This panel seeks to explore the various modes of navigating the often complicated relationship between the individual and the community, between private and public, in postcolonial and contemporary Irish literature and poetry. How does Ireland's particular brand of nationalism and postcolonial history allow the individual to delineate his or her own relationship with the larger community? For instance, how does the secret, an object fraught with difficulty in light of Ireland's history of censorship and secret societies, navigate these borders of private and public? Or, how does the use of humor mitigate, or facilitate, power struggles between these borders?

The International Anchoritic Society is sponsoring a session at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, UK (July 9-12 2012) on the Ancrene Wisse -- please visit https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/index.html for more information about the conference. The theme of the conference is rules, but please do not feel you have to limit your presentation to that aspect of the text.

Please send abstracts for 20-minute papers to Susannah Chewning, chewning@ucc.edu. Deadline for abstracts: Wednesday, 28 September.

Jorge Luis Borges' influence on literature has been immense, both in his native Argentina and throughout the world. Umberto Eco once wrote that while James Joyce "designed with words," Borges "designed with ideas." These ideas have had a tremendous impact throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. For example, the genre of magical realism that Borges helped to inspire has in turn inspired writers as diverse as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, José Saramango and Toni Morrison among many others. Likewise, postmodern authors such as Eco, Italo Calvino, John Barth, and Thomas Pynchon have all cited Borges as a key influence on their work.

The Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association will hold its 33nd Annual Conference in Albuquerque, NM on February 8-11, 2012. Proposals are welcomed from established scholars as well as graduate students for individual presentations, panels, or roundtable discussions on any aspect of Women in Popular Culture and especially those which reflect the conference theme of Celebrating Foods & Culture(s) in a Global Context. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

This panel will explore "experience" as a constructed form of knowledge in American literature. Papers
 may focus on one text, on works by one author, or on multiple writers. I am also interested in essays centering on experience in connection with American literary historiography. Of particular interest are analyses of scholarly traditions that privilege experience as an epistemological category—often in the service of arguments that foreground the distinctiveness and/or the exceptional quality of American culture. Essays may address any American literary period(s), genre(s), and/or themes. Papers may also compare constructions of experience in American literature with the literatures of other linguistic, national, and/or cultural groups.

Call for Papers
43rd Annual Convention
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
March 15-18, 2012
Rochester, New York

Using and [Re]Fusing The Bible: Revision and Parody in Medieval Britain (Roundtable)

2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Aldous Huxley's final novel, _Island_ (1962), and 2013 will observe the half-century since his death. The panel session will reexamine Huxley's work (of any genre) in light of its influence on and relevance to contemporary culture, ideas, and movements. The panel's scope intends to be broad and inclusive, to encourage new North American scholarly attention on Huxley and his works. Of particular interest are new approaches that place Huxley in dialogue with other artists and intellectuals within and beyond Anglo-American traditions.

Send 250-word abstract to Bill Harrison, harrison@geneseo.edu.

Call for Submissions: Edited collection on the recently-concluded WB/CW television series Smallville (01/15/12, 06/01/12)

Editors: Cory Barker, Chris Ryan and Myc Wiatrowski, Bowling Green State University

The Sandstar Review is an online literary magazine that seeks unpublished prose for its second issue. (Note: prose may include scripts.) Poetry is also accepted, but will be deferred to the third issue. Send up to 6 poems or 15 pages of prose; cover letter and bio appreciated. Simultaneous submissions accepted upon notification of publication elsewhere.

Send all work in one document (poetry or prose; no combined submissions) to sandstar.review@gmail.com. Further guidelines may be found here.

Conference Call for Papers

HOME/LAND: WOMEN, CITIZENSHIP, PHOTOGRAPHIES
5-7 July 2012
The School of the Arts, Loughborough University, UK

Home/Land is an interdisciplinary conference that asks what dialogues might be engendered, globally and locally, around concepts of citizenship and belonging by engaging with women's photographic practices. In the terms of this conference, 'photographic practices' may include both historical and contemporary work, still and/or moving image, derived from fine art and social science contexts and embracing genres such as portraiture, landscape, documentary and installation.

Abstracts due December 21, 2011 (250-300 words; include contact info and short bio)
Final essays due Winter 2012 (4,000-8,000 words)

Too often, students of medieval English literature unnecessarily categorize Old and Middle English as completely disconnected, highlighting Beowulf and Chaucer as the exemplary markers, with little in between. This panel seeks instead to explore moments of interaction across the spectrum of earlier and later medieval English literature. Examples may include parallel literary forms, English identities, linguistic developments, and the ways that they interact with historical, religious, and social frameworks.

The theme for this graduate conference is Seeing the Future in The Past: Critical and Creative Interpretations. It will take place in Chico, CA on November 5th. In the fields of literary criticism/theory, composition, and creative writing we often look to the past for lessons that apply to the present and future. Which authors and eras are still worth looking at and which have been overlooked? Should the literary canon stay the same or change? We spend so much time looking at theory and literature that is separated from us by decades if not centuries. How are these figures and works still relevant to us today? Should we be looking at more contemporary work? In composition, what theory speaks to our time?

Applied Nonexistence: A Journal of Negation Theory (Vol. 1)

www.appliednonexistence.org