the transnationalist perspective to other literary
cultures produces similar academic results; a transnationalist de-centers foundational
criticism, challenging long perceived notions of literary truth, authority, and
authenticity.
While Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic was published twenty years ago,
contemporary literary studies remain in a struggle with nation-based understandings
of subjectivity, identity, and literary histories. Nearly ten years ago Shelley Fisher
Fishkin told the American Studies Association that the transnationalist perspective
will place more emphasis “on the nation as a participant of global flow of people,
ideas, texts and products.” The importance of the nation is maintained even as
national boundaries are exposed as a product of specific temporality and ideology,
creating a reliance on the prowess of the nation to form subjects while simultaneously
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de-centering nationalism as an ideological apparatus responsible for literary and
cultural production.
The University of Tulsa’s 2014 English Graduate Student Conference continues the
investigation promoted by Fishkin, Janice Radway, Paul Gilroy, Paul Giles, and
several other notable scholars into the effect transnationalism has on literary and
cultural studies. Of particular interest is the paradoxical relationship between
nation-states and identity formation; how do authors, readers, and literary cultures
react against the very national ideologies which not only permeate literature, but also
statically remain as social formations which affect individual subjectivity? Even as
scholars and critics decry national exceptionalism as empty rhetoric, the abstract
notions of nationalism are required to provide the foundation for reactionary criticism.
Does the “transnational-diaspora complex,” as defined by Donald Pease, strengthen or
weaken nationalist ideologies? These are a few of the questions the University of
Tulsa’s 2014 English Graduate Student Conference will address, among others. We
welcome myriad literary and cultural interests, and we hope this topic contributes to
the larger debate among the humanities over the importance of a transnationalist
perspective in our increasingly globalized society. We invite paper abstracts and
complete panel proposals on all aspects of transnational literature throughout all
genres of study. Proposals may consider the following:
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Revising Nationalist Discourse through Literature
Identifying and/or Dissembling Geopolitical Boundaries
Literary Construction of Transnationalist Identities
Nationalism as an Ideological Apparatus
Transnational Influences on the American Renaissance
National and Regional Identities of Authors and/or Texts
Mapping Transatlantic Modernism and other Literary Movements
The Influence of American Exceptionalism on the American Literary Canon
Governmental Influence on the Formation of Subjectivity
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Global Influences on Regional and National Economies or Social Formations
Texts Transcendent of Geopolitical/National Boundaries
Underlying International Contexts/Influences in American Literature
Literature Concerned with Oceanic Influences/Geographies
Literature’s Navigation through Nationalism
Transnational Authors
Diaspora in Literature and other Texts
Influence of Race Across National Boundaries
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Please submit abstracts and proposals (no more than 350 words) to
TUEGSA2014@gmail.com
Deadline for proposals and abstracts:
Conference fees:
January 15, 2014
$10 Current EGSA Member / $15 Non-EGSA Member
Please direct all questions/inquiries to Stewart Habig, 2014 EGSA Conference
Director Stewart.habig@gmail.com
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Conferences in Europe
Merging Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference on
the Study of Hybrid Arts
February 1, 2014
Due: December 13, 2013
University of Kent
mergingmedia2014@gmail.com
Merging Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Hybrid Arts
Call for Papers
Saturday 1st February 2014
University of Kent, Canterbury
Although we naturally recognise different artistic media as distinct forms – music,
painting, sculpture, film, dance, theatre, architecture, animation, and so on – we also
understand that these mediums can nevertheless have a meaningful dialogue in the
creation of new artworks. Over the course of art history there have been numerous
occasions when different media forms have merged or been juxtaposed for artistic
purposes. These intermedial examples have seen word and image intertwined on the
page in the illuminated books of William Blake; experimentation with the partnership
between painting and music in Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition;
performance and music mixed in Variations by John Cage; the deconstruction of
paintings through digital visual manipulation in Peter Greenaway’s lectures; and the
recent National Theatre Live and Royal Opera House theatrical performances being
broadcast onto cinema screens. These instances – and many more – demonstrate a
long tradition of medium boundaries being crossed, media being combined to
accentuate one another, or the creation of a new medium altogether.
24
It is particularly relevant to consider the subject of merging media at a time when
discussions of media archaeologies, media convergence and the transmedia
phenomena permeate contemporary academic debates. This conference seeks to
engage with these topics by exploring the theories and histories of hybrid art, as well
as the effect new technologies have upon our understanding of this concept. The
emergence of digital technologies is an important strand in this investigation because
it has both facilitated the creation of new art forms (such as 3D digital animation) and
generated the remediation of older forms (for example, the digitisation of literature for
consumption on computerised devices, and new forms of interaction with fine art
online through virtual galleries).
This one-day conference is for postgraduate students and early career researchers
whose work incorporates the interdisciplinary topic of artistic hybridity and
intermediality. We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations (individual papers or
pre-formed 3-paper panels) or performance pieces from candidates across arts and
humanities. We welcome papers, panels and performances that investigate “merging
media” through a variety of interpretations. Possible research topics for submission
can include, but are not limited to:

Hybridity of forms: case studies which explore instances where two or more
established art forms are combined. What is the effect of this hybridisation?

Hybridity and technology: the impact of new technologies upon intermedial art
forms, both past and present. Does technology facilitate the “merging” of media
for artistic purposes, or is this an inevitable side-effect of – and an unavoidable
trajectory towards – a larger media convergence culture?
Hybridity and history: specific case studies of merged media from the past, from
Wagner's conception of gesamtkunstwerk – where all art-forms are united as one
total art – to the revolutionary intermedial 'decadence' of Warhol's Exploding
Plastic Inevitable, and others.
Hybridity of performance: how performance is incorporated with various art



media, from architecture in site-specific performances, to video in multi-media
productions. How do we engage with performance through technology? How
does the notion of “intermedial” relate to the performance of art?
Hybridity and the audience: what effect does a “hybrid art” form have upon its
audience? How does merging media provide new opportunities for engaging
with artworks?
25




Hybridity and remix culture: how various art forms are recycled and reused in
the establishment of new works of art (e.g. the reprocessing of “found footage”
for the purposes of art; fan-made hybrid products).
Hybridity and modes of production: ways in which hybridisation impacts upon
the production or creation of an artwork. What relationship does this production
have with the development and influence of new technologies? What
implications do intermedial modes have upon the idea of a singular artist? Which
organisations or institutions inspire or enable the creation of hybrid art?
Hybridity and sites of exhibition: what is the relationship between the
intermedial art and how it is exhibited? Is there a convergence between
performance and exhibition? How is the exhibition of such work impacted by
technology? Or is it technological itself (such as the internet)?
Hybridity and theory: work on the historical or future discourse of intermediality.
What implication does contemporary “merging media” hold for theory? How
should hybrid arts be theorised and which elements – such as production,
exhibition or audience interaction – should be centralised in this scholarly
debate?
Please send abstracts (300 words) for proposed papers, panels or performances and a
short biographical note to mergingmedia2014@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is 13th December 2013. Should you have any queries,
please contact us at the e-mail address above.
Conference Organisation Committee
Emre Caglayan, Frances Kamm, Keeley Saunders, Pete Sillett
Website: http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/mergingmedia/
Twitter: @mergingmedia14
26
Fear and Loathing: Phobia in Literature and Culture
May 9-10, 2014
Due: January 31, 2014
Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Writing, School of English, University of Kent,
Canterbury, United Kingdom
D.Kavanagh@Kent.ac.uk
Focusing on the literary and historical representation of irrational emotions or phobias,
Fear and Loathing seeks papers on topics and authors from any period, which aim to
demonstrate the extent to which literary-historical study offers us unique insight into
the cultural politics of emotions. Given the growth of both affect studies and historical
enquiry into emotions over the past decade, Humanities scholarship has generated a
rich and varied body of work on the representations and histories of emotions,
sentiments, feelings and affects. This two-day international conference seeks to build
upon this research and to reflect upon the relationship between the Humanities and the
study of emotions more generally. Some key questions that we envisage animating the
discussion at this conference include the following: (1) how might we define
phobia/fear/loathing within the context of the Humanities? (2) How have literary
works been complicit with and/or reactive to dominant social phobias? (3) Can the
archive be deployed to historicise feeling? (4) What role do the Humanities have in
challenging contemporary phobias? We welcome proposals for individual papers and
panels that address any of these core questions. Moreover, possible research topics for
submission can include, but are by no means limited to:


Phobia & Academia
Archival Objects








Disability/Variability/Disease
Bodies and Minds
Trans & Homophobia
Letters and Diaries
Propaganda
Outsiders/Others/Freaks
Religion/Theology
Human and Nonhuman Animals
27

The Monstrous



Borders and Territories
Aesthetics
Science and Technologies
Please send titles and abstracts (300 words) for proposed papers and panels, along
with a short biographical note (100 words) to D.Kavanagh@kent.ac.uk Deadline for
submissions is 31st January 2014.
Conference organising committee: Dr Declan Kavanagh, Dr Monica Mattfeld and Dr
Sarah Horgan.
28
Victorian and Edwardian Lives and Letters
July 10, 2014
Due: January 31, 2014
University of Hertfordshire
a.c.maunder@herts.ac.uk
Victorian and Edwardian Lives and Letters
Venue: University of Hertfordshire and Knebworth House: Thursday 10- Friday 11
July 2014.
Keynote speakers:
Professor Jane Ridley, University of Buckingham
(Bertie: A Life of Edward VII; The Young Disraeli; The Architect and his Wife: a life
of Edwin Lutyens).
Professor Katharine Cockin, University of Hull (The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry;
Women and Theatre in the Age of Suffrage; Edith Craig (1869-1947))
Submissions are invited for this two-day conference to be held at the University of
Hertfordshire, Hatfield and at Knebworth House, the country home of Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton (1803-73). The conference will focus broadly on the topic of
life-writing in its different manifestations and the challenges posed by Victorian and
Edwardian figures from across the literary, theatrical, political and social scenes. How,
for example, were Victorian lives recorded by Victorian contemporaries? How did a
Victorian subject go about writing an autobiography or memoir? What was/is the
relationship between life-writing and creative writing? Given that the fields of
biography and autobiography regularly undergo re-evaluation as notions of identity,
selfhood and `suitable’ subjects shift, how do those working on nineteenth century
topics in the twenty-first century approach them. Where is the field going?
Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for a range of topics. These might include,
but are not limited to:
29

Challenges in recovering both well-known and forgotten subjects







Celebrity and infamy
Working with letters and diaries
Creative writing’s use of Victorian and Edwardian lives
Shifting reputations
The legacies of earlier biographers (e.g. Froude, Strachey)
New developments in the field
Teaching life-writing
The conference includes a tour of Knebworth and conference dinner at the house.
Residential accommodation is at the University of Hertfordshire.
Please email 300 word abstracts or enquiries to the conference organisers, Rowland
Hughes, Andrew Maunder and Janice Norwood at VictorianLives@gmail.com. The
closing date for abstracts is 31 January 2014.
30
France and Ireland: Celebrating Music, Words and
Art
May 23-24, 2014
Due: January 31, 2014
10th Annual Conference of the Association of Franco-Irish Studies (AFIS)
eamon.maher@ittdublin.ie
The 10th annual conference of AFIS will be held in the National Concert Hall and an
exceptional part of the event will be the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s
French-flavoured concert on Friday 23 May.
Musical, literary and artistic links have existed for centuries between France and
Ireland. As a powerful colonial power with a royal court, France had a
long-established tradition of supporting its composers, musicians, writers and artists.
Ireland, on the other hand, lived for a long time in the shadow of its powerful
neighbour, Great Britain. Hence, flowering of the arts therefore took longer to emerge
and France was frequently the place that attracted those who were keen to absorb the
richest of cultural influences in music, painting, sculpture and literature.
Interested parties are invited to submit abstracts of not more than 200 words and a
short biography (50 words) to one or all of the organising committee by Friday 31
January, 2014. As we always stipulate, papers can deal with any aspect of the theme
as it applies to France or Ireland, although it would ideally cover both. Only paid-up
members of AFIS are eligible to present papers.
Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:






The history of musical performance in France and Ireland;
Music in literature/literature as music, in France and Ireland;
Artistic cross-fertilisation between France and Ireland;
Irish musicians in France, French musicians in Ireland;
Narrating aspects of French and/or Irish culture through music;
Artistic links between Brittany and Ireland;
31

‘In the beginning was the word…’: Assessing the impact of Christianity in
French and Irish literary representations.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Dr Una Hunt, Lecturer in Music, Dundalk Institute of Technology
Ms Lara Marlowe, French Correspondent for The Irish Times
Please note: There will be special rates for conference delegates anxious to attend the
concert on 23 May.
Organising Committee:
Dr Una Hunt, Dundalk Institute of Technology (unahunt1@eircom.net)
Dr Eamon Maher, Director of National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, IT Tallaght
(eamon.maher@ittdublin.ie)
Dr Mary Pierse, University College Cork (piersems@eircom.net)
32
The English Civil War in the Romantic and Victorian
Period. France-England, 1789-1901.
October 9-10, 2014
Due: February 1, 2014
University of Rouen, France.
claire.gheeraert-graffeuille@univ-rouen.fr
Nowadays the English Civil War is a mostly forgotten episode in British history on
both sides of the Channel. Yet, this has not always been the case. In the nineteenth
century, the “Great Rebellion” was a reference point that helped contemporaries to
make sense of the political upheavals on the Continent; it was also an inexhaustible
source of inspiration for a wide range of artists and writers. The phrase “English
Revolution” – which echoes the “French Revolution” – was coined by François
Guizot to refer to the period spanning the years 1640-1660. It reflects the social,
religious and political changes that affected the British Isles in the middle of the
seventeenth century.
The French Romantics, who were enthusiastic about national and European history,
viewed the English Revolution as a watershed in European civil history. Even before
1789, this moment of upheaval was thought to portend the momentous events that
deeply transformed French society at the end of the eighteenth century. Still what
most Romantics learned from the English Revolution was its utopian dimension.
Hugo was so fascinated by Cromwell that he gave him the leading role in his first
“drame” in 1827, and on several occasions he returned to this enigmatic figure in his
work. In Le Rhin he wrote: “On admire Charles ler; on ne peut que plaindre Louis
XVI. Quant à Cromwell, l’enthousiasme hésite devant ce grand homme difforme. Ce
qu’il a de Scarron gâte ce qu’il a de Richelieu; ce qu'il a de Robespierre gâte ce qu’il a
de Napoléon”. Indeed, many writers were led to rethink the French Revolution in
terms of the English Revolution, which may account for why so many Restauration
publications were concerned with Cromwell (Villemain, Histoire de Cromwell, 1819 ;
Guizot, Histoire de la Révolution de l’Angleterre depuis Charles Ier jusqu’à la
restauration de Charles II, 1826-1827). In the same way, on the stage, Dumas and
Mérimée imagined Cromwell as a Romantic hero.
33
In nineteenth-century Great-Britain, the English Revolution was also vividly
remembered. In socio-political debates, it aroused either fascination or abhorrence as
striking parallels were drawn between Cromwell and Napoleon, between Charles I
and Louis XVI, or between Henrietta-Maria and Marie-Antoinette. After a century of
denigration, the character of Cromwell eventually had gained some supporters, first
among Dissenters, then among a wider audience, especially Whig sympathizers.
Moreover, Thomas Carlyle’s publication of Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches in 1845
contributed decisively to rehabilitate a historical figure that had been generally
viewed as Charles I’s murderer. But the reassessment of Cromwell did not mean
“Charles the Martyr” was eclipsed. The feast day of Charles the Martyr was only
removed from the Book of Common Prayer in 1859 and is still commemorated by
members of the “Society of St Charles the Martyr”.
The nineteenth-century revival of interest in the English Civil Wars also resulted in
the edition of primary sources such as Memoirs, letters, and collections of pamphlets
that had never been published before. Civil Wars were used as settings for several
paintings, plays and novels, among which Sir Walter Scott’s novels are the most
famous. They also constituted a source of inspiration for romantic poets, from
Wordsworth to Shelley.
Even though the appeal of the English Revolution has its own history in France and in
England, the editorial history of a number of Civil War texts shows interactions
between the two nations. For instance Guizot’s History of the English Revolution
(1826) was translated into English in 1838 and until the publication of S.R. Gardiner
and C. H. Firth’s histories at the end of the 19th century, Guizot’s History was deemed
the most authoritative narrative. Conversely, during the French Revolution, texts by
Milton, Harrington and Needham were translated into French and in the 1820s, Scott’s
novels were translated into French as soon as they were published in England. This
was for instance the case of Woodstock, or The Cavalier (1826) which was adapted
for the French stage as early as September 1826. In many respects, in both countries,
the troubled history of the Civil War was essential to make sense of rapidly changing
times.
Contributions (in English or French) may concern France or England and address the
following issues:
34






Representations of the English Civil Wars in novels, plays or poetry; the origins
of these representations; the ways in which historical characters are recast as
Romantic or Victorian heroes; the relationship between history and fiction.
Iconographical representations of the English Revolution (paintings, engravings,
illustrations).
Nineteenth-century historiography of the English Civil War.
Translations of English Civil War texts into French and translations of French
histories of the English Civil Wars into English.
The English Civil Wars as seen by the French; the English Civil Wars in
nineteenth-century English political and religious debates.
Nineteenth-century editions of Civil War texts: pamphlets, memoirs, letters,
histories.
This international conference is rganized by the CÉRÉdi (« Centre d’Études et de
Recherche Éditer/Interpréter » - EA 3229) and ERIAC (« Equipe de Recherche
Interdisciplinaire sur les Aires Culturelles » – EA 4705)
http://eriac.net/la-guerre-civile-anglaise-des-romantiques-france-angleterre-1797-190
1/
Please send abstracts (300 words) and a short bio-bibliographical note by 1 February
2014 to Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, Tony Gheeraert and Sylvain Ledda.
claire.gheeraert-graffeuille@univ-rouen.fr
tony.gheeraert@univ-rouen.fr
sylvain.ledda@univ-rouen.fr
35
Intellectuals and the Great War
December 17-19, 2014
February 1, 2014
Ghent University
intellectualsandthegreatwar@gmail.com
Ghent University announces a First World War conference, scheduled to take place
from 17-19 December 2014. The focus of this international scholarly gathering is on
the role of the intellectual in the First World War. It aims to explore the ways in which
intellectuals, working in different fields and contexts, dealt with the strain, the shock
and the aftermath of WWI. We invite papers that look into the position of the
university during the war; the ways in which academia and the ‘monde international
des esprits’ dealt with the issue of action and commitment, and what it meant for
thinkers to be confronted with the physical aspects of war. In the vast field of WWI
studies, relatively little attention has been devoted to the role of the intellectual. When
this topic has been tackled the debate rarely reached a transnational, multidisciplinary
level. In bringing together scholars from different academic and national backgrounds,
the 2014 Ghent conference seeks to do justice to the many faces of the intellectual
during WWI and wants to trace what the scholarly world now owes to them. We aim
to address the strategies and narratives of both the Entente and Central European
intellectuals, of both patriots and collaborators in occupied territories.
The Great War broke out at a time of educational reform. Due to demographic
changes and social reforms the early twentieth century speeded up the
democratization of higher education, which had slowly begun in the second half of the
nineteenth century. The fact that colleges started to open their doors to men and, in
some cases women, from different social backgrounds changed the profile of the
intellectual, from armchair scholar to public figure and intrepid adventurer. The
impact of the First World War on this development cannot be overestimated. Those
not out on the battlefield had to confront the questions if and how to contribute and
react. In which ways did the events influence innovative developments, within the
fields of the sciences, philosophy, literature and the arts? In which ways was the
question how to make sense of the broken minds, the many maimed and dead bodies
dealt with across disciplines? What survives today of the insights or techniques that
36
question yielded? How do twenty-first-century intellectuals, engage in writing and
rewriting the history of 1914-1918, look back on the attempts of our peers to mobilize
their minds and bodies? More specifically, the conference proposes four avenues, with
four intellectual disciplines, for discussion:

Science
The positioning of the academic and scientific world at large during the First World
War is this section’s focus. We also welcome papers that seek to find an answer to
what it meant to be an academic at the time, both intellectually and practically. We are
interested in the legitimization of scientific and technological progress made in
service of the war effort. Finally, we also invite papers that aim to understand the
impact in terms of continuity and discontinuity of the First World War and the Russian
Revolution on the transnational circulation of ideas and cultural goods. We encourage
proposals that deal with the individual life-story of scientists, engineers, social and
human scientists, to open up to a larger perspective.

Literature
In this section we want to explore the impact of the Great War on early
twentieth-century as well contemporary literature. Possible topics include: WWI as a
period of literary innovation; the production and reception of patriotic and
non-pacifist texts; the image of war poets as “doomed youth”; generation gaps in the
war effort; the production of nationalist literature before, during, and after the war; the
decision for authors whether to swell the ranks or to comment from the sideline; the
ideal of heroism; the employment of women in factories and other previously male
domains; the formation of new social norms in masculinity and femininity; war poetry
by female writers and its exclusion from anthologies until after 1980; nature and the
countryside as a scene of war and peace; the representation of trauma during and after
the War Effort.

Philosophy
Paper proposals that deal with any aspect of philosophy’s relationship to the First
World War and its reception among philosophers are welcome. Topics could include
the role of the war in the thought (and lives of) particular philosophers (e.g.
Wittgenstein, Otto Neurath, Carnap, Bergson, Russell, Reinach, Eucken, etc). We are
especially interested in papers that explore the role of the war in the rise (and decline)
37
of philosophical movements (analytic philosophy, phenomenology,
Lebensphilosophie, positivism) and their broader relationship to larger intellectual and
political movements. We also welcome contributions that deal with the philosophy
and morality of mass war and that trace the ways in which current debate in ethics
relates to 1914-1918, with the use of arms, with the philosophy of history, and with
the social responsibility, if any, of intellectuals.

Artists and architects
Paper proposals dealing with the following themes are welcomed: The Great War as
artistic motif; the war as catalyst for the development of new artistic currents as well
as for the rise of a new type of artist coping with industrial modernity; the use of
visual media in the war effort; the relation between the arts and new war-related
visual practices (such as aerial photography or camouflage techniques); industrial
warfare as a nihilist "Gesamtkunstwerk" in relation to avant-garde currents such as
Futurism and Dada; the development of new international contacts and forms of
collaboration among artists within pacifist circles in exile; architectural conferences
and education of architects abroad; exiles returning to their home country;
confrontation of local and international ideas about rebuilding the country ; et cetera.
Proposals for 20-minute papers are due via email
(intellectualsandthegreatwar@gmail.com) by Feb 1, 2014, and should take the form of
a 1-page abstract accompanied by a short CV; in the case of complete panels,
proposals should consist of an abstract and short CV for every panelist together with a
short CV for the chair (if different).
The conference will be held from December 17-19, 2014 at Het Pand, Onderbergen 1,
9000 Ghent, Belgium. We welcome papers in English, French, German, and Dutch.
38
Revolting Peripheries
June 25-27, 2014
Due: February 15, 2014
University of Bielsko-Biała, Poland
revoltingperipheries2014@gmail.com
Dates: 25—27 June 2014
Venue: University of Bielsko-Biała, Poland
Revolting Peripheries
I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction between that marginality
which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as site of
resistance – as location of radical openness and possibility.
- bell hooks Although not consciously perhaps, the periphery is an idea that is willed, and it
governs perception under the quiet dictates of interest.
- Timothy Brennan To summon up the term “peripheries” is undoubtedly a problematic gesture indebted,
as it is, to hegemonic ways of thinking and performed, arbitrarily, from within the
centre (e.g. Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Meyda Yeğenoğlu). The most common
association would probably be the exhausted centre/periphery binary understood as a
product of the Western(-ized) Mind attempting to socio-economically conquer larger
and larger geopolitical areas. Expected to be passive and penetrable, in the dominant
political imagination peripheries have been constructed as places not capable of
undermining the centre’s authority, of posing any serious threats or coming up with
viable socio-economic and cultural alternatives. However, when they do not comply
with the expectation, when they do rise up against the centre’s power, when they try to
constitute themselves as subjects in their own right, they tend to be seen as irrational,
non-human, thus violent and active; it is then that the Western(-ized) Mind,
attempting to prevent its body politic from being contaminated, untangled or
barbarically invaded, takes action to contain or pacify them.
39
While the centre has frequently attempted to magnanimously give voice to the
marginal, it continued to reassert and consolidate its own vocal authority.
Alternatively, in its ambition to valorize the periphery, the centre has appropriated
peripheral lives and cultures to further stage its own superiority and maintain
hierarchies (cultural, political and economic). Either way, the centre has persistently
imagined its relationship with the periphery as one-directional: instituting itself as the
sole author and dispenser of values, ideas, knowledge and money, it has passionately
defended its inviolable purity and vigorously denied any influences from the margins.
But, to unthink the dominant conceptualizations, is it enough to argue that there are
many different centres and peripheries? How enabling, politically speaking, is it to
say that centrality depends (to use the post-Marxist apparatus) on one’s ability to - in a
favourable socio-economic climate - enact the hegemonic binding which results in
one’s subjugating, overcoding or marginalizing other imaginaries? What is more,
could it be argued that in upholding the centre/peripheries binary and in trying to
emancipate and grant subjectivities to the “peripheral” identities/voices/practices,
political and cultural thinkers contribute to the “hegemony of the hegemonic
formation” (J.K. Gibson-Graham) and, as a result, petrify an imaginary in which
subalterns will never be able to speak?
With all this in mind, Revolting Peripheries invites readings of the periphery that
reveal how what is deemed peripheral tampers with, contests, appropriates, and
misuses the very logic of the centre in order to challenge the legitimacy of the
centre/periphery designation underlying political conceptualisations past and present.
“Revolting,” therefore, gestures discursively in at least two directions. On one hand, it
is meant to register the centre’s sentiments towards the periphery, its hegemonic logic,
gaze and taste, the manifold ways in which it finds the periphery repulsive and
offensive. “Revolting” would thus be seen as a quality the periphery acquires when it
is seen as refusing (something it has always done) the centre’s passifying/pacifying
practices. If what is revolting conveys “a strong sense of aversion to something
perceived as dangerous because of its powers to contaminate, infect, or pollute by
proximity, contact, or ingestion” (William Ian Miller) then it can be seen as a
particularly cogent trope for how the centre imagines and deals with the periphery. On
the other hand, “revolting” is meant to capture the periphery’s various forms of
dis/engagement with and rebellion against the centre’s “dictates of interest,” however
conceived, including the very interest in upkeeping the centre/peripheries modes of
thinking.
40
Since the phenomena perceived as peripheral are recognized today within the whole
spectrum of discourses we hope to explore these multiple areas in order to present a
truly interdisciplinary view on the subject. We, therefore, invite proposals that address
the theme of the conference from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, offering a
critical consideration of manifold aspects of both the scope and the limitations of the
revolting potential of the periphery.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Mireille Rosello University of Amsterdam
Saul Newman Goldsmiths College, University of London
Tadeusz Rachwał University of Social Sciences and Humanities,
Warsaw
Please send paper proposals of no more than 300 words and a short bio to the
conference organizers at: revoltingperipheries2014@gmail.com
Deadline for proposals: 15 February 2014
All received submissions will be acknowledged, with notification of acceptance by 28
February 2014.
Conference fees:
Participants from Poland: 450 PLN and 350 PLN for PhD students
Participants from outside Poland: 120 Euro and 95 Euro for PhD students
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/revoltingperipheries2014
Conference organizers:
Ewa Macura-Nnamdi (University of Bielsko-Biała, English Department)
Maria Korusiewicz (University of Bielsko-Biała, English Department)
Rafał Majka (University of Bielsko-Biała, Department of Foreign Languages; PhD
candidate at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw)
Sławomir Konkol (University of Bielsko-Biała, English Department; PhD candidate
at the University of Silesia)
41
A Fiend in the Furrows—Perspectives on ‘Folk
Horror’ in Literature, Film & Music
September 19-21, 2014
Due: June 1, 2014
Queen's University Belfast
ebyers01@qub.ac.uk; folkhorror@qub.ac.uk
‘A Fiend in the Furrows’ is a three-day conference in association with the School of
English at Queen’s University Belfast, exploring British and Irish 'folk horror' in
literature, film, television, and music. The event will include academic papers, film
screenings, musical performances, and readings.
Supernatural and horrific aspects of folklore inform the Gothic and weird writings of
M.R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, where philosophical and
religious certainties are haunted and challenged by the memory of older cultural
traditions. Folklore has a profound and unsettling impact on the imaginative
perception of landscape, identity, time and the past. Folk memory is often manifested
as an intrusive and violent breach from an older repressed, ‘primitive’ or ‘barbarous’
state that transgresses the development of cultural order. Gothic and weird fictions are
burgeoning as the focus of serious academic enquiry in philosophy and literary
criticism, and the genres continue to have an impact on popular culture.
Through the writing of Nigel Kneale and Alan Garner, among others, the tradition has
influenced British horror cinema and television, being revived and reimagined in
films such as 'Quatermass and the Pit' (1967), 'The Devil Rides Out' (1968),
'Witchfinder General' (1968), 'Blood on Satan’s Claw' (1971), 'The Wicker Man'
(1973), and more recently in 'Wake Wood' (2010) and Ben Wheatley’s 'Kill List' (2011)
and 'A Field in England' (2013). The conference will examine 'folk horror' texts, films
and music in their period context and the implications for British and Irish culture’s
understanding of its own unsettled past.
Proposals are welcomed for presentations that engage with various aspects of ‘folk
horror’ from researchers in the disciplines of Literature, Film Studies, Music, Drama,
42
History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Folklore, Geography, Art History, Philosophy
and Theology. Presentation topics may include (but are not limited to):








Late 19th century Gothic literature
Early 20th century weird fiction
Modernism and weird fiction
The ghost story
Contemporary horror and fantasy fiction
Children’s literature
Folklore collectors and redactors
Folklore and the supernatural



Primitivism, atavism, degeneration
Rural and urban folklore
Horror cinema and television

Folkmusic
Please submit a 300 word abstract together with a brief biography to:
folkhorror@qub.ac.uk – by 1st June 2014.
43
Journals and Collections of Essays
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (www.coldnoon.com) Call
for Entries (Research Papers/ Poetry)
Due: December 6, 2013
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Interntional Journal of Travel Writing) www.coldnoon.com
submissions@coldnoon.com
CALL FOR ENTRIES (RESEARCH PAPER ABSTRACTS AND POETRY)
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (International Journal of Travel Writing)
ISSN 2278-9642
E-ISSN 2278-9650
www.coldnoon.com
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (International Journal of Travel Writing) invites writers and
researchers to submit their original works of poetry, or abstracts of creative
non-fiction, art/book/film reviews and research papers on travel/travel poetics for
publication in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Dec ‘13, Issue IX (online). The works
published in the forthcoming issue will be republished in the print issue of Coldnoon:
Travel Poetics, Summer, 2014 (Vol III, Issue I), along with the subsequent online
issue of Mar ‘14, Issue X, in April, 2014.
The last date of sending submissions is 6th December, 2013.
To read about the concept of Coldnoon, travelogy and travel poetics please visit our
website www.coldnoon.com.
The submission categories and criteria are:
Poetry – Submit at least 4 poems, and not more than 6, in MS Word Doc. format only.
Please ensure your poems are properly formatted, and the lineation is as desired. The
works will be checked stringently for plagiarism; avoid any whatsoever. Before you
44
submit, we suggest you read our previous publications of poetry, once, so as to have a
clear idea of the kinds of poetry we like, or tend to understand better.
Non Fiction, Research Papers & Reviews – Works may be based on travel pertaining
to literature, cinema, culture, architecture and more. Submit an abstract of your essay
in no more than 500 words. The works will be checked stringently for plagiarism;
avoid any whatsoever. Attach your submission in MS Word doc. format only.
Notification of the selected abstracts will be sent by 12th December, and the deadline
for the submission of the complete papers is 21st December.
Along with your submission also attach a short bio note of no more than 100 words.
Email your submissions to: submissions@coldnoon.com
45
Mia Couto: A Critical Companion
Due: December 15, 2013
Dr Grant Hamilton & Dr David Huddart
coutocompanion@gmail.com
.
CFP
Submissions are invited for an edited anthology of new and existing research on the
work of Mozambican writer, Mia Couto.
The novelist, poet, and journalist Mia Couto is one of Africa’s best-known writers.
Born in Mozambique in 1957, Couto is today internationally acclaimed for the way in
which his intoxicating writerly style crafts hallucinatory environments of thought and
geography. The author of over twenty works of poetry and prose fiction – most
recently The Tuner of Silences (Biblioasis, 2012) –, Mia Couto is read today as a
significant voice in world literature.
For many of those who do not read Portuguese, the encounter with Couto’s work is
often through the excellent translations of David Brookshaw. However, it is perhaps
because of this implied distance from Couto’s original writing that one sees an overall
reluctance in the English-speaking world to critically engage with Couto’s work.
Indeed, book-length critiques of Couto’s work in the English language can be counted
on the fingers of one hand.
It is the position of the editors that this “implied distance,” commonly regarded in any
work of translation, should not quieten critical response to the work of this important
figure of world literature. As such, this edited anthology – provisionally titled Mia
Couto: A Critical Companion – seeks to gather together both the most significant
extant critical work in English on Couto and new research from those who understand
the significance of Couto’s writing to contemporary discussions of African literature,
lusophone studies, and world literature. Ultimately, then, this anthology of criticism
aims to be a comprehensive introduction to the critical terrain of Mia Couto’s literary
thought.
Those who have already committed work to this project include Professor David
46
Brookshaw, Professor Phillip Rothwell, Professor Patrick Chabal, Professor Bill
Ashcroft, and Henning Mankell.
Potential contributors offering new research to this collection are invited to consider,
but are in no way limited to, the relationship between Couto’s writing and the broad
notions of:




Nation / nationalism
Translation (into English)
Revolution / war
Identity



Literary context / intertextuality
Story-telling
Eco-criticism

the generations
Expressions of interest/abstracts (300 words) with brief author biography (100 words)
should be submitted before 15 December, 2013.
Final articles will be 5,000–6,000 words in length and submitted by email before 1
May 2014 (provisional). All original articles will be peer-reviewed.
Enquiries should be directed to the editors, Dr Grant Hamilton or Dr David Huddart,
at coutocompanion@gmail.com
Deadline for abstracts/expressions of interest: 15 December, 2013
Deadline for articles: 1 May, 2014 (provisional)
About the Editors:
Grant Hamilton is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the Chinese University
of Hong Kong. He has published in the fields of African literature, post-colonial
literature and theory, and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. He is the editor of
Reading Marechera (James Currey, 2013), and author of On Representation: Deleuze
and Coetzee on the Colonized Subject (Rodopi, 2011).
David Huddart is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Chinese University
of Hong Kong. He has published widely in the fields of post-colonial literature and
47
theory, and world englishes. He is the author of Homi K. Bhabha (Routledge, 2005)
and Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography (Routledge, 2008).
48
Soil in Early Modern Literature (Essay Collection)
Due: December 15, 2013
Hillary Eklund / Loyola University New Orleans
hceklund@loyno.edu
Amidst changing patterns of land use, contested political ideologies, and shifting
religious beliefs, early modern writers considered soil not just as a material resource
but as a site for exploring questions of power, belonging, and being. Still, soil remains
a surprisingly under-examined element in the current critical literature (Cf. recent
books on plants, animals, and water in the period). This volume seeks to organize a
critical conversation about representations of soil across an ample range of early
modern texts. Essays may address topics such as





soil ecology
agrarianism/husbandry
soil amendment/manuring
public works
excavation









mining and mineral harvesting
habitation/identity
hallowed and unhallowed grounds
grave-digging
composting and decomposition
spontaneous generation
climate change, desertification
sulliedness/filth
plats/plots/surveys

property
For consideration please send a chapter abstract (500-1000 words), bio (~250 words)
and CV (<4 pp). Deadline for abstracts is 12/15/2013; completed chapters expected
by 6/15/2014.
49
Sovereignty, Transnationalism, (Im)Mobility, and
Desire
Due: December 15, 2013
Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Brock University
gcoskanjohnson@brocku.ca
CALL FOR PAPERS
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO DEC. 15, 2013
The Brock Review
“Sovereignty, Transnationalism, (Im)Mobility, and Desire”
The response of some nation-states to transnational constructions of danger (e.g.
“terrorism,” “illegal” immigration, environmental crisis, social media) has been to
perform seemingly anachronistic scenes of sovereign power, such as nation-state
walling, militarized borders, indefinite detention, assassination, expanded surveillance,
torture, water cannons, tear gas, attempts to regulate or shut down the internet. What
are the forms of critique and/or invention that lead scholars and artists to respond
philosophically, theoretically, practically, productively, and creatively to this state of
affairs? Some argue persuasively that militarized borders have themselves precipitated
more sophisticated forms of organized crime that make use of the same technologies
to smuggle drugs, people, and arms across borders with greater efficacy and
intensified violence. Others have foretold the end of the nation-state and its
consequent fragmentation, or at least its declining importance in an increasingly
transnational world. Still others point out that many who seek to transcend borders
today continue to encounter the territorial desires, the aggressions, and the fears of
sovereign power and to bear the material consequences of those encounters on their
bodies and on their quality of life—or death. Those who cross borders “without
papers” pay a high price for the economic gains of advanced capitalism and neoliberal
economics. However, it is also clear that the contemporary scene has produced novel
and creative forms of resistance (e.g., the emergence of “Dreamers” in the U.S., the
virtual explosion of humour, protest music, and art on social media produced by
antigovernment protestors in Turkey, the emergence of iconic images like the Guy
50
Fawkes mask to, perhaps, signal solidarity across lines of difference at
anti-government protests across the world).
The Brock Review is seeking scholarly essays and creative pieces to enter into
dialogue on this topic across disciplines, across theoretical positions, and across
borders in its upcoming issue on the theme of "Sovereignty, Transnationalism,
(Im)Mobility, and Desire." This issue will explore the excesses, assemblages,
resistances, and desires that circulate, coagulate, and shatter in the current global
climate in which sovereign power (re)emerges in the fields of the biopolitical (Butler).
Submissions that explore, develop, and/or challenge and resist the positions implied
above are welcome. Queries are also welcome.
Possible perspectives for this issue might include:




Rhetorical approaches to sovereignty, transnationalism, (im)mobility, and desire;
The psychoanalytic dialectic of powerlessness/power within contemporary
sovereignty;
Transnational Feminist Critique, including the “politics of complicity”
(Mohanty);
The neoliberal economy and Marxist critique;
New forms of (hegemonic?) territorialism;









The ever-rising number of immigrants dying on increasingly securitized borders;
Humour and/or artistic representation in contemporary forms of popular protest;
State power and indigenous national sovereignties
Geographies of place and out-of-places-ness;
Sovereign power and biopolitics;
(In)compatibilities of historical materialism and biopolitics;
Social media and the struggle to control the name and/or the frame;
Pop culture and its forms of resistance and/or complicity;
Discourses and/or rhetorics of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism,

homophobia, speciesism, ablism, ageism, etc. in the juxtaposition of sovereignty
and transnationalism.
The Brock Review is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the
Humanities Research Institute at Brock University. Scholarly essays submitted to The
Brock Review should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages in length. Essays should
adhere to the latest edition of MLA Style and include endnotes (where necessary) and
works cited.
51
Manuscripts should be original works and should not be published (or under
consideration for publication) in another venue. Manuscripts should be submitted via
the journal website (www.brocku.ca/brockreview) by the 15th of December, 2013.
Each submission must be accompanied by a 100-word abstract and a brief biography
of the author. It is the sole responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary
copyright permissions for images accompanying an essay. If your essay is accepted
for publication, you must provide copies of these permissions before your essay can
be published.
Creative work (i.e.: paintings, photographs, poetry, short fiction, or other types of
work suitable to the online format of the journal) will also be considered for
publication and should be submitted in an electronic format by the 15th of December,
2013. In the event that your submission is too large of a file to submit online, CDs or
DVDs may be sent to the address below. Creative work must be accompanied by a
statement indicating the creator(s) of the piece have given consent to have it included
in The Brock Review.
Send all communications to:
Dr. Gale P. Coskan-Johnson
Editor, The Brock Review
c/o Department of English Language and Literature
500 Glenridge Ave.
St. Catharines, ON L2N 4C2
CANADA
gcoskanjohnson@brocku.ca
52
Marvel’s Civil War: How Comics Defined the Post
9/11 Era (Collection of Essays)
Due: December 31, 2013
Kevin M. Scott / Albany State University
marvelcivilwar2006@gmail.com
Marvel’s Civil War: How Comics Defined the Post 9/11 Era (McFarland Books)
Not since the comics book industry’s response to World War II have comic books
addressed contemporary events in American culture so powerfully than they did in the
years after 9/11. As the United States invaded Iraq and struggled to deal with fears
about terrorism at home, the medium that has often depended on icons of American
exceptionalism found the very idea of the superhero—who exerts his power over
others with little to no oversight—politically charged and problematic. Marvel
Comics responded with its now famous Civil War series, pitting superhero against
superhero and placing the very embodiment of American values, Captain America, in
the position of criminal and fugitive. The series, a seven–issue comics event that ran
from 2006 to 2007 but included nearly a hundred other comics from across the Marvel
universe, had at its center the classic, painful question of “how much liberty will you
give up for security?” The answer would control the storylines within the Marvel
universe for the next four years and engender a sustained and sophisticated discussion
of America’s values and its political system.
The volume editor, the coauthor of The Porning of America (Beacon, 2008), seeks a
variety of essays addressing the Civil War event as well as the storylines that followed
from it.
The editor seeks essays of about 5000-6000 words and fitting two categories:
First, essays examining the Civil War events themselves both in the tent-pole series
and throughout the Marvel universe. (The following list is not intended to be complete.
Other approaches are welcome.)


Comics and the representation of historical trends in Civil War.
American responses to terrorism as represented by Civil War.
53














Race and ethnicity in Civil War and their correlation to pro/anti-registration
status.
Readings of Civil War from disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and so
forth.
Civil War and issues of Constitutional Law and Civil Rights.
Civil War and Social Contract theory (trading rights for security).
Gender, women’s (superhero) social status, and the benefits of registration.
The significance of “42,” the prison in the Negative Zone, as a kind of
Guantanamo Bay.
The “Illuminati” and the limits of power.
The co-opting of super-villains as servants of government efforts.
The representation of journalism and the lives of non-super-powered civilians
(Civil War: Front Line).
The nature and actions of S.H.I.E.L.D. as international police force during and
after Civil War.
The prose adaptation of Civil War as a novel, its differences from the comics
series, and their importance (its focus on Obama-era America).
Analyses of key characters individually or in comparison (Iron Man, Captain
America, Spider-man, Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, and so forth).
The video game, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and its interpretation of the
storyline.
Teaching Marvel’s Civil War.
Second, essays exploring the consequences of the “Civil War” within the Marvel
universe over the next four years. Each listed topic could include multiple essays.






Avengers: The Initiative as super-powered Homeland Security.
The Avengers split (New Avengers vs. Mighty Avengers) as representative of
ideological splits within American culture.
The Planet Hulk and, especially, World War Hulk storylines in relation to the
Civil War.
The Secret Invasion storyline as investigation of American identity.
The Dark Reign storyline as interpretation of Bush era America.
The storylines Siege and The Heroic Age as culmination and antidote to the
themes of Civil War.
As well, the editor would welcome essays discussing Civil War in terms of
narratology and/or other theoretical approaches that can be effectively applied.
54
The audience for this volume is undergraduates through active scholars, though books
on this topic will also attract an audience among fans of the medium.
Please submit abstracts of 500 words to Kevin Scott
(marvelcivilwar2006@gmail.com) by December 31, 2013. Abstracts should be
accompanied by a short biography. Notification of acceptance will be given by
January 15, 2014. Completed essays will be due by May 1, 2014.
55
Reviewing Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple
Due: December 31, 2013
Dr Devaleena Das
devaleena.83@gmail.com
Reviewing Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple
The book aims to locate Walker’s masterpiece at the crossroad of postmodernism,
post colonialism and motherism. Mainly designed for the university students and
scholars, the purpose is to capture all the possible arrays ranging from Walker’s
autobiographical reflection to the most controversial racist legacy of writing. Here are
some topics to consider, but is by no means an exhaustive list:





Race and Nation
Female Relationships and sisterhood
Psychoanalysis and Female Desire
Subaltern and double marginalisation
Gender, Sexuality, Racism and Identity Politics









Female body from object of desire to protest
Motherhood
Hybridity and its dilemma
Narrative Voice and the Afro-American language
Neo-Slave narrative
Symbolism
Class and comsumerism
Eco-feminism and Walker
Space and Domestic Violence



Race and Culture
Afro-American music
Journey of the self
Deadline for submission of papers: 31st December 2013.
1.
Submit a paper of maximum 4000 words along with a 250 words abstract and
key words on a separate page to the editors at
56
alicewalkersubmission@gmail.com
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
A manuscript that has been published or that is currently under consideration for
publication elsewhere in either article or book form should not be submitted.
Submission only by e-mail in MS Word format following MLA 7 style sheet
Strictly use Times New Roman font using 12-point with 1.5 spacing and title of
paper in bold letters at the centre.
Try to eliminate all typos/ spelling errors and grammatical fly offs.
Send also a brief and concise bio note mentioning professional details,
specialisations, current affiliation and email id.
57
Book in Series: Refocus on the films of Amy
Heckerling
Due: January 31, 2014
Frances Smith and Timothy Shary, eds., Edinburgh University Press
refocusamyheckerling@gmail.com
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: REFOCUS ON AMY HECKERLING
Refocus on the films of Amy Heckerling
Edited by Dr. Frances Smith and Prof. Timothy Shary
The films of director and screenwriter Amy Heckerling have enjoyed both popular
and critical success. Debut features Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and
National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985) were blockbuster hits at the box office,
and were arguably instrumental in the development of the nascent high school and
family comedies that emerged during the 1980s. Later, Heckerling would achieve
critical recognition for Clueless (1995), her revisionist adaptation of Jane Austen’s
Emma, which led the way for a boom in teen literary adaptations at the end of the
1990s. Additionally, Heckerling has directed family films, notably the huge hits Look
Who’s Talking (1989) and its follow-up Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), and created
two television series – Baby Talk (ABC 1991-1992) and Clueless (ABC 1996-1999) –
based on her film work. Her more recent films– Loser (2000), I Could Never Be Your
Woman (2007), and Vamps (2012)– while compelling in terms of theme, did not
achieve the visibility of her earlier work, suggesting that Hollywood may no longer
embrace the mildly feminist work of a middle-aged female director.
Heckerling’s films remain relevant and well remembered, while a growing body of
academic literature acknowledges the importance of her teen films. Nonetheless, there
has to date been no scholarly volume dedicated to the discussion of her work as a
whole. This anthology seeks to address this gap in scholarship, and will be published
by Edinburgh University Press in 2015 as part of the Refocus Series. Edited by Dr.
Gary D Rhodes and Dr. Robert Singer, this series is dedicated to examining the work
of overlooked directors.
We are seeking proposals of 500 words plus a biography of 50 words for essays to be
58
included in the book. Completed essays should be between 6500 and 8000 words and
follow the Chicago endnote referencing style.
We are open to proposals on all aspects of Amy Heckerling’s work in both film and
television. Essays may focus on individual works, or on themes and topics that
pervade her body of work. Contributions are particularly welcome, but are by no
means limited to, the following areas:



Heckerling and teen cinema and/or teen television
Analysis of individual films, or television series
Gender and teen comedy



Heckerling and family films, such as Look Who’s Talking (1989)
The American family in Heckerling’s films
Heckerling and Jewish comedy





Feminist themes in Heckerling’s work
The place of female directors in genre history
Audience studies – growing up with Heckerling’s films
Heckerling’s role in the 1980s teen movie cycle
Issues of medium specificity working across film and television
Proposals should be sent to refocusamyheckerling@gmail.com by January 31, 2014.
Both editors will review all proposals and provide a response by February 28, 2014.
Essays will need to be completed by September 30, 2014.
Please send any queries to refocusamyheckerling@gmail.com
59
Depicting a Mormon Moment: Mormon Characters
and Mormon Authors in American Popular Culture
(Call for Chapters)
Due: February 1, 2014
Mark Decker and Michael Austin
mdecker@bloomu.edu; austinm@newmanu.edu
UPDATE: A university press with a significant Mormon Studies catalog has expressed
conditional interest in this collection. More information about the press is available
from the editors of the collection.
When Mitt Romney captured the Republican presidential nomination, news outlets
such as Time, CNN, and the Huffington Post had already begun to talk about a
“Mormon Moment” in the United States. At the same time that the Romney campaign
focused the nation’s attention on the LDS Church, a variety of media forces combined
to spread the Mormon Moment across the culture. Between Romney’s entrance into
the 2008 presidential campaign and the present, The Book of Mormon became a
Broadway hit, Big Love concluded its run, Cody Brown moved his complicated
family to Las Vegas, and Brady Udall wrote another well-received novel about
Mormon oddballs. And Mormon writers treating a variety of subjects—most of them
not explicitly Mormon—have become more popular than they have ever been.
Stephenie Meyer’s vampire novels and their film adaptations became phenomenally
popular while causing many to wonder if Bella and Edward’s romance has Mormon
inflections. Shortly, the release of the big-budget movie adaptation of Orson Scott
Card’s science fiction novel Ender’s Game will bring increased scrutiny to Card’s
politics and religious commitments.
While pundits and political scientists can – and should – opine about the political
implications of Romney’s Mormon Moment, the cultural Mormon Moment deserves
its own investigation. Consequently, this volume will explore what this fascination
with Mormon characters and Mormon authors says about American culture. Specific
questions might include:
60





Does critical preoccupation with an author’s Mormonism create the perception of
a Mormon text, or are Mormon authors employing Mormon themes to reach an
unsuspecting mass audience?
What do “reality” programs about polygamist families say about contemporary
gender relations? About the concept of family in a postmodern society?
How do portrayals of Mormons compare to portrayals of other religious groups?
Are audiences genuinely interested in understanding Mormon culture, or are
Mormon characters best understood in symbolic terms that are largely
disconnected from the lived Mormon experience?
Are Mormon texts inherently conservative? Does an interest in Mormon
characters represent a nostalgia for or fascination with more conservative eras in
American history?
Were there earlier Mormon Moments in American cultural history? Do these
earlier texts presage the current interest in Mormons, or are they best understood
in their own historical context?
The editors encourage submissions from a variety of theoretical perspectives
concerning texts that portray Mormons or texts that were written or created by people
who self-present as engaged Mormons. Preference will be given to proposals dealing
with texts designed to reach a broad audience. Discussions of texts created for a
Mormon audience will not be considered unless a strong argument for crossover
appeal is made.
Timeline:
1 February 2014: Deadline for proposals (500 words).
1 April 2014: Editors will notify authors whose proposals were selected for inclusion.
1 June 2015: Deadline for receiving book chapters from authors of selected proposals.
Chapters should be no shorter than 6000 words and no longer than 15,000 words
including documentation. Editors will help authors determine appropriate length for
individual chapters.
Proposals should be sent to both editors as a Microsoft Word, Pages, or rich text
document attached to an email. Contact information below:
Mark Decker (Bloomsburg University) mdecker@bloomu.edu
Michael Austin (Newman University) austinm@newmanu.edu
61
Food & Foodways, Special Issue: Food, Memory, and
Narratives (Published by Routledge)
Due: March 15, 2014
Meredith E. Abarca & Joshua R. Colby, University of Texas, El Paso
mabarca@utep.edu and jrcolby@miners.utep.edu
Foods we encounter through our life cycle leave memories that affect our past,
influence our present, and shape our future. Food memories speak through out senses;
they are preformed physically through our bodies; they reflect a visceral
self-awareness. Food memories have the ability to nourish or starve us depending on
the narrative interpretation by which these recollections are re-created. In short, food
memories have the capacity to mark the narratives of our lives.
But how and why do food memories shape the narratives of our lives? Simone Smith
and Julia Watson in 'Reading Autobiography' (2010) define a food-centred narrative
as gastrography: a "food memoir [that] incorporates food-laced memories that feed
readers' desire to redefine [themselves]." This definition raises a central topic that we
seek to examine: what is it about food and the memories it evokes that awaken a
desire to both define and re-define who we are?
In an effort to examine the complex ways that food memories mark the narratives of
our lives, we seek submissions that address (some) of the fallowing issues:

Historically, and across social economic classes and ethnicities, this form of food
self-expression and self-defintion is one that women have employed: how does
gender influence memories of food?

Since memories are never replicas of past experiences but interpretations of them,
how do recollections rewrite a given food experience and in doing so change its
symbolic and material value?
How and why do food memories invite, create and challenge nostalgic feelings
about home, and thus reimagine the very meaning of home?
What function of sharing personal and private food memories with others in the
form of memoirs, cookbooks, or television food shows serve?
Memories are voluntary and involuntary and can either authenticate or



62
destabilize past experiences. Some theoreticians of memory argue that


paradoxically in the process of recalling past experiences our memory validates
them. But it is also our memory that questions long-ago lived moments. With the
passing of time, our recollection of a single event change. Are food memories
prone to this paradox? If so, how does this affect our reading of food memories
embedded in someone's narrative? How does it affect our reading of the term
"authenticity" when related to food?
How do people's travels (voluntarily or not) frame their food memories and the
stories these tell?
Can we speak of food memory as another sense? If so, how does it work and
how do we engage frame our life narratives guided by this sense?
Abstract due March 15, 2014 (500 to 600 words)
Articles due September 15, 2014 (6000 to 9000 word )
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