第 12 屆英美文學學會
國際學術資訊 第七十九期
Contents
Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
2
Conferences in North America
9
Conferences in Europe
27
Journals and Collections of Essays
40
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Conferences in Asia Pacific and Other Places
IAPL 2013: Hospitalities:
Biopolitics/Technologies/Humanities
June 3-9, 2013
Due: December 31, 2012
International Association for Philosophy and Literature
execdir@iapl.info
Hospitalities: Biopolitics/Technologies/Humanities
3-9 June 2013
The International Association for Philosophy and Literature
37th Annual Conference
National University of Singapore
Singapore hosts Hospitalities: Biopolitics/Technologies/Humanities
We speak of hospitality in several senses.
It defines variously a power, a property, a right, a relation, or a gift.
From the Latin hostis, “to have power,” hospitality is associated with places of rest
and respite, of care and protection (the hospice and hospital), and of survival and
defense.
Out of the same root evolve the senses of hostility: threats that remain open for each
event where hospitality is offered or received.
The need or longing for a hospitable space arises regularly in different circumstances.
The figure of the refugee (from disaster, war, or diaspora) and the figure of the citizen
(whether modern, postcolonial, or unofficial) are put into ambiguous or ambivalent
relations when it comes to hospitality. Indispensible political notions, on the edges or
limits of legislated boundaries, must engage with hospitalities: tolerance, welcome,
dwelling, reception, and remembrance. But also their contraries: intolerance, hostility,
homelessness, aporia, forgetting.
The question of maternal hospitality (of the matrix, the mother, the womb, the home):
a biological metaphor? a sign of gender? Questions also arise concerning the
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ecological conditions for a hospitable earth and world or for hospitality towards earth
and world.
Hospitality, as an ideal and a practice, performs in its several ways throughout the
great port city of post-colonial Singapore. Hospitality as a form of knowledge, of
several kinds of expertise, as an issue, a problem to be solved: Singapore is in the
thick of it.
Singapore plays host to the Annual Conference of the International Association of
Philosophy and Literature in June 2013. The event will not only concern hospitality in
all its senses but will also perform as an exemplary event of hospitality. The
conference will identify various sites and styles of hospitality, in writing, in building,
in design, in architecture, in art and in thought.
The topic of hospitality in Singapore can imply relations in Asia and Southeast Asia
to a turbulent world economy and to the changing conditions for questions of the
foreigner: foreign policies, international law, cosmopolitanism, globalization,
immigration, transmigration, and so on.
Finally the role of the Humanities, especially as it evolves in new forms, new
disciplines, and new modes of knowing, can play host to the space in which ancient
traditions encounter urgent and contemporary questions.
IAPL Website: http://www.iapl.info/
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2012
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Writing Life -- Postgraduate Symposium
March 22-23, 2013
Due: February 11, 2013
University of Malta
writinglife2013@um.edu.mt
Writing Life
Postgraduate Symposium
22–23 March 2013
University of Malta
http://www.facebook.com/events/292097414242784/
Keynote speakers:
Dr Stefan Herbrechter (Coventry University)
tba
‘Life itself is a quotation.’
– Borges
‘We, not Hamnet who died young, nor Susanna and Judith, who survived their father,
are Shakespeare’s true children.’
– C. Kegan Paul
‘But now all my life grows to be story and there is nothing of my own left to me.’
– Susan Barton in Coetzee’s Foe
Writing life? One might first of all wonder whether life can be written. On reflection,
of course, it quickly becomes apparent that life is written constantly. Literature and
popular narrative across various media conjure entire communities, breathing life into
fictional characters that often then live on beyond the confines of the work in which
they first appear. Biographies and autobiographies dominate the book publishing
market, from serious literary biographies to the ghost-written semi-autobiographies
that have become a staple of celebrity culture and its marketable dissemination.
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Philosophy, now as always, writes life, exploring its meaning and what it might be to
live a good life. The rights and attendant obligations of life are decided upon and
codified in legalese, ready then to be invoked in the name of the law. The field of
medical ethics writes of life on the margins and in extremis, exploring
beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues and questions of biogenetic manipulation.
History writes of lives past, and with the advent and proliferation of digital media, life
has come to be written—recorded and remade—online, in personal blogs, on Twitter,
on Facebook etc by countless millions of people every day. Even when confronted by
death the dominant cultural impulse is usually to write life: to obituarise, elegise,
memorialise and generally to ponder, often in writing, the value of life. Arguably, then,
life has never been more ‘written’ and we have never before been so engaged in, and
exercised by, writing life.
Indeed, writing, in one form or another, has so colonised ‘life’ that imagining life
unwritten is anything but a straightforward task. Is it even possible or desirable? And
if it is, are there any identifiable strategies for bypassing or minimising the writerly
mediation of life? How is unwritten life reflected in literature and other forms of
narrative? The lessons of theory might well incline us to dismiss the idea of
unmediated or unwritten life as naïve. If there is nothing outside of the text (as the
mistranslation of Derrida’s observation usually has it) then why should we think life is
an exception? Isn’t it a truism of theory that, in some sense, writing begets life? It is a
Lacanian and, more broadly, a poststructuralist orthodoxy that we become who we are
upon entering into language. Postcolonial theory, conversely, highlights the ways in
which life can be stunted, subjugated and ultimately denied through the control of
language—it is not the subaltern, after all, who writes life.
But what are the consequences of giving up the idea of life as, at the very least—that
is, in its minimal instantiation—the bare substratum of existence that remains when
everything else, writing included, has been subtracted? Following Foucault, for
instance, Giorgio Agamben is inclined to see modernity defined by a wholly new and
insidious political mediation and manipulation of such ‘bare life’. In other words,
modernity can be understood as the era in which a properly pre-scriptive form of life
is in effect proscribed, rendering life entirely prescribed. Life thus written might be
considered biopolitically inscribed, attesting to the pervasive reach of modern
biopower. Or is there a way in which the act of writing life can resist and push back
against the tendency to see life as already written? And if, in the final analysis, life is
always mediated by writing, and must therefore be judged indistinguishable from the
written, might one want to argue that unwritten life—life not traversed by writing
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(and all that that entails)—is, to use Wallace Stevens’s phrase, a necessary fiction?
Might it be necessary, in other words, to write (and thus ‘right’) unwritten life?
This symposium seeks to address such questions, but it is by no means limited to
them. Indeed the organisers hope that the ways in which the topic ‘Writing Life’ will
be taken up will be as rich and as variegated as life itself is proverbially held to be.
Obvious points of focus will be literary biography, realism in literature, subjectivity
and characterisation in literature, biopolitics, posthumanism, the vitalist turn in theory,
the various forms of life writing facilitated by the new media, and so on, but there are
many other topics to explore, such as, for instance:
Different media for writing/inscribing/adapting life
Life on the screen
Life in-between the virtual and the real
Role-playing life online
Mediation and its (epistemological, political, ethical) problems
The complications of realism and mimesis
Writing as life-affirming/negating
Unwritten life, the bare life, and life as Other
Writing as learning how to live/die
Life as after-life and resuscitating life
Writing life poetically
Writing life and disability
Epistolary life
auto-hetero-bio-thanatographies
Writing life and ecocriticism
Writing animal life
Writing gendered and queered life
Recollecting life
Etc.
Abstracts of not more than 300 words, accompanied by a brief biographical note,
should be sent to writinglife2013@um.edu.mt by 11 February 2013. The organisers
are planning to publish selected Symposium papers in the postgraduate journal Antae.
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Post-Graduate Conference on English Literature and
Translation Studies
May 9-10, 2013
Due: March 4, 2012
Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies and Deptartment of English
Language and Literature at Cankaya University in Ankara, Turkey
eltsconferences@gmail.com
English Literature and Translation Studies:
An interdisciplinary/international postgraduate conference
9-10 May 2013
Cankaya University, Ankara
Translation and Interpreting Studies and English Language and Literature
Departments at Cankaya University in Ankara warmly invite our colleagues/students
to send proposals for a 20-minute paper on English Literature and Translation Studies.
This conference welcomes papers centering upon English Language, Translation and
Interpreting Studies, Literary Translation, English Literature and Culture, American
Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature and Literary and Cultural Theories.
This two-day English Literature and Translation Studies conference seeks to bring
colleagues, post-graduate students and academicians together in the friendly
atmosphere of Cankaya University.
Submission Guidelines:
• Papers/Posters
A 300-word abstract for a 20-minute paper should be submitted as an email
attachment to eltsconferences-at-gmail.com by March 4th, 2012. In your email, please
include your name, affiliation, email address, phone number, title of paper, and a brief
biographical statement.
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For more information please visit www.elts.cankaya.edu.tr and for all inquiries please
do not hesitate to write us an email: eltsconferences@gmail.com
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Conferences in North America
Purdue Early Atlantic Reading Group Colloquium
April 18-19, 2013
Due: December 31, 2012
Purdue Early Atlantic Reading Group
rmitsein@purdue.edu
During Captain Cook’s 1769 transoceanic voyage, he collected a rust fungus in Tierra
del Fuego, Argentina. That rust fungus was carried around the globe until it returned
across the Atlantic and the American midwest to arrive at Purdue University’s
herbarium where it remains to this day. The journey this rust fungus took reflects the
global nature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, full of circulations between
continents and islands, specimens and texts, peoples and cultures. Purdue’s Early
Atlantic Reading Group invites you to celebrate this interconnectedness through a
graduate student colloquium exploring the material and miscellany, pictures and
people, literatures and locations of the early Atlantic world.
The colloquium will take place on April 18th and 19th, 2013 and Dr. Nicole Horejsi
from Columbia University will be our featured speaker. We welcome individual
papers, non-traditional presentations, and constituted panels which deal with the
literature and culture of America, England, and the Atlantic World from the
seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century. We encourage paper and presentation topics
including, but not limited to:
Representations of Nature & the Natural World
Constructions of Nationalism(s) & Creole Experience
Discussions of Science, Medicine & Natural History
Aesthetics and Literary Form
Women’s & Native writings
Transoceanic Studies
Caribbean Literatures
Trans, Circum, & Cis Atlantic or Hemispheric Studies
Print & Material Culture
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History of the Book
Media Transformations & Visual culture
Modern Rhetorics
Please send abstracts of about 300 words by December 31, 2012 to Rebekah Mitsein
at rmitsein@purdue.edu.
Panels will be finalized and participants notified by no later than January 31, 2013.
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American Deconversion Narratives, ASA
November 21-24, 2013
Due: January 5, 2013
American Studies Association
aconnol1@connect.carleton.ca
Deconversion narratives are becoming increasingly visible in American culture:
recent films by Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy
May Marlene) chronicle a character’s involvement with, and eventual departure from
a new religious movement; former Pentecostal minister and staunch atheist Jerry
Dewitt has been touring the country sharing his deconversion experience and offering
assistance to those who are “recovering from religion.” These recent developments
compliment a long history of deconversion narratives in American literature, which
includes work by Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Lee Smith, Chaim Potok, and Mary
Rowlandson. What do these narratives, and others like them, tell us about the position
and influence of religions in the United States? As the position and influence of
religions has transformed, how have deconversion narratives changed? How do
cultural producers use these narratives to present new identities and secure
membership in different communities? How are elements of religious practices that
are left behind recuperated and re-imagined to accommodate new identities and
communities? Papers may consider any historical period and any medium.
The 2013 American Studies Association conference will be held Nov. 21-24 in
Washington, D.C. Please submit abstracts (300 words), a brief bio, and a c.v. to
Andrew Connolly (aconnol1@connect.carleton.ca) by January 5.
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“Shelleyean Movements” (special session): NASSR
2013
August 8-13, 2013
Due: January 15, 2013
Matthew Borushko / North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
mborushko@stonehill.edu
This CFP aims to assemble a special session for the 2013 Conference of the North
American Society for the Study of Romanticism, “Romantic Movements,” to be held
in Boston on August 8-13, 2013.
http://www.bu.edu/nassr-2013/
“Shelleyean Movements” means to reexamine the place of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
writings in later aesthetic, political, and theoretical movements, broadly conceived,
including – but not limited to – the Chartist movement, the Pre-Raphaelite movement,
British socialist movements, the aestheticist movement, movements in Marxian theory
and praxis, as well as any other reformist, radical, or anarchist movements that draw
on Shelley’s thought, including those of transatlantic, transnational, or global scope.
Please send 250-word abstracts (for 15-minute papers) and brief curricula vitae to:
mborushko@stonehill.edu
The deadline for submissions is January 15.
Contact:
Matthew Borushko
Stonehill College
mborushko@stonehill.edu
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“Goodbye Blue Monday,” American Literature
Association
May 23-26, 2013
Due: January 15, 2013
Greg Sumner/Kurt Vonnegut Society
sumnergd@netzero.com
The Kurt Vonnegut Society invites proposals for papers to be presented at two panels
at the American Literature Association Annual Meeting in Boston, May 23-26 2013.
One panel will feature papers on any theme or issue relating to Vonnegut and his life
and works.
The second panel will consider his landmark novel BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS,
forty years after its publication. Accompanied by childlike doodles, BREAKFAST is a
journey through a culture in crisis after the collapse of 1960s utopianism. Deploying
his trademark gallows humor, Vonnegut offers an upside-down view of American
history, and comments on the alienation of daily life in the 1970s, amid the emptiness
of sprawl and advertising slogans, the poisons of racism, sexism and economic
inequality. How does the novel read today?
Please send a 250-word abstract by JANUARY 15 to Gregory Sumner,
sumnergd@netzero.com
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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Reconsidered, Proposed
Panel, ALA
May 23-26, 2013
Due: January 15, 2013
American Literature Association
mgreenb6@uwo.ca
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Reconsidered
Proposed Panel for American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 2013
In the post-bellum 19th century, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was one of the most widely
read American authors. From her series of spiritualist novels entitled The Gates Ajar
to her Gypsy Brenton books, which were widely used in Sunday School classes, many
of Phelps’s books were commercial successes. However, her more political works
were less well-received. Books like The Story of Avis, Hedged In, and Doctor Zay,
while they sold reasonably well, were widely criticized by the American literary
establishment. However, these books, which address many issues key to the feminist
movement in the 19th century, remain relevant today. For example, The Story of Avis
examines the ways marriage can, and often does, limit a woman’s ability to have a
successful career, while Doctor Zay considers how a woman who chooses to work in
a field dominated by men (in this case, medicine) is viewed by society. As the country
moved into the 20th century and as Modernism came into vogue, Phelps’s books
stopped selling altogether, and while she, like so many other American women writers
from this period, was “rediscovered” in the late 20th century amidst the second wave
of feminism, she remains on the margins of the American literary canon. Indeed,
Phelps, who arguably was a key literary figure in the late-19th century, has been
largely ignored by all but a few critics in the 20th and 21st century.
This proposed panel seeks to reconsider the works of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, arguing
that her books respond to many of the issues that were central to the first wave of the
Feminist movement. Indeed, amidst an alleged 21st century “war against women,”
many of the issues Phelps addressed, including the value of a career, feminine beauty,
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and equality in marriage, continue to be debated. Among other issues, we will
explore/identify reasons, political or otherwise, why Phelps has been largely ignored
in the 20th and 21st centuries, even as other women writers from the same period
have been “rediscovered.” Further, we will consider how she, and other equally
marginalized writers, remain relevant and ripe for continued scholarship.
Please submit 300 word abstracts for this proposed panel to Miranda Green-Barteet of
University of Western Ontario (mgreenb6 @ uwo.ca) by Jan. 15, 2013.
The 2013 American Literature Association Conference will be held at the Westin
Copley Place in Boston, May 23-26, 2013.
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Banff Research in Culture: Dock(ing), or, New
Economies of Exchange
May 27-June 14, 2013
Due: January 15, 2013
University of Alberta / The Banff Centre / Liverpool Biennial
bbellamy@ualberta.ca
Dock(ing); or, New Economies of Exchange
BANFF RESEARCH IN CULTURE 2013
Program dates: May 27-June 14, 2013
Application deadline: January 15, 2013
Application Information can be found at:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1334
Banff Research in Culture (BRiC) is a research residency program designed for
scholars engaged in advanced theoretical research on themes and topics in culture.
BRiC is designed to offer researchers with similar interests from different disciplinary
and professional backgrounds an opportunity to exchange opinions and ideas.
Participants are encouraged to develop new research, artistic, editorial, and authorial
projects, both individually and in connection with others.
During the residency, participants will attend lectures, seminars, and workshops
offered by visiting faculty from around the world. The residency will help to develop
new approaches toward the study and analysis of culture, as well as creating lasting
networks of scholars who might use this opportunity as the basis for future
collaborative work.
The Banff Centre is a world-renowned facility supporting the creation and
performance of new works of visual art, music, dance, theatre, and writing. The 2013
edition of BRiC is organized in conjunction with the Liverpool Biennial.
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BRiC is funded by The Banff Centre, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies,
Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta and the Office of the Vice-President (Research),
University of Alberta. In 2013, BRiC is being organized by Imre Szeman, Sally
Tallant, Maria Whiteman, and Visual Arts at The Banff Centre.
Dock(ing); or, New Economies of Exchange
Faculty: Joseph Grima, Suzanne Lacy, Michael Speaks
A dock is the place where the land meets the ocean, where goods arrive from abroad,
and where foreigners step onto the surface of the country they are visiting. It is a
liminal space of encounters and exchanges, both legal and illegal — a space of furious
new activity that can upset the given order, just as often as it confirms it through the
smooth operations of legal power and border control. The physical space of the sea
wharf is only one of the ways in which ‘dock’ names a necessary yet potentially
dangerous threshold. A dock is also the space in a courtroom where prisoners are
placed on trial, exposed to the full power of the law. And when used as a verb, ‘dock’
names such varied practices as the punishment of workers by withholding payment
for their labour, the removal of an animal’s tail to bend its body into shape in line with
human demands and desires, and the connection of different bits of computer
hardware to allow for the exchange of information.
Banff Research in Culture 2013 is organized in partnership with the Liverpool
Biennial. For the city of Liverpool, which has undergone a significant period of
de-industrialization and de-population, the docks that line its waterfront constitute a
reminder of a more prosperous moment in its development. They are also a site of
potential urban re-development and re-imagining, with all the promise and hazards
that such gentrification and rebuilding bring with them. BRiC 2013 seeks to bring
together critical thinkers intent on exploring the politics played out on physical and
metaphoric docks, as well as practices of docking in art, culture, design, critical theory,
cultural studies, and urban development. The liminal spaces to which docks point
include legal, national, physical and conceptual borders of all kinds — spaces and
places where power is exerted over identities and collectivities, and so, too, sites
where power is actively challenged with the aim of enabling new possibilities for a
new century.
The collective interrogation of docks and docking that will take place during BRiC
2013 constitutes a starting point for understanding some of the major social, political
and cultural challenges we face at the outset of this new century. Far from being an
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end in itself, a multifaceted, multidisciplinary investigation of docks promises to open
new vantage points on long-standing problems. In the case of the City of Liverpool,
for instance, this includes the very real trials involved in re-constituting genuine civic
life in the wake of de-industrialization, the role played by art in this process, and the
difficulties of creating new urban possibilities and opportunities that do not follow the
problematic script of capitalist gentrification.
We look forward to receiving compelling and original project proposals from thinkers
and creators working on a wide range of projects.
Applications
Applications to BRiC 2013 are processed through The Banff Centre.
For information on Application Requirements or to Apply to the program, please visit:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1334&p=requirements
Applicants will be notified of their status as soon as adjudication is complete.
Questions?
For questions on preparing your application, please contact the Office of the
Registrar:
Email: arts_info@banffcentre.ca
Phone: 403.762.6180 or 1.800.565.9989
Fax: 403.762.6345
For information on BRiC, please contact Brent Bellamy (bbellamy@ualberta.ca) or
Imre Szeman (imre@ualberta.ca)
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“William T. Vollmann and Transgression” at
ALA--Boston,
May 23-26, 2013
Due: January 21, 2013
Ralph Clare, Boise State University
ralphclare@boisestate.edu
One of the notable features of William T. Vollmann’s work is its ability to defy simple
classification. Whether through its excessive display of language, genre, and
experiential “research,” as well as its sheer page count, footnotes, and glossaries,
Vollmann’s expanding oeuvre eludes the usual conceptual categories we might draw
upon to understand it. This can be both exhilarating and frustrating, as one of the
primary strengths of Vollmann’s texts also makes them difficult to deal with critically
and pedagogically.
In response to this challenge, this panel seeks papers exploring the notion of
“transgression,” in its broadest possible sense, in the works of William T. Vollmann.
In what ways can we conceive of Vollmann’s work as transgressing normative literary,
ethical, sexual, national, or temporal boundaries? How can such a theory of
transgression offer a way of thinking about Vollmann’s work that still respects its
radical heterogeneity? Are such transgressions truly subversive, or are they easily
subsumed by the moral, political, economic, or social systems that they confront?
Areas of inquiry might include:
--genre mixing
--history as fiction, fiction as history
--traversing national borders and geographical boundaries
--sex and gender “transgressions”
--the relationship between self and “other”
--negotiating center and margin(alized)
--the book as apparatus
--image/text
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--American/transnational literature
--moving beyond postmodernism
Please send a prospective title, 250 word abstract, and the briefest of bios by January
21st to Ralph Clare at ralphclare@boisestate.edu.
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Narrative-Making in the Aftermath of War
April 25-26, 2013
Due: February 1, 2013
UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
narrativemaking@gmail.com
“Narrative-Making in the Aftermath of War” will be a two-day conference sponsored
by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) of the University of California,
Santa Barbara, on April 25-26, 2013. The conference is part of the IHC’s 2012-2013
program “Fallout,” a year-long series of events dedicated to examining the impact of
the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan upon the soldiers who have fought in these
wars: visit http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/fallout for more details. The conference will focus
specifically on the capacity of narrative-making to help returning service members
deal with the after-effects of war and reintegrate into their communities. We seek
papers from diverse perspectives that address the complex processes and potential
effects of narrative-making upon veterans, their communities, and the culture more
broadly. Veteran-writers, scholars, mental health professionals, writing workshop
facilitators and others engaged with this issue are encouraged to apply. Please submit
a 250-word abstract and a brief CV to narrativemaking@gmail.com by Friday,
February 1, 2013.
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The Merchant of Venice; University of La Verne,
California 2013
April 27, 2013
Due: February 1, 2013
The La Verne Shakespeare Center, University of La Verne
Shakespearecenter@Laverne.edu
Is the Merchant of Venice a plea for tolerance or a sanction for revenge? Is it a late
early comedy or an early problem play? How does it reflect (or seem to reflect) upon
our own situation—ie. our ongoing banking crises, religious tensions, and cultural
transitions?
Keynote Speaker: Eric Mallin, University of Texas, at Austin
Papers can consider but are not limited to the following topics:
recent stage and film versions
Pedagogical approaches in the inclusive, multicultural classroom
Early comedy vs. “problem play”
Relation to other Renaissance plays
The ongoing financial crisis
Cross-dressing
Male relationships
Send an abstract of 150 words (maximum) and a one-page CV to Jeffrey Kahan
(Shakespearecenter@Laverne.edu) by February 1, 2013.
Conference prices: $50 for tenured faculty; $40 non-tenured; $30 graduate and private
scholars; $10 high school teachers. All prices include a buffet meal and a ticket to the
University of La Verne’s production of Merchant of Venice.
A prize for the best student essay will be awarded.
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Worlds Between: Exploring the Borders, Boundaries,
and Gaps that Divide and Bind
April 27, 2013
Due: February 15, 2013
Sigma Tau Delta, Iota Chi Chapter / California State University, Northrdige
sigmataudeltaiotachi@gmail.com
“Worlds Between: Exploring the Borders, Boundaries, and Gaps that Divide and
Bind”
Saturday, April 27, 2013
California State University, Northridge
Graduate Conference
“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s
verge.” – Lord Byron
This conference is interested in exploring the concept of the spaces between – genres,
cultures, times, people, movements, nations – the possibilities are endless. How do
these spaces confine? How do they enable? What moves between? What exists
within?
We invite undergraduate and graduate students to submit proposals for both critical
and creative works that explore the boundaries of the many worlds in which we study,
live, struggle, strive, and thrive.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
Queer Theory
Disability Studies
Interpretations of the gap
Crossing literal and figurative boundaries
Hybridity, liminality, and interstitiality
Slipstream, speculative, surrealist narratives
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Globalization
World literatures
Post-Colonialism and cultural studies
Pop Culture
Gothic Studies
Film Studies
Pedagogy and narratology
Rhetoric and composition
Linguistics
Gender, race, class, and politics
Environmental Studies and ecocriticism
The space between good and evil
Our keynote speaker is Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and
Professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California.
Please send 250-word abstracts to sigmataudeltaiotachi@gmail.com. Submission
deadline is February 15, 2013.
This graduate conference is hosted by Sigma Tau Delta Iota Chi Chapter and
sponsored in part by the CSUN English Department and the Distinguished Speaker
Award.
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Victorians Institute 2013 Conference: Through the
Looking Glass
November 1-2, 2013
Due: May 1, 2013
Victorians Institute
Rebecca.King@mtsu.edu
CFP: Victorians Institute 2013 Conference: Through the Looking Glass
Proposals: 5/1/2013
The 42nd Meeting of the Victorians Institute
November 1-2, 2013
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN
Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. via email to
Rebecca.King@mtsu.edu by 1 May 2013.
We invite papers on any aspect of the theme, which refers to Lewis Carroll’s 1871
sequel to Alice in Wonderland, but invites much wider consideration. The story begins
on November 4, the day before Guy Fawkes Night, and is also associated with issues
of time and space, the game of chess, fairy tale and fantasy, neologism, history,
curiosity, epistemology, dress and wigs, and of course, mirrors.
Possible topics might include mirrors and mirroring; microscopes and telescopes;
Victorian mathematics, science, and science fiction; arts and crafts; illustrations and
media adaptations; language; hybridity; history and discovery; new worlds and
cultures; travel; empire; Victorian pedagogy; childhood; gender and sexuality; fantasy
and play; pseudonyms; biography; photography; music; linguistic play; poetic parody;
and others.
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The keynote speaker is Jay Clayton, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, and
Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/curbcenter/people/staff/jayclayton/
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/curbcenter/our-vision/
Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the Victorians Institute
Journal annex at NINES.
Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate
students whose institutions provide limited or no support.
Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians
Institute, and Victorians Institute Journal.
26
Conferences in Europe
The 'Holocaust Metaphor': Cultural Representations
of Traumatic Pasts in the 20th Century
May 30-31, 2013
Due: December 28, 2012
Chiara Tedaldi, Irish Research Council CARA Postdoctoral Mobility Fellow,
University College Dublin and Universidad de Zaragoza, Anna Rosenberg, ARAID
Postdoctoral Researcher, Universidad de Zaragoza
chiara.tedaldi@ucd.ie, arosen@unizar.es
Call for Papers
The ‘Holocaust Metaphor’: Cultural Representations of Traumatic Pasts in the 20th
Century
30th and 31st May 2013, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Keynote Speakers: Alejandro Baer, Director of the Center for Holocaust and
Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota (tbc); Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez, Trent
University
The recent publication of Paul Preston’s book The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and
Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain (2012) invites reflection on the manner in
which a term that refers to the near annihilation of the European Jewry at the hands of
Nazi Germany and its allies is often taken out of context and used to describe a wealth
of unrelated historical events. Some examples of this trend include the destruction of
Armenians and Greeks (1915-22), the Ukrainian famine in 1932-33, the persecution
of Italians in 1943-45 by Titoist troops, the 1.7 million people killed by the Khmer
regime in 1975-79, as well as to instances of ethnic cleansing and genocide that took
place in East Timor (1975-99), Rwanda (1994), the former Yugoslavia (1992-95), and
Sudan (2003-10).
Clearly, the evocative power associated with the term ‘Holocaust’ enables all those
who employ the ‘Holocaust metaphor’ uncritically (i.e. scholars, politicians,
27
journalists, novelists etc.) to reach a wider audience, comparing tragedies that are
qualitatively and quantitatively different by conjuring up a broad imagery of senseless
horror, racial hatred and powerlessness with which contemporary societies have
become to some extent familiar through testimonies and representation in literature,
cinema, documentaries, comic books, art, photography and advertising. On the one
hand, despite an abundance of criticism towards it, this trend has demonstrated a
surprising capacity to perpetuate itself, and there seems to be no end to the
mushrooming of instances in which tragedies that bear no connection with the plight
of the Jews are compared with it, and constructed in a manner that often fails to take
into consideration crucial debates and questions – such as those concerning the
Holocaust’s uniqueness, its commodification, banalisation, and inherent exploitation.
On the other hand, there also seem to be very little awareness as to the fact that, even
in the few instances in which an engagement with the afore-mentioned matters can be
detected, such works usually fall short of highlighting one of the key problems of
contemporary multicultural societies: how to think about the relationship between
different groups’ histories of victimisation (Rothberg, 2009).
This conference wishes to bring together early career researchers and doctoral
students who have recently completed (or are about to complete) their course of
studies to examine the multiple ways in which Holocaust discourse and
conceptualisation has been used to make sense of traumatic pasts and civilian
suffering in Europe and elsewhere in the world. It constitutes an attempt to move
beyond a sterile ‘nominalist’ debate and explore the possibilities and limitations of
reference.
We invite individual and joint proposals for 20-minute presentations (to be delivered
in either English or Spanish), in the following areas:
• Representations of violence and trauma through literature, the media, films,
documentaries, photography, and the arts
• Representations of group victimisation through monuments, public ceremonies,
and legislation
• Examining how new communication technologies contribute to the multiplication
and diffusion of stereotypical representations of the past
• Gendered representations of trauma, post-memory and the question of an emotional
engagement with a painful past
28
• Representations of victims, survivors and witnesses in an age characterised by the
broadening of the notion of ‘victimhood’ and an increasing preoccupation with the
questions of generation, generational belonging and generational memory
• Representing trauma and victimhood in a commodity culture; assessing the
repercussions of the ‘Holocaust business’ (i.e. the Holocaust as a market-determined
product, consumed for the sensationalist and sentimental effects it generates)
Please send a 250-word abstract (in English or Spanish) and a 50-word biography to
holocaustmetaphor@gmail.com. Abstracts should include name and affiliation, email
address and A/V requirements (if any). The deadline for submissions is Friday, 28
December 2012.
All queries shall be addressed to the conference organisers, Dr Chiara Tedaldi and Dr
Anna Rosenberg. For queries in English please contact Dr Tedaldi
(chiara.tedaldi@ucd.ie) and for those in Spanish write to Dr Rosenberg
(arosen@unizar.es).
The organisers envisage the publication of the best papers presented at the conference.
The authors of successful paper proposals will be notified via email by Friday, 1
March 2013. On this occasion, the instructions for authors and the deadline for
submission of articles to be considered for publication will be circulated. Prospective
participants should bear in mind that contributions that have a limited engagement
with the themes included in the above Call for Papers are unlikely to be shortlisted for
publication.
Due to the limited funding available, the conference organisers cannot provide
financial assistance to cover travel and accommodation expenses. A conference fee of
€20 (for conference lunches and light refreshments) will be charged to presenters.
Entrance for students and members of the public will be free.
29
Modernist Intimacies
May 17, 2013
Due: January 15, 2013
University of Sussex, UK
rnec20@sussex.ac.uk
Call for Papers:
Modernist Intimacies
Friday May 17, 2013.
The Centre for Modernist Studies
University of Sussex
Responding to recent scholarly constellations of modernism, affect and intimacy this
one-day symposium, hosted by the Centre for Modernist Studies at University of
Sussex, seeks to explore new ways of thinking about modernist feeling and modernist
intimacies. Are there such things as “modernist feelings”? How might different
modernist narratives of emotion in psychoanalysis, literary theory, philosophy and
medicine be made to collide, disrupt and form new points of contact? How do
modernist bodies come together and apart?
We encourage papers from academics at all stages in their career and hope to
encourage inter-generational discussions.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
-Genealogies of modernist affect
-Narratives of (im)personality
-Modernist diaries, autobiographies and letters
- Scenes of intimacy and extimacy in modernist writing
-The role of affect in modernist cinema and/or other visual arts
-Touch, texture, and textuality
-Modernist emotional geographies
-Modernism and affective disorders
-Modernist archives of feeling
30
- Constructions of publicity and privacy in modernist writing
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words (for 15-20 minute papers) and a
short biography to Ruth Charnock at: rnec20@sussex.ac.uk by 15th January, 2013.
31
Translation, Adaptation, and Dramaturgy
July 22-26, 2013
Due: January 31, 2013
Translation, Adaptation & Dramaturgy Working Group. International Federation for
Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT)
bernadettecochrane@uqconnect.net
CALL FOR PAPERS
Translation, Adaptation & Dramaturgy Working Group
International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT)
Annual Meeting – Barcelona, Spain, 22-26 July 2013
Following the theme of the 2013 IFTR conference in Barcelona, the Translation,
Adaptation, and Dramaturgy Working Group will focus on ‘networks of exchange’
that underline, resist, or subvert the cultural hierarchies in place. We are interested in
papers addressing ‘dramaturgies’, with attendant translations and adaptations, which
realize the ‘smaller’ literary or theatrical paradigms outside or even within the
originating language. What does it mean for a translator, adaptor, or dramaturg to
transfer a work from a dominant system towards one with a perceived smaller
audience or vice versa? What are the strategies involved in translating to or from the
language or dialect of the lesser-represented cultural enclave? What imperatives
should guide the adaption of the unfamiliar towards a broader cultural understanding?
What are the dramaturgical processes necessary to ensure that a work is fairly
represented before an audience that is unfamiliar with its references? How are
minority voices represented when travelling between systems? What is the
relationship between veracity and analogue?
Asymmetries and incompatibilities of approach are in no way minimized when
institutions of comparable influence are involved, as the recent cancellation of the
production of Clybourne Park in Deutsches Theater demonstrates. The recent debate
concerning the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Orphan of Zhao
provides further evidence to this end. These and related incidents raise among others
the issue of intentionality in translation, adaptation, and dramaturgy. Is redefinition
possible, and most significantly, is it constructive? Although translators have moved
32
away from the discourse of “loss in translation,” such phenomena reinforce questions
of feasibility and the problems of communication between systems. What then will be
the role, responsibility, and ethical stance of the translator, adaptor or dramaturg in the
process?
While submissions focusing on this theme are preferred, the group also welcomes
contributions that touch upon all aspects of its remit. We also eagerly welcome new
members who wish to take part in the group's discussion but do not wish to submit a
paper. Working Group sessions will not as in previous years be scheduled at the
beginning of the conference, but may be placed at any point in the five days of the
conference. The deadline for submission is January 31st 2013 and all abstracts for
Working Groups should be sent through the CJO website
http://journals.cambridge.org/iftr. Please note that you need to be a current IFTR/FIRT
member in order to send an abstract. The organizers will forward each WG abstract to
the appropriate WG convener. Please also forward a copy of the submission to
Bernadette Cochrane (bernadette.cochrane@uq.edu.au).
33
Politics of Puritan and Nonconformist Writing,
1558-1689
April 20, 2013
Due: February 28, 2013
Dr Paul Frazer / Northumbria University
paul.frazer@northumbria.ac.uk
Politics of Puritan and Nonconformist Writing, 1558-1689
20 April 2013
Dr Paul Frazer / Northumbria University
paul.frazer@northumbria.ac.uk
This conference is concerned with re-visiting the politics of religious writing in the
‘Long Reformation’, a broad chronology of early modern literary and political culture
and across an inclusive range of literary genres. Proposals are invited for 20 minute
papers that consider puritan and nonconformist writing and its engagement with /
impact on a wide range of political and cultural contexts. Recent work by historians
and literary scholars has led to a resurgence of interest in the religious history of the
period and how various forms of faith and belief engaged with culture and politics in
a period sometimes described as the Post-Reformation. How did writers in the Tudor
and Stuart world engage with the constantly evolving religious contexts that
witnessed experimentation with highly controversial religious beliefs?
Themes to address might include:
- Catholicism and anti-Catholicism
- Separatists and sectarians
- Puritanism, nonconformity and the established Church
- Puritanism and dissent
- Print culture, Puritanism and nonconformity, 1558-1689
- Non-conformity and the stage
- Literature and politics of toleration
- Royalist Puritanism 1642-60
34
- Satire
- Migration, exile, and non-conformity
- Persecution and propaganda
- Puritan places and literary production
Confirmed plenary speakers: Adrian Streete(Queen’s University Belfast); Glyn
Parry,(Northumbria University)
Please email 250-300 word abstracts to paul.frazer@northumbria.ac.uk by 28 Feb
2013.
35
Samuel Beckett and the 'State' of Ireland III
August 1-3, 2013
Due: February 28, 2013
University College Dublin
beckettucd@gmail.com
“Samuel Beckett and the ‘State’ of Ireland” III
August 1-3, 2013.
University College Dublin
Humanities Institute
The emerging field of study dedicated to Samuel Beckett’s complicated relationship
with his home country of Ireland has produced an exciting new spectrum through
which to explore the author’s work. The upcoming third conference at University
College Dublin, entitled “Samuel Beckett and the ‘State’ of Ireland”, is dedicated to
providing a stage on which the exchange of new scholarship can take place. Our
purpose is to extend the already rich debate on the influence Ireland has had on the
world renowned author, including tension between the various ‘Becketts’; the Irish
Beckett, the French Beckett and the other Becketts to name a few. With this in mind
we wish to leave open the scope of the conference to allow for the investigation into
different realms of study relating to any aspect concerning Beckett and Ireland. Does
Beckett fit into the category of being an Irish philosopher? Does his work portray an
Irish France or a French Ireland? Is there an element of the archive that indicates a
more or less pronounced relationship with his homeland than previously thought?
How can the place of Ireland be read in historical and archival approaches to Beckett?
These are just a few types of questions the conference hopes to bring to bear on the
Irish scope of Beckett studies.
Being situated in proximity to Trinity College Dublin, and the ‘Beckett Country’, the
conference at UCD affords a rich environment for exploring Beckett within the
context of his native metropolis and surrounding areas. The interaction between
“Beckett and the ‘State’ of Ireland” and the Samuel Beckett Summer School has seen
a continual crossover of speakers and topics which has enriched the two events and
36
delegates from both are encouraged to experience the opportunity the two offer in
tandem.
Categories for possible paper topics will not be put forward this year as we wish to
open the scope of the conference even further. As mentioned above, abstracts which
engage in any aspect of Beckett’s relationship to Ireland will be enthusiastically
considered from Academics and Postgraduates alike. For a sample of past paper topics
please see the website for previous schedules.
http://beckettucd.wordpress.com/
Deadline for abstracts of 300 words and bios will be February 28th 2013 and should
be emailed to:
beckettucd@gmail.com
For a review of the 2012 conference in The Beckett Circle please see:
http://www.beckettcircle.org/2012/10/ucd-conference-beckett-state-of-ireland-review.
html
37
History, Postcolonialism and Tradition
September 12-13, 2013
Due: April 15, 2013
Postcolonial Studies Association/Kingston University
fass-conferences@kingston.ac.uk
The organisers of the 2013 Postcolonial Studies Association would like to invite
proposals for papers on this year’s theme: ‘History, Postcolonialism and Tradition’.
The theme is designed to facilitate the opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue,
particularly (but not exclusively) between the spheres of literature, cultural studies,
anthropology, the visual arts, the performative arts, folklore, history, politics, and the
social sciences.
Issues of history and tradition remain sites of significant contestation for postcolonial
studies. Whilst postcolonial studies focuses increasingly on ‘future-thinking’ this is in
tension with, and reliant upon, a continued need to negotiate the postcolonial cultures’
relationship to often violent histories and the marginalisation of indigenous traditions.
Equally, global and diasporic cultures are the sites of complex interplays of
productively competing traditions and forms of remembrance. Issues include but are
not limited to:
- The difference between history and memory in postcolonial cultures
- Theoretical approaches to postcolonial history (new historicism, cultural
materialism)
- Gendered histories and traditions
- Myth, folklore and oral tradition
- Postcolonial historiographies
- Negotiations of history and tradition in literature, creative writing and the visual arts
- History and/or tradition as source of/barrier to political and social change
- Transformations of history and tradition in the context of global and diasporic
identities
Confirmed keynote speakers include Robert Irwin (author of The Arabian Nights: A
Companion and For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies) and
38
Sadhana Naithani (author of In Quest of Indian Tradition and The Story-Time of the
British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics).
The conference will be held at Kingston University (London) from 12-13 September
2013. Short abstracts (approx. 300 words) should be sent to the organisers, Sara
Upstone and Andrew Teverson, at the following address:
fass-conferences@kingston.ac.uk. The deadline for proposals is 15 April 2013.
39
Journals and Collections of Essays
Call for Book Reviews for Schuylkill Graduate
Journal: (Re)constituting Publics -- Special Issue
Due: January 15, 2013
Schuylkill Graduate Journal
skook@temple.edu
Call for Book Reviews for Schuylkill Graduate Journal:
(Re)constituting Publics -- Special Issue
Schuylkill Graduate Journal, Temple University
Contact email: skook@temple.edu
Deadline: January 15, 2013
The Schuylkill graduate journal seeks submissions from all disciplines for our 11th
volume of critical essays and book reviews to be published in Spring of 2013 (online
and print). We are seeking book reviews on works addressing the theme of
(re)constituting publics (broadly defined), 5 pages in length; double spaced; MLA
format; no footnotes. Current graduate students should direct their work to Colleen
Hammelman at skook@temple.edu by January 15, 2013; no simultaneous
submissions please. All reviews will be anonymously reviewed by at least two staff
members. Please e-mail submissions with author name and contact info on first page
only.
The concept of “the public” as a singular community, bound by a particular national
identity and empowered by access to and control of public space, has become
increasingly contested. From battles over citizenship and public memory to occupy
movements and the Arab Spring, people within and across national borders are
engaging in efforts to redefine traditional ideas about the public sphere and who
constitutes the public or publics. Additionally, information technology and the mass
spread of social media have intensified this process of reconstituting publics. But even
before the advent of telecommunications, communities within nations battled over
issues of public identity and the power to define, control and exist in public space.
40
Because we want to provide an original and important angle to the discussion of new
works, we will publish reviews by graduate students exclusively. Additionally, the
reviews will explicitly address the reviewer's impressions of the importance of the
work to future research as well as emerging fields, disciplines, approaches, etc.
To compliment the articles centered on this issue’s special topic of (re)constituting
publics, the Schuylkill seeks book reviews of recent scholarship that in some way deal
with this topic. Below is a list of suggestions, but the editors are open to other works
provided they were published in the past three years.
A few suggestions (though the possibilities are by no means limited to this list):
Bruggeman, Seth C. Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American Public
Memory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
Gordon, Tammy S. Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of Everyday
Life. AltaMira Press, 2010.
Morphew, Christopher C. and Peter D. Eckel. Privatizing the Public University:
Perspectives from across the Academy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Parkinson, John R. Democracy and Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic
Performance. Oxford University Press, 2012.
We welcome reviews focusing on any of the multi-dimensional aspects of
(re)constituting publics and the meaning and function of public space. Please feel free
to write with questions or proposals.
The Schuylkill is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal founded, edited, and run
by graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia. We are looking to publish
the scholarly work of graduate students in the humanities from around the globe. We
are especially interested in work that, in presenting a rich and nuanced perspective on
the topic of bondage and power, blurs the boundaries of the disciplines (literary theory;
philosophy; history; political theory; religious studies; cinema studies; women’s
studies; art history; etc.).
41
Collection of Essays on Charles Bowden and the
U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Due: January 15, 2013
D. Seth Horton and David Cremean
dshorton@umd.edu, nialmccruimmen@gmail.com
We are now accepting abstracts for a forthcoming collection of essays entitled,
Memories of the Future: Critical Essays on Charles Bowden. We are open to all
critical approaches, including feminist, Marxist, critical regionalist, hemispheric,
narratological, postcolonial, and ecocritical perspectives. Potential proposals may
include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
•
•
•
•
The Apocalyptic Southwest
Connections between Bowden and other writers (Abbey, McCarthy, Silko, etc.)
Environmental beauty and destruction
Genre tensions between the essay, the memoir, crime reporting, gonzo journalism,
and history
• Literary journalism in the Southwest
• Globalization and the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
• Interplay of text and images in the trilogy of Inferno, Exodus/Éxodo, and Trinity,
and/or Juárez: Laboratory of Our Future, and/or Dreamland
• Bowden’s collaborations with Jack Dykinga
• Mexican North and the American West
• Human detritus/”waste” as nature
• Police state(s) vs. anarchism
• Relationships between narcotraficantes and the war on drugs
• Representations of the Mexican Army and/or the U.S. Border Patrol
• Transnational social justice
• Versions of El Sicario (film, articles, and books)
This volume appears almost certain to be the initial scholarly foray into Bowden, and
we have already received interest from a major university press. E-mail abstract
proposals with a working title and a brief biography or CV by January 15, 2013 to
David Cremean (nialmccruimmen@gmail.com) and D. Seth Horton
42
(dshorton@umd.edu). The deadline for final papers will be July 15, 2013. Send any
questions or other inquiries to the same emails.
43
Ernest Hemingway's ‘The Old Man and the Sea’: A
Critical Appraisal
Due: January 31, 2013
Pinaki Roy-edited "Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea': A Critical
Appraisal'
cfpproy@gmail.com
A Kolkata-based international book-seller/publisher is scheduled to release a critical
anthology titled "Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea': A Critical
Appraisal". Full papers on different aspects of the novel, written with M.L.A.-style
citations, and in Times New Roman, Single-space-format (not less than six pages)
may be e-mailed to Dr. Pinaki Roy, Assistant Professor of English, Malda College,
Rabindra Avenue, Rathbari More, Post Office + District: Malda - 732 101, West
Bengal, India, within 31 January 2013 at cfpproy@gmail.com. Papers sent will be
duly acknowledged, the writers of selected essays notified, and contributors will
receive complimentary copies of the critical anthology.
44
Contemporary Music and Fiction – Edited Collection
Due: January 31, 2013
Jeffrey Roessner/Mercyhurst University; Erich Hertz/Siena College
jroessner@mercyhurst.edu; ehertz@siena.edu
Submissions are sought for a collection of essays titled Write in Tune: Contemporary
Music in Fiction, which is under contract at Bloomsbury Press (formerly Continuum).
As the title suggests, the forthcoming volume focuses on post-1960s fiction that
engages the themes, artists, songs, genres, or cultural import of popular music.
Given that many of the chapters for the collection are in place, we would emphasize
two points: a) we are particularly interested in essays that focus on issues of gender or
that treat racial/national/postcolonial identity; and b) we very much welcome inquiries
to avoid duplicate proposals.
Otherwise, please email 500-word proposals and a 150-200-word biography to both
Erich Hertz (ehertz@siena.edu) and Jeff Roessner (jroessner@mercyhurst.edu) by
January 31, 2013.
Below is an expanded description of the aims of the project:
Since the 1960s the confluence of music and literature has moved far beyond simple
adaptation studies, with writers turning to music for cultural references, foundational
metaphors, and complex intertextual structure. Indeed, the range of novels that
reference contemporary music is stunning, from obvious examples such as Roddy
Doyle’s The Commitments, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress
of Solitude, Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar, and Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues,
to more subtle intertextual negotiations in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, Willy
Russell’s The Wrong Boy, and Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street.
We welcome essays that offer readings of how specific authors or texts negotiate these
intertwined art forms, but also encourage broader theoretical investigations that
illuminate this moment in contemporary fiction. We are also interested in
contributions that reflect an international perspective. Essays could consider but are
not limited to the following issues:
45
• In what ways have the musical forms of rock, rap, and pop been interpolated in the
structure of contemporary narrative?
• How do authors/characters employ music to construct social, racial, or political
identities?
• How does music function as a historical referent, symbolizing the mood or politics
of an era?
• What function do musical allusions play in upholding social distinctions (i.e., what
is hip, what is not)?
• How has rock music as a postmodern art form (destabilizing assumptions about
cultural value) inflected the voice, style, or perspective of contemporary authors?
• How do authors/characters negotiate the racial associations of pop music (grounded
as it so often is in African American culture)?
• In contemporary fiction, what role does pop music play in undermining or
upholding distinctions between “low” and “high” culture?
• In what ways have gender issues been raised or elided through the musical intertext
in recent fiction?
• How is the masculine identity of characters signaled through their appreciation or
performance of particular styles of music?
• How has sixties musical style, with its countercultural associations, been
appropriated or rejected in contemporary fiction?
• How has western or non-western pop music figured in the negotiation of
postcolonial identity?
46
Companion to American Gothic
Due: January 31, 2013
Dr John Sears & Dr Jason Haslam
J.Sears@mmu.ac.uk
Call for contributors
We are currently commissioning contributions to a proposed Companion to American
Gothic, to be published in 2015 by a major UK academic publisher as part of a new
series of Gothic companions.
Proposals for chapters of 5500-6500 words (including notes) are invited. Early career
researchers are encouraged to submit, but we welcome proposals from all American
Gothic scholars.
Chapters are required that offer critically erudite, authoritative, and cogently written
surveys and analyses, focused on appropriate examples, addressing the following
topics:
European Ghosts, American Witches: Early American Gothic Realism / Romance
Slavery and the Gothic
Romantic Gothic: The American Tradition
American Modernism and the Southern Gothic
American Gothic after 9/11
American Art and the Gothic Sublime
American Gothic Film and Television
Gothic Gaming in Video and Role-Playing
Gender and American Gothic
African-American Gothic
Border Magic - Chicano/Chicana Gothic
Proposals (500 words), and any queries about these topics, should be sent by email to
the editors, Jason Haslam (Jason.Haslam@dal.ca) and John Sears
(J.Sears@mmu.ac.uk), by January 31st 2013. Decisions for inclusion will be made by
47
the end of February 2013, with completed chapters due for submission end of October
2013.
48
Situating Postcolonial Trauma Studies
Due: March 15, 2013
Postcolonial Text
saado33@hotmail.com
Call for Submissions
Postcolonial Text. Special Issue: Situating Postcolonial Trauma Studies. Saadi Nikro
(ed)
Postcolonial Text is an open access, fully online journal, internationally peer-reviewed
and accessible to a global audience. A quarterly journal, it is affiliated with the Open
Humanities Press (OHP). The editors seek submissions for a special issue on
postcolonial trauma studies.
In recent years trauma studies have been taken up by critics engaging postcolonial
cultural production, or else cultural production in postcolonial contexts. The very term
postcolonial trauma studies has come to gain some consistency as either a specific
field of research or a range of conceptual applications across fields of research.
In staking out the terrain of postcolonial trauma studies, there has been a tendency to
produce a non-relational clash of civilizations scenario that pits a notion of the west
against the rest, the former marked by an apparent concentration on the individual that
is unsuitable to the equally apparent collective experience of trauma in non-western
societies. This logic is framed by and informs a compulsive, though debilitating
binary opposition between the West and the Rest, symptomatically expressed by the
negative valorization of the work of Cathy Caruth (Trauma: Explorations in Memory,
1995; Unclaimed Experience; Trauma, Narrative, and History, 1996), often positioned
as “the ur-texts” of contemporary trauma studies, or else an equally symptomatic
neglect of the work of, for example, Kai Erikson (A New Species of Trouble, 1994).
The work of Franz Fanon has come to be positioned as providing a non-Western
approach to trauma studies. And yet considering how Fanon’s work moves across and
between Caribbean, European and North African contexts, to what extent does it make
sense to maintain a unique sense of trauma studies as non-Western, which serves to
assert a unique West? Towards questioning the methodological and ethical value of
49
this dichotomy, we can note Ella Shohat’s “situational” or “relational” approach to
Fanon, which in part she describes as posing “questions about Fanon’s choices of
where, when, and in relation to what and whom he opens up or closes down his
analogies and comparisons” (Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Duke University
Press, 2006, 251). More directly situating trauma within a relational approach,
Michael Rothberg has recently argued that as a category “trauma often functions as
the object of a competitive struggle, a form of cultural capital that bestows moral
privileges” (Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
Decolonization. Stanford University Press, 2009, 87).
We can also note how significant Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) has been for
the study of postcolonial trauma literature. The novel, produced in the very heart of
“the West”, wonderfully corrupts any neat model of “individual” and “collective”, and
can be read to question a decontextualised distinction between an event-based model
of trauma and its belated reverberation or else circumstantial situation as a modality
of social exchange. These three inter-related, though not equivalent registers or
themes have been pointedly addressed, for example, in two recent publications on
South Africa, both from the publisher Rodopi: Ewald Mengel, Michela Borzaga and
Karin Orantes (eds) Trauma, Memory, and Narrative in South Africa: Interviews,
2010; and Ewald Mengel and Michela Borzaga (eds) Trauma, Memory, and Narrative
in the Contemporary South African Novel, 2012.
Papers are invited to develop a more relational, comparative approach to postcolonial
trauma studies, to better take account of physical and imaginary flows and movements
across and between geographies, historiographies and related conceptual registers.
Some of the following questions/themes can be addressed:
- What is the potential of trauma studies to further a more relational compass of
postcolonial studies?
- To what extent can cultural production engaging experiences and articulations of
trauma in both settler and postcolony geographies extend the scope of the
postcolonial?
- How does and can postcolonial trauma studies adapt an ethical register for research
on gendered, ethnicised and racialised relationships between personal and public
trauma (rather than, or in tension to, individual and collective)?
- How can postcolonial trauma studies maintain a tension between an event-based
model and a belated model towards situating testimony, witnessing and responsibility,
as both discursive and social modalities of exchange.
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- How does a circumstantial scope of trauma as ongoing, pressing situation
foreground the temporalizing limits of event-based and belated models?
- To what extent can postcolonial trauma studies take into account more layered and
inter-textual relationships between history and memory?
In focusing on one or more of these themes (as well as relevant others), papers may
address literature, film, autobiography and memoir, theatre and performance,
curatorial and exhibition practices, as well as other practices of cultural and media
production emphasising a more documentary register.
Abstracts or else queries should be sent to Saadi Nikro: saado33@hotmail.com by
March 15, 2013. Essays should be submitted to Postcolonial Text by August 30, 2013,
logging into http://postcolonial.org and following the prompts.
Dr.Norman Saadi Nikro
Research Fellow
Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
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New Essays on Marilynne Robinson
Due: March 15, 2013
Rodopi Press
stjason@umbc.com
Call For Papers
The Rodopi Press Dialogue Series seeks proposals for new writings to be included in
a volume of critical essays devoted to Pulitzer-prize winning author Marilynne
Robinson’s fiction with specific emphasis on the novels Gilead and Home, as well as
her first novel, Housekeeping, and her collected and uncollected essays. The volume
seeks submissions in the following areas:
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Robinson’s ecological concerns and their relationship to her spirituality and
aesthetics.
Robinson’s influence on contemporary writers via her work in the Iowa Writers
Workshop.
Robinson and mid-Western American writing. Submissions may focus
specifically on late 19th century Midwestern regionalism or, broadly, on 20th
century Midwestern authors.
Robinson and portrayals of the American small town, including more recent
examples (such as Richard Russo’s Empire Falls). Essays might consider how
Robinson engages with many negative or satiric depictions of small town life in
American fiction and drama.
Robinson’s portrayal of domestic spaces and her apparent anti-sentimentalism.
Themes could include filial relations, reversed parent roles, food, illness, death,
grieving.
Robinson and the politics of memory, especially bearing upon continuing
debates over what it means to be living in a “post-Civil Rights era.”
Robinson in relation to popular religious fiction. Examples of popular religious
writing would include not only the overexposed genre of apocalyptic thrillers,
but also romances, westerns, novelizations of Bible stories, or historical novels.
Does Robinson represent the alterity to Christian genre fiction or are there
points of overlap?
Can recent attempts, by John McClure (among others), to define “the
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post-secular” in American literature adequately theorize Robinson’s ideas about
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faith, conversion, enchantment, multiculturalism, activism, and the public
sphere?
Robinson’s interventions in the “Culture Wars”: “we want the past back,” she
says in The Death of Adam, “but we don’t know what it was.” To what past
does Robinson point us for instruction?
Robinson has long been affiliated with Congregationalism and has written
about characters whose theologies and sensibilities are permeated by the
Calvinist tradition. How does Robinson’s positioning of Calvinism in American
thought and politics compare with that of other writers and scholars?
Robinson interpreted theologically. Conceptual lenses could include: divine
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grace, agape, assurance, communion, sin, theodicy, cosmology, messianism,
apologetics, ethics, nonbelief.
With John Updike’s passing, Robinson is now the most critically acclaimed
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Protestant author in the U. S. (though far less prolific). Would we gain from
considering her high profile Protestantism in light of the example of Updike’s
long career, which often saw controversy over his stances, both perceived and
avowed?
Robinson’s international reputation. She has been interviewed for the Paris
Review, but does her work, which is so often focused on what might appear to
be parochial settings and situations, promise to become (or is it already
becoming) part of “a world republic of letters,” to borrow Pascale Casanova’s
phrase?
The volume’s editors will consider submissions across a range of writing styles and
scholarly methods in order to achieve a collection of the most compelling and
readable essays. Scholars, advanced doctoral students, artists and independent
intellectuals are invited to submit.
Submissions
Send C.V. and 500 word proposal (with contact information) to Jason Stevens Visiting
Professor, UMBC 2012-13 (stjason@umbc.com)
Deadline: March 15th, 2013
About the Series: The Dialogue Series publishes new and recent criticism on literary
writing that has elicited or is eliciting critical debate. In addition, Dialogue devotes
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occasional volumes to neglected works deemed worthy of renewed critical attention.
The Dialogue Series is devoted primarily to literary works written in English (or
translated into English) after 1900.
The planned volume on Marilynne Robinson is part of a planned line of edited
Dialogue Series volumes devoted to on Contemporary Authors.
For more info, visit our Website and Facebook pages:
http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=DIALOGUE
https://www.facebook.com/DialogueSeries
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Spectral Spaces and Hauntings (anthology)
Due: March 29, 2013
Dr Christina Lee, Curtin University (Bentley, Western Australia)
c.lee@curtin.edu.au
CALL FOR PAPERS: Spectral Spaces and Hauntings (anthology)
Edited by Christina Lee
“We moderns, despite our mechanistic and rationalistic ethos, live in landscapes filled
with ghosts.” (Michael Bell, 1997: 813)
We are soliciting contributions for an anthology which will explore the spectral
quality of space. The language of ‘hauntings’ will be implemented to unpack how
absence, emptiness and the imperceptible can signify an overwhelming presence of
something (that once was, and still is) there. A major premise of the book is that space
is constituted of both physical terrain and psychological landscapes that are infused
with memory and history. As such, places are always ambivalent.
The anthology is committed to generating critical dialogue surrounding how
hauntings and the spectral create affective spaces that have very real and powerful
impacts upon identity and experience. At the core, we ask: how and why do certain
places haunt us? The book will be an interdisciplinary project drawing from fields that
include Cultural Studies, History, Sociology, Geography, Fine Art and Film Studies.
Possible areas of research include (though are not limited to):
•sites of memorialisation e.g. monuments, grave sites, museums
•former sites of conflict/violence/disaster e.g. crime scenes, internment camps
•abandoned sites and structures e.g. disused buildings, deserted towns
•heritage sites
•transformed landscapes e.g. gentrified neighbourhoods, reclaimed territories
•sites of clandestine activity
Submissions (abstracts of 250–300 words) must be sent via email to the editor before
29 March, 2013. This should include a short author bio and recent publications.
Accepted contributions (6,500–7,500 words) will be due 30 August, 2013.
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Contributors, please address all inquiries and proposals to:
Dr Christina Lee (c.lee@curtin.edu.au)
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InTensions Issue 7: Fun and Games – Playing to the
Limit
Due: April 15, 2013
InTensions
aguevara@yorku.ca
Call for Submissions
InTensions is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed e-journal published out of Fine Arts
at York University. This initiative brings together interventions by scholars and artists
whose work deals with the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence,
and sensory regimes.
To play is human. Play is a social act of often unclear boundaries. The delineation of
playing as a special conditional form of doing or acting in the world relies upon
registers of seriousness, authenticity, consequence and import, yet these registers are
ultimately ambiguous. Play can materialize and relativize banal affective and social
relations. Play can imagine, insist on the possibility of, or suppress, difference. Play
may provoke shock or distraction, conceal or reveal intention. Play may be
encouraged or denied, rewarded or punished, feared, disdained, addictive, fatal.
In this issue, we invite scholarly/artistic contributions that engage the relations
between play, power, and social reproduction. We welcome theoretical explorations,
as well as reflections, experiments, reports, or ethnographies on play and playfulness
in its lived, historical, and cultural contexts.
Papers (4000-6000 words), artist works, reviews and interviews can be submitted by
April 15, 2013 to:
David Harris Smith (dhsmith@mcmaster.ca)
Elysée Nouvet (nouvete@yahoo.com)
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