category: african-american

[UPDATE] SAMLA 2013: (Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean (due June 10)

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:39:01 -0400

2013 SAMLA CONFERENCE, NOV 8-10, ATLANTA

SPECIAL SESSION: "(Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean"

We often think of globalization as a contemporary phenomenon, characterized by the way high-speed technologies have changed everything from market dynamics to social relations. Many scholars, however, see the current phase of globalization as part of an historical process beginning as early as the sixteenth century. The Caribbean has, indeed, been a transnational site from the time of its original European colonization, soon followed by the importation of coerced labor from Africa, South Asia, and China. Today, the region remains populated by a wide variety of ethnic groups, highly trafficked by tourists from around the world, and economically tied to foreign currencies and markets. Additionally, high rates of migration from the Caribbean to North America and Europe have created an immense Caribbean diaspora that retains cultural and economic ties to the region, facilitated in part by new technologies and alliances.

Images of the Caribbean have thus been documented, constructed, and circulated globally from the rise of print culture to the dawn of the digital age. This panel seeks proposals engaging any aspect of the conference theme, “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds,” in relation to literature and/or other media from any part of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Some possible topics include:

The “digital humanities” and Caribbean studies
Visual images of the Caribbean
Cartographic representations of the Caribbean
Caribbean service economies—tourism, textiles and “free trade” zones, data mining, banking, etc.
Regionalism, Nationalism, Transnationalism
Marketing the Caribbean/the Caribbean market
Intra-Caribbean exchange and migration
Local and regional grassroots activist networks in the Caribbean
Caribbean diasporas—cultural, economic, and/or social networks

Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words and a brief bio (not CV) of <100 words, in Word or PDF, to Kristine A. Wilson (wilson67@purdue.edu). DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 10, 2013.

Apollon eJournal - Undergraduate Submissions deadline 6/15/2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:43:39 -0400

Check the website, apollonejournal.org, for submission details on publication, or for an application to work with us

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Apollon invites undergraduate students to get published in, review submissions for, or help edit a the third issue of our peer-reviewed eJournal, Apollon. By publishing superior examples of undergraduate academic work, Apollon highlights the importance of undergraduate research in the humanities. Apollon welcomes submissions that feature image, text, sound, and a variety of presentation platforms in the process of showcasing the many species of undergraduate research.

ABOUT THE PROJECT
Apollon, an undergraduate humanities eJournal, is a peer-reviewed publication for undergraduate humanities majors. Apollon features undergraduate research developed in humanities courses, and thus emphasizes faculty-student collaborations beyond the classroom. We invite interested students to join us by contributing leadership or original work to Apollon. Our student team participates at all levels of this ongoing project (design, review, and publication) to offer their peers a real outlet for intellectual work in the humanities. For more information you can go to the program website, www.apollonejournal.org, talk to your professors, or contact the Faculty Director, Jason Cohen, at (859) 985-3765 or cohenj@berea.edu.

SAMLA Special Session on Creating or Expanding a BA Program in English During Uncertain Times (June 20th- Abstract Deadline)

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:05:03 -0400

This panel invites participants from any college or university where there is an interest in building a B.A. in English or establishing a new programmatic track within the discipline. Participants need not be at any particular point in the process, and we hope to incorporate a diverse array of experiences and viewpoints. In other words, participants may only be thinking about the possibility of creating a program or they might be on the other side of the process. This panel will also consider what types of programs should/need to be created to meet the changing needs of students in the 21st century. We hope that this session will produce a vibrant dialogue that will serve as a bridge to future cooperation.

Because of the collaborative nature of this panel, we would like to create a roundtable atmosphere in which the audience plays an active role. Participants will each provide an informal 5-10 minute talk about their experiences and the advice they have about the process and then the rest of the session will be dedicated to having an open dialogue.

Instead of traditional proposals, those interested should send a brief 250 word description of their experiences and what they would like to gain from participating in the panel. Accepted descriptions will be shared with all participants to help generate a productive discussion. In order to be considered, these descriptions should be sent to SOrtolano@Edison.edu by June 20th.

Featured Speaker: Dr. Kristie Fleckenstein, Professor of English at Florida State University; co-collaborator in the creation and administration of FSU's undergraduate program in Editing, Writing, and Media

Call for Papers - Patents for Humanity Special Issue - August 23 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:08:55 -0400

In recognition of the USPTO’s Patents for Humanity program, Technology and Innovation - Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors, will be publishing a special issue highlighting influential humanitarian technologies, including the innovation and imagination seen in the Patents for Humanity contest submissions.

To this end, T&I is soliciting abstracts for articles or commentaries on humanitarian patents. We hope that all finalists of the Patents for Humanity contest will consider contributing to the issue.

Abstracts should be submitted by June 8, 2013. The abstract submission should contain: title, author affiliation, abstract of no more than 250 words, key words, and corresponding author’s contact information. Upon approval, full manuscripts will be due by August 23, 2013.

All submissions should meet Technology and Innovation’s author instructions and should be submitted through T&I’s website, http://submissions.academyofinventors.org/index.php/journal/about/.

Articles should concern patented technologies or innovations that have made/have the potential for making significant contributions to humanity. Articles may include commentaries by field experts concerning patents, original articles describing the development and research towards a technology or patent, and/or narrative-like stories that emphasize the societal benefits of select innovations.

Submissions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:
• Economics of a technology, governmental and policy action, and innovation
• Environmental impact of various technologies/patent types
• Health impacts of technologies and innovations
• Analyses of the distribution and access to technology

If you have any questions, please contact Editorial Assistant Diana Vergara at TIJournal@research.usf.edu.

Technology and Innovation is published by Cognizant Communication Corporation.

UPDATE: Reinterpreting Carson McCullers (The 85th Annual SAMLA Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, November 8-10, 2013)

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:32:36 -0400

DEADLINE EXTENDED: JUNE 1, 2013

To inspire more work on Georgia writer Carson McCullers and her legacy, this panel invites papers discussing innovative ways of analyzing texts related to McCullers, whether biographies, literary works, or adaptations of either. These reinterpretations might include discussions of McCullers’ works in the context of her contemporaries (Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, et al), film or dramatic adaptations of her work, or her contributions to today’s southern gothic, Grit Lit, and/or Queer Studies. We welcome essays that address the conference’s theme “Cultures, Contexts, Images, and Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds” as related to studies of McCullers (however, the scope of the panel is not limited by this theme).
Please e-mail abstracts (250 to 500 words) to Courtney George, george_courtney2@columbusstate.edu, by 1 June 2013.

Gender, Identity and Sexuality for NEPCA conference; deadline June 10, 2013; conference 10/25-26

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:59:35 -0400

Currently soliciting paper proposals for the upcoming NEPCA conference at St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont, October 25/26, 2013.

Papers may deal with any aspect of gender and identity, sex and sexuality in popular culture. Papers focusing on recent public and media discourse regarding marriage equality are especially welcome, though papers on all topics within the areas listed above are encouraged.

Please submit a 250-word abstract,as an attachment in MSWord, to Dr. Donald P. Gagnon at the email address listed. Please include your university or college affiliation and preferred email and telephone contact information. Deadline for submissions is June 10.

GagnonD@wcsu.edu

[NeMLA 2014] Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:14:15 -0400

Conference: Northeast Modern Language Association Convention (2014)
Date: April 3-6, 2014
Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Panel Title: "Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory"

Panel Description:

While affect theory has expanded the analysis of affect and emotion within the humanities, a surprisingly small set of feelings has taken prominence within the field. Indeed, critics such as Heather Love, Sianne Ngai, and Sara Ahmed evince a strong bias toward negative affects. Within a consumer culture that praises positive feeling at every turn, these scholars argue, "ugly feelings" appear to afford critical agency for cultural resistance. One consequence of this thesis, however, is that positive affects such as pleasure, happiness, and peace appear suspiciously complicit with dominant ideologies. Recently, critics within queer studies have begun to challenge this logic. For example, Elizabeth Freeman, Jose Munoz, and Michael Snediker each identify the critical agency of pleasure, hope, and optimism for marginalized communities. Yet much work remains to be done within affect theory to challenge the binary between positive and negative feelings and to complicate their respective relationships to cultural power. To that end, this panel seeks papers that expand the palette of affects traditionally analyzed within affect studies. How might these understudied affects operate as "critical" in contemporary literature and culture? Why do certain affects signify as "critical" whereas others fall to the margins? How can affect theory redefine our conceptions of cultural critique and critical agency more broadly?

Papers are welcome to focus on a single affect, a genera of feelings, or the theoretical problem of affect as a whole. However, panelists are encouraged to ground their arguments within a specific a cultural and historical context.

Submit 250-500 word abstracts to tyler.bradway@gmail.com by September 30th, 2013.

ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:38:32 -0400

From Escape in the Fog (1945) to Ride Lonesome (1959), among many other titles, few filmmakers created as unique a body of work in the United States as Budd Boetticher (1916-2001), but few directors have been as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature.

We are currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 100 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Boetticher to appear in 2015. Essays may focus on individual films or on themes and topics that pervade his films. These essays may also focus in work in other media, such as television.

Essays included in the refereed anthology will be of approximately 5,000 to 8,000 words, referenced in Chicago endnote style.

The Films of Budd Boetticher will be one of the first scholarly editions to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press in a new series of anthologies examining overlooked American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Ph.D. and Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D.

Please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract, and email them to both:

Gary D. Rhodes
Film Studies
The Queen’s University of Belfast
gdrhodes@gmail.com

Robert Singer
CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies
collegenowsinger@aol.com

ReFocus: Announcing a New Series of Film/American Studies Anthologies

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:32:25 -0400

In 2015, the University of Edinburgh Press will launch a multivolume series of scholarly, refereed anthologies entitled ReFocus. Edited by Robert Singer (CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies) and Gary D. Rhodes (Queens University, Belfast), each book in the series will focus on an overlooked American film director who worked in the studio system, independent cinema, experimental filmmaking, or documentary tradition.

ReFocus will feature a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of the work of these American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture --its myths, values, and historical precepts. This series will consider any director who created a historical space, either in or out of the studio system, beginning with the origins of American cinema and continuing up to the present. This research may include work in other media, such as television.

The first four books in the series will cover the careers and films of George Cukor, Budd Boetticher, Fred Zinnemann, and Ida Lupino.

We will shortly begin soliciting proposals on-line for the Boetticher, Zinnemann, and Lupino editions, as well as for future volumes.

We are hopeful that proposals will appear on such filmmakers as Dorothy Arzner, William Castle, Fred Wiseman, Lionel Rogosin, Spencer Williams, Mervyn LeRoy, Rouben Mamoulian, Tobe Hooper, Robert Florey, Doris Wishman, Lizzie Borden, Amy Heckerling, Franklin Schaffner, and Woody van Dyke, among others.

If you are interested in editing such a volume, please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract/proposal and email to both:

Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D.
Film Studies
The Queen’s University of Belfast
gdrhodes@gmail.com

Robert Singer, Ph.D.
CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies
collegenowsinger@aol.com

Intersecting Gender - 22nd - 23rd November 2013, Queen's University Belfast

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:26:57 -0400

The idea of intersectionality in the field of feminist and gender studies has increasingly been used to facilitate deeper understandings of contemporary gendered identity and experience. Intersectionality in this usage seeks to speak to the coinciding of gender with other biological, social and cultural categories of personal identity and/or oppression, but also to the intersections which can be observed between gender and other apparently “gender-neutral” areas and experiences.

The Sibéal Irish Postgraduate Feminist & Gender Studies Network will hold their annual conference in Queen’s University Belfast on 22nd and 23rd November. The conference invites engagement with the intersections of gender as they can be detected in a range of locations, spaces and manners. The conference seeks to stimulate a wide and inter-disciplinary approach to the theorisation and everyday practice of gender identity. To that end, paper, panel and performance proposals are sought on, but not limited to:

Practice-based and theoretical perspectives on gender, sexuality and LGBTQI concerns as they relate to:
• The Arts, Literature and Performance
• Law, Politics and Development
• Health and Bodies
• Community and Activism
• Conflict and Nationality
• Economy, Poverty and Welfare

We highly encourage postgraduate students at the MA and PhD level from any area or discipline with an interest in feminist or gender studies to submit proposals.

Abstracts or proposals of no more than 250 words should be submitted to sibealbelfast@gmail.com

All selected papers should be twenty minutes long.

Deadline for submission is 16th August 2013.

A number of travel bursaries and a best paper prize will be available to conference presenters, further information on these will be made available after the close of the call for papers. Further information on the conference can be found at www.intersectinggender.wordpress.com

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:11:49 -0400

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Edited by Robert McKay & John Miller (University of Sheffield, UK)

The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

Wolves lope across the gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to the human, they become, in the figure of the werewolf, liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal: humans in animal form and animals in human form. They are metonyms of forbidding landscapes, an unsettling howl in the distance; more intimately, their imposing fangs and gaping mouths threaten a monstrous consumption. The gothic wolf is singular, anomalous but gothic wolves form a demonic multiplicity, a pack. Wolves and werewolves function as a site for working out or contesting complex anxieties of difference: of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality; but the
imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long demonized and persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Wolves, then, raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

We welcome proposals for chapters on any aspect of wolves, werewolves and the Gothic on page or screen in any historical period for a collection of essays to be submitted to The University of Wales Press series of Gothic Literary Studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that seek to read gothic wolves in the context of material histories of (for example) human/animal relations; environmental development; empire and globalization; and gender and sexuality.

Please send chapter abstracts of 500 words along with a short biography to Robert McKay (r.mckay@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by July 31st, 2013. Completed essays will be 6500 words in length and will be commissioned in September 2013 for delivery in the autumn of 2014.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not restricted to:

Lycanthropy/metamorphosis
Real and imaginary wolves
Animal ethics and the anthropomorphic imagination
Monstrosity
Fangs, mouths, the oral and the abject
Lupine presences and gothic spaces
Wolves and the Postcolonial Gothic
Captivity/escape
Wolf to Man – gothic politics from Plautus to Hobbes to Agamben
Gothic wolves, capital and globalization
Sublimity
Natural and unnatural histories
Wolf packs/lone wolves: multitudes and singularities
Ecocritical readings
Zoonosis
She-wolves, he-wolves and gender criticism
Wolfish appetite
Howling and gothic soundscapes
Queer readings
Dogs/wolves; ferity/ferocity
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Wolves and psychoanalysis from Freud to Deleuze and Guattari
Reforming the Gothic: comic (or teen) werewolves

Call for Abstracts/Book:"A Practical Guide to Prepare Graduate Students of Color for their First Job in Academia"

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:35:03 -0400

As many of us who are members of academia know, most graduate students are not prepared for the political and social rigors of their first tenure track position. Most colleges and university environments are filled with roadblocks, pitfalls and other often unexpected challenges for newly minted Ph.D., Ed.D., MFA., J.D.s, and those with other terminal degrees. This is particularly true for junior faculty of color, women, Gay and Lesbian, and other underrepresented faculty.

Professors Dwayne Mack and Elwood Watson, the editors of a forthcoming collection of essays tentatively titled "Telling it Like it Is: A Practical Guide to Prepare Graduate Students of Color for their First Job in Academia," invite faculty and administrators to submit abstracts related to their early and/or current experiences in academia. While stories of challenges, adversity and barriers are welcome, this is primarily an anthology for educators to mentor, rather than simply outline grievances. This edited volume will give faculty and administrators the opportunity to reflect and share strategies with graduate students of color on how to transition from graduate school to a tenure-track/tenure-stream position.

Contributors are asked to share their personal experiences on topics such as interviewing strategies, c.v. preparation, finding the right institutional fit, negotiating a contract, outlining a tenure and promotion plan, responding to microaggressions, macroaggressions, sexism, racism, homophobic attitudes, religious and cultural prejudice, avoiding cultural taxation, effective teaching and publishing strategies, managing service and teaching expectations, and developing meaningful relationships with junior and senior faculty. Other similarly related topics are welcomed as well.

We feel that this forthcoming collection of essays will provide a valuable service as well as prepare graduate students of color for professional success. We welcome collaborative pieces and submissions from scholars at majority White institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), small liberal arts colleges, Research I institutions, and Community Colleges.

Please send an abstract – no more than 350 words by July 29, 2013 to
Dwayne Mack, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History and Carter G. Woodson Chair of African American History
Berea College
Department of History
CPO 2027
Berea, Kentucky 40404
dwayne_mack@berea.edu
We will accept abstracts via U.S. mail, but electronic abstracts are preferred.

Italian-American Identity Politics, New Orleans, Oct. 3-5, 2013

Wed, 08 May 2013 06:39:07 -0400

Italian American Studies Association
2013 Conference
Call for Papers

Italian-American Identity Politics

New Orleans Marriott
October 3-5, 2013

This year’s conference examines the politics of the identifying term “Italian American” from multiple perspectives and in different time periods. The evocation of “Italian American” for political purposes and agendas has a varied history, e.g., to combat anti-Italian American discrimination, to rally allegiance to Mussolini’s Fascist regime, or to support feminism. In addition to various ideological positions, the structures for conjuring and maintaining ethnic identity have also been myriad, including newspapers, the Catholic Church, commercial marketing, voluntary associations, and social media sites What are the social conditions in which the ever-changing narratives of collective identity are formulated and perpetuated? How are ethnic symbols and practices mustered and re-invented at the service of “Italian American?” And ultimately, how do competing politics reveal and engender intragroup tensions but possibly also productive dialogue, both of which might re-configure understandings and enactments of the very term “Italian American?”

Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

•Who gets to speak for Italian Americans, both within and outside of academia, political venues, cultural venues, etc.?;
•The use of identity politics by community leaders, the press, scholars, and others;
•The limitations and/or role of public policy in shaping and/or supporting Italian American identities/communities, e.g., public housing during the 1930s-1940s, suburban development during the 1950s and 1960s, the celebration of Columbus Day;
•The self-conscious development and use of cultural and expressive forms of ethnic identity;
•The co-opting of identity politics by consumerist culture, from reality television to Olive Garden commercials;
•Resistance to elite notions of Italian-American identity;
•The role of voluntary organizations in the formation of a politicized and political Italian-American collective identity; and
•Italian Americans as a political entity in electoral politics, in Italy’s voting abroad, in relation to political activism or electoral politics in other countries with an Italian diaspora.

The conference is interdisciplinary and inter-genre in its perspective and thus is open to scholars in different disciplines, creative writers (novelists, poets, and memoirists), and visual and media artists. The conference committee is open to papers not addressing this year’s conference theme.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT www.italianamericanstudies.net.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: JUNE 15, 2013.
Abstracts for scholarly papers (up to 500 words, plus a note on technical requirements) and a brief, narrative biography should be emailed as attached documents, by June 15, 2013, to iasa2013conf@italianamericanstudies.net to whom other inquiries may also be addressed.

We encourage the submission of organized panels (of no more than three presenters and a chairperson). Submission for a panel must be made by a single individual on behalf of the group, with all the paper titles, abstract narratives, and individual biographies. The conference committee encourages organized panels that are interdisciplinary and inter-genre.

All presentations are to last no longer than twenty minutes, including audio and visual illustrations that accompany presentations.

An individual can be a paper presenter, a panel chair, a panel discussant, and a roundtable participant but cannot be any one of these more than once, eg., being a presenter and a discussant but not chairing two different panels.

Individual paper and panel proposals should include requests for audiovisual equipment (eg., computer projector).

Prospective presenters may expect to be advised of their acceptance or otherwise by August 1, 2013.

All presenters, respondents, and discussants must be members in good standing of the Italian American Studies Association by September 15, 2013.

Conference Committee:
Bénédicte Deschamps
Michael Eula
Laura E. Ruberto
Joseph Sciorra, chair

[UPDATE] MMLA 2013 Special Session: Irony and Authenticity in Contemporary Artistic Production

Wed, 08 May 2013 02:19:59 -0400

Is there room for earnestness and authenticity in contemporary media? In accordance with the 2013 Midwest Modern Language Association conference theme of "Art & Artifice", This panel explores the intersection of authenticity and irony in literature, film, music, and other media. While stable irony depends upon fixed meanings intended to elicit specific interpretations from an audience, contemporary theories of language, identity, and community emphasize the ultimate contingency and instability of meaning. Thus, the possibility for irony is thrown into question; is irony impossible, or is irony all-pervasive? Likewise, is any form of authenticity or earnestness possible in artistic production? What happens when an earnest art form is treated ironically? How can we interpret irony or authenticity as such?

Papers from a variety of fields that explore at least two different media will be particularly useful for this discussion, though single-media topics are also welcome. This panel would greatly benefit from a respondent, as well.

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JUNE 1. Please send a 250-300 word abstract and brief vitae to panel organizer Janessa Toro
(jltz85@mail.missouri.edu). Conference Program Deadline has been extended: June 28; Conference Registration: July 12.

Translation and Transcendence conference: 25-26 October, 2013, Toronto

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:22:23 -0400

Modern Horizons CFP – Translation and Transcendence

For the third annual Modern Horizons conference—to be held October 25th and 26th, 2013 in Toronto, Ontario—we invite proposals for 20 minutes presentations, in English or French, on ‘Translation and Transcendence.’
Translation is prevalent in many aspects of life, whether one works between languages or across cultural divides. If translation happens each time something different, new, or unexpected is confronted or experienced, then it is basic to almost any register of human life. While recognizing that translation is often thought of as communication between languages, we wish to expand on this concept with the aim of addressing issues of identity, tradition, relationships, responsibility, and forms of culture. This conference will re-examine these ideas by considering translation alongside transcendence.

Considering translation and transcendence together is significant; since translation is literally a carrying across of meaning, transcendence is what makes this possible as it allows translation to be distinguished from mere imitation, formal repetition, or reproduction in other media. Thought of in this way, translation involves both continuity and change, because transcendence allows for the rejuvenation of ideas and experiences across change of context. Change and continuity are essentially related: we can only recognize either one through the presence of its counterpart. Contextually present, translation denies an overemphasis of one’s own time (and place), for it necessarily conjugates past with present, and in doing so prepares for a translated future.

Along with its fundamental connection with transcendence, one may think of translation in terms of appropriation and completion. Translation as appropriation occurs when the Other (text or person) is drawn into and becomes a part of our own ethos (our being, sensibility, or ethical disposition) and yet does not lose its own proper essence, its 'transcendent' difference. Translation as completion occurs when we recognize that the Other (text or person) must be read or heard in order for its meaning to be complete. This is not to say that meaning is finalized, but rather that nothing stands in a vacuum, and encounter and affirmation are essential to meaning.

With these ideas in mind, we invite abstracts of 500 words or full papers (taking not more than 20 minutes). Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
- translation and justice
- translation within tradition
- translation and scripture/the sacred
- translation as appropriation
- translation as completion
- translation and threats to integrity
- translation and fragments/the fragmentary
- translation, immanence, and transcendence
- translation and hermeneutics
- translation as response
- translation as mimesis
- translation and the question of origin
- translation and authenticity
- translation as dialogue
- translation and the question of form
- translation and fundamentalism
- the question of untranslatability
- the role of the translator today
- the limits of literal translation
- translation, metaphor, symbolism

Please submit abstracts or full papers to editors@modernhorizonsjournal.ca by 15 June 2013.
Modern Horizons
modernhorizonsjournal.ca
editors@modernhorizonsjournal.ca

trans* : Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference, Keynote José Muñoz, October 18, 2013

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:08:23 -0400

Call for Papers

3rd Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference
Tufts University
October 18, 2013
Keynote: José Muñoz

trans*

In the Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway famously suggests, "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras." Chimeras are amalgams, hybrid beings that stand both in and between disparate identities. They are bodies in transit; they are transforming and potentially transformative bodies. At a contemporary moment in which identity politics have material, potentially violent, effects on bodies and subjects, the mobile and undecided limits of what Judith Butler terms the "recognizably human" pose an especially pressing set of questions. This year's conference theme takes up the questions of the transnational, the transsexual, the transhistorical, and other states of being in trans*.

We solicit papers from all areas of the humanities on being suspended between or moving across two states of being. Some questions of interest include: What are historical moments of fissure at which trans* figures emerge? How might the trans* figure transfigure structures of identity and power? In what ways are identities and bodies transfixed? What constitutes an act of transgression? How do new technologies translate and transform identities?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Citizenship and transnationalism
- Translation and transposition
- Technology and the mechanical
- Queer bodies and identity politics
- Temporality and historiography
- Intersectionality and interdisciplinarity

Please send abstracts of 250 words or less to tuftsgradhumanitiesconference@gmail.com by June 15, 2013.

‘Bibliography in the Digital Age’ conference: Sydney, Australia, 20–22 November 2013 [CFP deadline 26 July]

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:25:07 -0400

The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will be held at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 20–22 November 2013 on the theme of ‘Bibliography in the Digital Age’.

The Society invites abstracts for presentations relevant to the theme of the conference, ranging from digital scholarship, digital scholarly editions, digitising and promoting collections online through to antiquarian dealers and the material book in the digital age.

Abstracts should be of approximately 250 words for 20 minute presentations and should be received by the conference convenor, Maggie Patton, Manager, Original Materials, State Library of New South Wales, Macquarie Street, Sydney, 2000 (mpatton@sl.nsw.gov.au) by Friday 26 July.

See www.bsanz.org for further information and updates.

Fairy Tales: articles for Topic: The W&J Review (deadline: 1 September 2013)

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:59:11 -0400

For the next issue of TOPIC, we are soliciting critical essays on fairy tales, either studies of classic tales or modern retellings, transformations, and refashionings (for adults or children, in poetry or prose, for film/television/web or print).
Essays should be well researched and argued, accessible to an educated reader, and written in a clear, engaging style.

Length: 4000-6000 words, including endnotes.
Style: Chicago, 15th edition (MLA or other styles are fine for submission)
Send completed essays as attachments by 1 September 2013; Word files preferred.

For more information, see http://www2.washjeff.edu/topic/

Alternative, Experimental and Independent Cinemas (November 8-9, 2013; Proposals due July 19, 2013)

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:35:01 -0400

We invite proposals pertaining to alternative, experimental and/or independent cinemas, for presentation in a special series of panels at the Alternative Visions in Media Conference, to be held at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, Texas) November 8-9, 2013.

The conference organizers are seeking historically and theoretically intriguing presentations that explore noteworthy non-, counter-, and/or anti-mainstream media artifacts from any historical era, and from any area across the globe. Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme quite broadly and innovatively, as we encourage submissions from scholars, educators, students, and filmmakers/videographers at all levels and from a wide range of disciplines.

Individual paper presentations will be limited to 20 minutes in length. We also invite submissions of relevant media offerings (of any length, in DVD format) for screening and discussion at the conference.

Given adequate participant interest and high-quality submissions, we are hoping to publish selected papers (with author’s permission) in a special collection of essays pertaining to the conference theme.

Please e-mail presentation proposals containing (a) a one-page abstract with complete contact information (name, institutional affiliation, mail and e-mail addresses, contact telephone number) and (b) a one-paragraph author biography to Professor Kylo-Patrick Hart (k.hart@tcu.edu) on or before Friday, July 19, 2013.

Decisions regarding the status of submitted proposals will be made and communicated as quickly as possible following the submission deadline, and certainly no later than August 1, 2013. For specific inquiries prior to submitting a proposal, please contact Dr. Hart at your convenience by e-mail (k.hart@tcu.edu).

Call For Ecologically-minded Creative and Scholarly Work

Sat, 04 May 2013 18:00:10 -0400

Kudzu Review is seeking work for its Winter Solstice Issue 3.1 as well as for its very first themed issue, "Apocalypse & Renewal." We define ecologically-minded very broadly, and our interest is in a wide range of approaches to literature, theory, creative writing, and visual art. We are interested in everything from epic poems to recipes for kudzu cake!

Check us out today at kudzureview.com.
Deadline for Winter Solstice: September 1st; after that all work is considered for Summer Solstice.

Forms of Reading, Forms of Life

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:56:47 -0400

Forms of Reading, Forms of Life

Observing a national decline in literary reading, in 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts instituted the Big Read Program to revivify what it deemed an indispensable, but endangered, civic activity. In 2009, the NEA celebrated new research indicating that, for the first time in twenty-five years, literary reading in the US was on the rise. Yet what grounds are there for such consternation or celebration? Indeed, why a governmental investment in this cultural practice? And, in a digital era, as new forms of textual production and consumption proliferate, why the emphasis on traditionally defined literary reading? Taking seriously the NEA’s claim that literary reading has “demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications,” this panel asks what distinctive forms of life such reading might nourish. We are particularly interested in considering questions such as the following: How do literary texts exert pressure on readers’ behavior? How do authors and poets imagine the act of interpretation itself in their creative work? Does digital media entail substantively different ethics of reading? How might the study of literature participate in alleviating social problems, such as poverty, illiteracy, debt, global war, or a diminishing food supply? We invite papers exploring these and related issues in the phenomenology and ethics of reading. Papers may address imaginative and/or theoretical texts from any historical period, national provenance, or (non-)print idiom. All critical orientations are welcome. By June 15, 2013, please submit abstracts of no more than 350 words to Benjamin Sammons, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at bsammons@email.unc.edu and Benjamin Mangrum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at bmangrum@email.unc.edu.

UPDATE: CFP: 9/11 Popular Culture (Panels for MPCA,Oct 11-13, 2013); May 15 deadline

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:38:08 -0400

The Midwest Popular Association / American Culture Association conference will be held at the St. Louis Union Station in St. Louis, MO, this October 11-13, 2013.

The 9/11 Popular Culture area seeks essays that explore the convergence of post-9/11 themes in contemporary television, film, fiction, comics, and other artistic expression. The past year has seen an increase in exposure to explicitly post-9/11 content, with Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk recently winning the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty also generated an array of opinion, and little consensus, about the logic of representing counterterrorist measures. To what end should politicians voice opposition to filmic representation? What does that state about film’s perceived role in the national consciousness?

The area especially welcomes essays that consider the pedagogical approaches to teaching 9/11 culture. What methodologies do you invoke? What textual couplings are especially fruitful? What responses do you elicit when you diverge from the “accepted texts” such as Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and DeLillo’s Falling Man?

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words by April 30, 2013, by logging into the following site http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/ and submitting your abstract, together with contact information, to the 9/11 Popular Culture area. If you run into difficulties navigating the site, please email me at pauldpetrovic@gmail.com.

UPDATE: 10 Years After Katrina: Critical Perspectives of the Storm’s Effect on American Culture and Identity

Fri, 03 May 2013 11:08:23 -0400

Seeking critical essays (20-30 pages in length) on texts that examine the storm's effect on American culture and identity.
Almost a decade later, distinct and meaningful body of literature has emerged following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. The best of these works give voice to the experiences of those wounded and displaced by the storm, elucidating how we might better comprehend how and why our nation failed to provide for its citizens in their time of need, how we might better prepare for future disasters, how we might rectify the multitude of wrongs committed against the Americans in the eye of the storm.
The book will be organized in the following sections:
--Identity (Race and Gender)
--New Media
--Lit Studies (narrative, genre, history)
--Katrina in the classroom
--Disaster/Testimony
--Sociopolitical and Economic Impact
--Environmental Impact

Possible works to consider, but not limited to:
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• What Remained of Katrina: A Novel of New Orleans by Kelly Jameson
• Storm Surge: A Novel of Hurricane Katrina by Ramsey Coutta
• City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
• The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke
• Hurricane Katrina--what Really Happened by Nathaniel Jones
• Hurricane Song by Paul Volponi
• Rooftop Diva: A Novel of Triumph After Katrina by D. T. Pollard
• Jesus Out to Sea by James Lee Burke
• First The Dead: A Bug Man Novel by Tim Downs
• A Little Bit Ruined by Patty Friedmann
• Blink of an Eye by Rexanne Becnel
• Last Known Victim by Erica Spindler
• Murder in the Rue Chartres by Greg Herren
• Revacuation by Brad Benischek
• Tubby Meets Katrina by Tony Dunbar
• Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden
• One D.O.A., One on the Way by Mary Robison
• Down in the Flood by Kenneth Abel
• Map Of Moments by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
• New Orleans Noir edited by Julie Smith
• Life in the Wake: Fiction from Post-Katrina New Orleans by the writers of NOLAFugees.com
• Lost and Betrayed (An American Tale): A Fictional Tale of Hurricane Katrina by Sly Fleming
• Dogs Gone Wild: After Hurricane Katrina by Theresa D. Thompson
• Katrina Nights: Love in the Time of Flooding by Fouad Khan
• Voodoo Storm: Hurricane Katrina, Death and Mystery in New Orleans by Davis Temple
• "The Passage" by Justin Cronin
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• Darker Angels by MLN Hanover
• Taken Away by Patty Friedmann
Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2013
Please include a brief bio with your submission. Abstracts and/or full-length submissions will be reviewed.

CREATING MYTHS AS NARRATIVES OF EMPOWERMENT AND DISEMPOWERMENT

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:52:45 -0400

Call for Papers: CREATING MYTHS AS NARRATIVES OF EMPOWERMENT AND DISEMPOWERMENT from 10 to 12 March 2014.
LDC of the High Institute of Human Sciences of Jendouba, University of Jendouba, Tunisia and the Institut de Recherche en Langues et Littératures Européennes, ILLE of the University of Haute Alsace, Mulhouse, France are pleased to announce the organisation of an international conference on ʻCreating Myths as Narratives of Empowerment and Disempowermentʼ to be held at the High Institute of Human Sciences of Jendouba from 10 to 12 March 2014.

Literacy, the advance of philosophical inquiry and Plato’s separation of ‘mythos’ from ‘logos’ signaled the birth of an intellectual hierarchy that caused the association of myth with implausibility, something that was later corroborated by the growth of scientific inquiry and rationalism. Yet, while myths seem to become distinctively associated with fantasy, their impact can still be contemplated with respect to every aspect of human history that implicates narration and (dis)empowerment. The discourses that have accompanied rising and waning orders and monarchies have shaped national feeling and identity as ‘myths’, whereby private and public narratives intersect. Whether we try to think of narratives related to the Arthurian tradition, the birth of Rome or the founding of Carthage out of an oxen skin, national identity is shaped as a space where myths of beginnings overlap with history and power. Political narratives turn into mythical accounts in the sense that they interfere between leaders and social groups to shape, explain and justify ideologies. In politics, mythologizing the narrative produces narratives that are repeatedly replicated to spawn an illusion of truth. Thus, terms such as the ‘Cold War’ or the ‘Arab Spring’ may lead us to think of uniform patterns that guided a complex set of events, disregarding their complexities and discounting alternative narratives. Moreover, as nationalism consolidated the mythologization of narratives, alternative histories started to acquire mythological significance, borrowing mythical names and imports, a trend postmodern thinking has supported.
Branches of the social sciences like anthropology and sociology have equally lent attention to myth as a space through which unrepresented groups can tell their stories in non-linear patterns, hence, for instance, the growing interest in myth in relation with gender studies and folk studies. With the works of De Saussure and Levi Strauss, linguistics and structuralism acquired a novel interest in myth. Believed to be a big vessel for collective consciousness in the Jungian sense, structuralism contends that myths of the ancient times are still present with little variations in their essential structures. While it is believed that the fading of religion and spirituality in contemporary times led to the obliteration of myth, it is not difficult to find traces of myth within the recurrence of symbols and paradigms in media and popular culture. This recurrence is akin to the telling and retelling of narratives, serving, as Hanno Hardt argues, ‘the new gods of mass culture.’

Starting from these assumptions, the organizers invite proposals for papers (of 20 minutes duration) addressing ‘Creating Myths as Narratives of Empowerment and Disempowerment.’ They particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, especially ones that bridge the domains of literature, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalysis and linguistics, but they equally encourage submissions on all aspects of myths that involve the ideas of narrativity, empowerment and disempowerment. To encourage innovative dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from diverse disciplines, falling within the scope of one of the following themes, among others:
Redefining myths
The Arab world, change and myth
Myth and narratives in the postcolonial context
Postmodernism and myth
Myth and folk studies
Myth and the politics of race and ethnicity
Myth as resistance and/or perpetuation
Myth in popular culture
Responses to myths
Myths, rewriting history, and power
Creating new myths
Myths of political reform and/or political repression
Myth and national identity
Feminist approaches to myths
Revisionism and myths
Science vs. myths
Myth and rhetoric
Myths and oral traditions of the Americas
(Dis)empowering myths and visual arts

PROPOSALS should be about 400 words, including the abstract and a brief biography and sent to myth.creation2014@gmail.com NO LATER THAN 30th November 2013.

CONFERENCE FEES: -Either 70 Euros for international participants and 100 Tunisian dinars for local participants (including publication, accommodation, food, refreshments, printing services, and cultural programme).
-Or 35 Euros for international participants and 50 Tunisian dinars for local participants (including presentation, lunch, coffee break, and publication).

CONFERENCE LANGUAGE is English, but proposals in French can also be accepted.

NOTIFICATION: Acceptance of proposals will be notified by December 2013.

CONTACT: For questions, please write to myth.creation2014@gmail.com

“CASCA” – Journal of Social Science, Culture and Arts (Deadline September 1st 2013.)

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:55:28 -0400

Interdisciplinary journal CASCA enables authors to publish papers in various areas of social sciences, culture and art. The journal publishes scientific papers and book reviews thematically related to literary theory, history of art, philosophy, anthropology, history, archeology, sociology, culturology, politicology, communicology, etc.
We are interested in publishing scientific and expert papers, book reviews, exhibition reviews, web portals, etc.
All the submitted papers are to undergo an adequate double blind peer review.
It is required of all the potential authors to prepare their papers in accordance with our Instructions to Authors and send them to the following email address of the journal: journal@casca.org.rs.
For detailed information visit our website http://www.journal.casca.org.rs/eng/about-journal/

[UPDATE - deadline extended] The African American Experience in the Post Civil Rights Era

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:51:14 -0400

Call for Conference Papers: “The African American Experience Since 1992”, to be held 20th September 2013.

This conference, hosted jointly by the American Studies programme and the Wilberforce Institute for Slavery and Emancipation Studies (WISE) at the University of Hull, aims to examine, explore and critically engage with issues relating to African American life and cultural representation in the post civil rights era.

We are seeking proposals for 20 minute presentations that explore the African American experience from a variety of approaches including politics, history, film, religion, photography, literature, music and economics. Proposals should be a maximum of 250 words and include a provisional title. Panel proposals involving a common theme are welcomed. We very much encourage PhD students to consider submitting a proposal and / or attend the conference. All proposals should be submitted with a one-page CV to j.metcalf@hull.ac.uk by 31 May 2013.

http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/american-studies/events.aspx

[UPDATE] PERSPECTIVES, 2013 - 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS (Deadline 31st May)

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:36:07 -0400

PERSPECTIVES ON PROGRESS 2013
An interdisciplinary postgraduate and early career researcher conference.
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. November 27-29, 2013.

In 1968, historian Sidney Pollard defined the Victorian ideal of ‘progress’ as, “the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind... that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement.” Despite the increasingly problematic nature of this ideal, the ‘progress myth’ still remains pervasive in the Western cultural tradition.

This postgraduate and early career researcher conference seeks to promote innovative interdisciplinary dialogues interrogating the concept of progress by bringing together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.

The conference committee invites proposals for papers in the form of an abstract of between 250 and 300 words to perspectivesonprogress2013@gmail.com by 31 May 2013.

Paper format is a 20 minute paper with a 10 minute period for questions and answers.

[UPDATE]
The organising committee is pleased announce that Dr. Alastair Blanshard, Dr. Sarah Pinto, and Dr. Catherine Mills have each agreed to deliver Key Note Addresses at Perspectives on Progress, 2013.

More information about the keynotes and the conference is available on our website - http://perspectives2013.org/

For periodic updates please subscribe to our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/perspectives2013

Link to full CFP: http://perspectives2013.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Perspectives2013-...

[UPDATE] Twentieth Century Studies Midwest PCA ACA St. Louis 11-13 October 2013

Thu, 02 May 2013 20:46:20 -0400

Call for Papers
Twentieth-Century Studies
Midwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference
2013

Friday – Sunday, October 11-13, 2013, St. Louis, MO

St. Louis Union Station Hotel, A Doubletree Hotel by Hilton

Proposal Deadline: April 30, 2013

Topics for this area can include, but are not limited to the following:

• 20th century British and American writers and writing innovations
• Harlem Renaissance artists and writers
• Silent film; sound film; silent to sound film
• Jazz, ragtime, rock—20th century musical innovations
• Great War/WW1 impacts on modern life
• Cubism, modernism, postmodernist movements
• Dadaism, surrealism, German expressionism
• Music hall and/or vaudeville’s demise
• The flapper, Rosie the Riveter
• The rise and fall of the American automobile
• Fred Harvey’s contributions to 20th century tourism/travel
• Between-the-wars culture
• Cold war culture
• The Beats and other countercultural movements
• Expatriation in 20s and 30s Paris and/or the French Riviera
• The Bloomsbury Group
• 20th century innovations in architecture

Please upload 250-word abstract proposals to the Twentieth Century Studies area: http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/

Any questions or concerns please email Lisa Haven at havenl@ohio.edu

More information about the conference can be found at http://www.mpcaaca.org/

Please note the availability of graduate student travel grants at http://www.mpcaaca.org/conference/travel-grants/

Please include your name, affiliation, email address and AV needs (we can provide only LCD projectors to use with your own computer) in your abstract. Looking forward to your proposals!

Apollon eJournal - Undergraduate Submissions deadline 6/15/2012

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:37:24 -0400

Check the website, apollonejournal.org, for submission details on publication, or for an application to work with us

ABOUT THE PROJECT
Apollon, an undergraduate humanities eJournal, is a new peer-reviewed publication for undergraduate humanities majors. Apollon features undergraduate research developed in humanities courses, and thus emphasizes faculty-student collaborations beyond the classroom. We invite interested students to join us by contributing leadership or original work to Apollon. Our student team participates at all levels of this ongoing project (design, review, and publication) to offer their peers a real outlet for intellectual work in the humanities. For more information you can go to the program website, www.apollonejournal.org, talk to your professors, or contact the Faculty Director, Jason Cohen, at (859) 985-3765 or cohenj@berea.edu.

CFP: 'Doonesbury': critical and cultural essays. An edited collection (Manchester University Press)

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:29:20 -0400

Doonesbury: critical and cultural essays. An edited collection (MUP).

CALL FOR PAPERS.

For over four decades G.B. Trudeau’s Doonesbury strip has reflected and refracted America’s national narratives, atomising and coalescing them within the strip format to a global audience. Chronicling, dramatising and defining key debates of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, the Pulitzer prize-winning Doonesbury has also intervened in and shaped their trajectory. Using and subverting the narrative strip form as a prism through which to explore, catalogue, landmark and define its contemporary moment, Doonesbury represents a significant artistic, cultural, comedic and critical achievement.

Doonesbury’s status as a symptomatic corollary, imaginative rendition, cultural-historical document, and exploration of America, as well as the strip’s diversity of interests, global reach, and cultural reception and standing, offer fertile grounds for fresh contemporary readings hitherto unfulfilled by academic engagement. Proposals are therefore invited for contributions to an edited collection of critical and cultural essays to be published through Manchester University Press that engage with the long-running, iconic strip.

The following themes are broadly suggested as points for discussion and points of departure for submitted proposals:

- Doonesbury: comedy and comment.
- Doonesbury’s narrative form: fragmentation, linearity and cohesion:
- Doonesbury 40: A Retrospective: the great American novel?
- Doonesbury and the American pastoral: from Thoreau to Walden commune and beyond.
- Doonesbury, representation, war and trauma: Vietnam, Iraq 1, the war on terror, Iraq 2, Afghanistan and the war within.
- Doonesbury and the comic tradition: art, satire, liberty and independence.
- Doonesbury’s and America’s political debates.
- Doonesbury and activism: civil and/or gay rights representation.
- Reach and syndication: virtual Doonesbury, the daily strip and the dot com.
- Doonesbury, the counter-culture and the baby-boomers: from protest to Gen X.
- On the cover of Rolling Stone: Doonesbury, music, business and cultural representation.
- Bright Lights, Big City: Doonesbury and the eighties.
- Doonesbury and the American presidency: idealism, reality and representation.
- Doonesbury, humour, dissidence and censorship.

It must be stressed that these are only suggested areas of discussion and that proposals dealing with any aspect of the strip, or advancing alternative disciplinary, theoretical or commentative approaches will be considered.

Proposals should be no more than 1000 words in length, and should be submitted to a.jackson@mmu.ac.uk no later than July 31st 2013.

Inquiries are welcome and should also be addressed to a.jackson@mmu.ac.uk

[UPDATE] Cracking the Ivory Tower

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:28:52 -0400

The editors seek abstracts for essays sharing advice, unique stories or sage wisdom for graduate students at all levels. Our goal is to increase transparency and a community of support for graduate students. We welcome abstracts which focus on personal experiences from graduate students at every stage in their academic career (i.e. first year, post Comprehensive exams, ABD, etc.). We also accept abstracts from professors. All humanities fields are welcome to submit.
Abstracts should be no more than 200 -300 words. Please also send a CV and a 100 word biography by May 11. Selected essays must be submitted by August 1. Essays should be written in a style appropriate for both academic and popular audiences. Essay length is no more than 7000 words. Please send all submissions to Kayla Paulk: klp68@pitt.edu.
Topics should include but are not limited to:
Year 1:
-Your path to finding potential mentors
-Your path to finding an academic focus
-The Art of Academic Writing: How I learned to write well

Year 2: Comprehensive Exams/ Qualifying Exams
-Comps studying experiences

Year 3: Dissertation Prospectus
-Choosing the dissertation topic
-Dissertation prospectus defense
-The Academic pipeline

Year 4: ABD and Networking
-The Art of the Conference Presentation
-“Diversification”: How to stand out on the job market

Year 5: Infiltrating the job market
-The Art of the Cover letter
-How to create a teaching portfolio
-The MLA interview process: the good, the bad and the ugly

UPDATE: SAMLA: English Graduate Studies Session: "The Romance between the Visual and the Printed Word" Nov. 8-10 Atlanta, GA

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:53:25 -0400

The Romance between the Visual and the Printed Word

Film engages our senses and provokes our emotions, which makes film a powerful vehicle for ideology. However, cinematic techniques create spaces that escape the censorship of dominant ideology. Thus, understanding how to interpret that which is hidden between frames reveals hegemonic struggles taking place. Mary Ann Doane’s cinematic emergence of time discussion best explains how such spatial arrangements in cinema can be provocative: “Time, death, and invisibility are welded together at the edge of the frame and between shots, in the unseen space that makes it possible for the cinema to say anything at all.” In other words, meaning can be deducted from spaces where action is not visible, as the movement or meaning occurs within these spaces. Due to the cinema’s popularity, novels have adapted film-editing techniques. Finding meaning in these narrative gaps of the written word as well as examining the historical and theoretical exchange in the gaps between the film adaptations of novels and the actual novels, panelists may bring new understanding to how authors, film producers, and/or actors have embedded resistance to dominant ideology. Papers may consider the following: How does understanding the relationship between cinematic techniques and narrative techniques within the novel or graphic novel influence how we experience literature? What new meaning can be found when novels are read through the lens of film theory? Is the ideological relationship between film and literature reciprocal? How do film adaptations speak to the novel, and how do graphic novel adaptations speak to both the film and the novel?

The deadline for abstracts (300 words or less) is May 15, 2013. Abstracts should be sent as word.doc or pdf email attachments to Ren Denton at grdenton@memphis.edu.

Movies in the Age of Obama: Upside and Downside

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:30:59 -0400

This collection is inspired by an article in The New York Times, which, in part is quoted below.

The Upside in film:

“Now, on the eve of a second Obama term, the images are more complex, and in some ways blurrier. Politically and personally this president functions as a screen onto which different Americans project their fears and fantasies.”
Two-way mirror: looking at/looking back –dual reflection of race perception
“The longing for Obama (or an Obama),” he wrote, “can be found in two prescient 2008 movies,” citing “Wall-E” and “Milk”
“This year race is firmly back on the table with movies like “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained.” Yet much like Mr. Obama, who has rarely made race a topic of conversation, the current nominees for best picture speak to other issues, including war, the economy and just about everything else. Some of the connections between politics and movies are obvious, but we wanted to go beyond the topical resonance of films like “Zero Dark Thirty” and enter into the realms of allegory and national mythology.”
Themes
Lincoln reappraised as reality and Mythology-(vampire hunter)
Literal Lincolns and allegories infused with Lincoln’s long shadow
Team of Rivals: Marvel’s Avengers/X-Men First Class/ Ideal of Community: Beasts of the Southern Wild/Promised Land/The descendants (Hawaii)
The Great Recession and the Workinig class: Warrior/Arbitage/Inside Job/Magic Mike/Les Miserables
“Glimpses of class conflict emerged amid the shadows of The Dark Knight Rises, which riffs on the French Revolution, nods at the Occupy movement and glances back at the gangster movies of the 1930s, in which struggles for power and money were accompanied by the rat-a-tat of Tommy guns.
“Both James Cameron’s Avatar and Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes scramble the usual good guy/bad guy dichotomy, suggesting that the enemy is us.
“That surely is one lesson of The Help, Lincoln, and Django Unchained. The passionate arguments over these movies partly confirmed that the postracial utopia in Avatar remains as much a dream deferred as mind-tripping in someone else’s body.

The Downsidein film:

“A recent Associated Press online poll concluded that racial prejudice in America has slightly increased since Obama's election. The survey said that a majority of Americans, 51%, express explicit racial prejudice toward blacks, compared to 48% in 2008.
“While the poll on its own doesn’t prove the country has become more racist in the last four years, it does offer evidence that the “post-racial” world some thought Obama’s inauguration would bring has yet to materialize.
‘We're in a racist renaissance,’ said Nsenga Burton, a writer for The Root, an online news site with an African-American perspective. ‘It's a rebirth of the oldest forms of racism. It's not new, not different. It's like the 1800s, the most archaic abusive terms are applied to black people every single day.’”
John Blake CNN online, 11/1/2012

The sting is unyielding without any amelioration or diffusion; instead, the age of Obama has sharpened the tips of a collective death by a thousand cuts. African Americans know it in their bones, in the marrow that harbors the old suffering now renewed as many old and new racists fear that their narrowly tenuous grasp on their isolationist de facto walls of mental segregation will enclose them within their psychological castles under siege by the new alliance of minorities near majority. They are afraid; fear of defeat becomes anger; anger is not suppressed; it is vented. Blacks are aware and not amused. How do Black literary artists recalibrate their approaches to this old/new Racism? The significance of this collection is to measure the recent past, the present, and anticipate the future of the next four years: The dominant theme is the art of suffering and the nature of oblivion found in contemporary Cinema.

Topics can come from the many listed above

PROPOSED TITLES ASAP--ABSTRACTS LATER

[UPDATE] Extended deadline for Fashion panels at 2013 MPCA/ACA conference

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:39:13 -0400

FASHION
2013 Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference
Friday-Sunday, October 11-13, 2013
St. Louis, MO
St. Louis Union Station Hotel, A Doubletree by Hilton

Deadline: May 15, 2013
Submissions.mpcaaca.org

Topics can include, but are not limited to fashion as it is represented in literature, film, television, or music, fashion as it pertains to current popular culture or popular culture of any time period of the past, the fashions of celebrities, or sociological implications of fashion in our culture.

Please upload 250 word abstract proposals on any aspect of Fashion to the Fashion area, http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/.

Any questions? Please email Kelli Purcell O’Brien at kobrien1@memphis.edu.

More information about the conference can be found at http://www.mpcaaca.org/

Please note the availability of graduate student travel grants: http://mpcaaca.org/conference/travel-grants/.

Please include name, affiliation, and e-mail address with the 250 word abstract. Also, please indicate in your submission whether your presentation will require an LCD Projector.

MODERN POETRY AND BEYOND

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:22:59 -0400

CALL FOR RESEARCH PAPERS

MODERN POETRY AND BEYOND
GUEST EDITORS :
Dr Amzed Hossain, Head, Dept of English, ALIAH UNIVERSITY, KOLKATA.

Dr Sukriti Ghosal, Principal, MUC WOMEN’S college, Burdwan

The poetry world is full of fence-building and turf wars. The territory of poetry written since Pound and Eliot tends to be subsumed into categories: modern, postmodern, avant-garde, post-avant-garde, post-post-avant-garde etc. One may not be interested in this mish-mash. However, a common issue is that all poetry since Pound and Eliot is a refusal to acknowledge an overtly oedipal relationship with literary traditions , and a willingness to construct and invent not only new kinds of poetry but new ways of reading.

We feel that whatever poetry is being written since Pound and Eliot has been an interesting call for a revaluation of fundamentals in poetry. Nothing can be wholly radical since everything has already been done, and whenever whatever, has appeared to be militaristically radical and path-breaking, has ultimately been institutionalized.
Our proposed collection of essays( in one or two volumes) will focus on the continuum of poetic utterance and will hence be entitled MODERN POETRY AND BEYOND. Taking Eliot as the locus classicus, we propose to include essays on all major British and American poets of the 20th century and beyond, and also propose to include papers on postcolonial poetry in English.

Thanks.
FOR, SCHOLARS’ CO_OPERATIVE
Dr SUMAN JANA
HEAD, DEPT OF ENGLISH, VIVEKANANDA MAHAVIDYALAYA,
(A NAAC ACCREDITED PG TEACHING COLLEGE),
BURDWAN, INDIA.

Email: sumsum.2006@gmail.com
Contact nos PROF ENAKSHI BANNERJEE +919932075805
MS SOMRITA DEY +919434002332
MS HASINA WAHIDA+91+918942812979
DR SUMAN JANA +919563212479

Editing requirements:

• Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.
• Title of the paper: bold, title case (Capitalize each word), centered.
• Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12.
• References: Please follow MLA style (Only Author-Date or Number System) strictly. Don’t use Foot Notes. Instead use End Notes.
• Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only.
• The paper should not usually exceed 14 pages ; 5 pages minimum in single spacing.
• Each paper must be accompanied by i) A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or sent for publication and ii) Abstract of paper about 100-200 words

Mode of Submission:

Each contributor is advised to send full paper with brief bio-note, declaration and abstract as a single MS-Word email attachments to email addresses: sumsum.2006@gmail.com up to 30th May, 2013.

Selection Procedure:

All submissions will be sent for blind peer reviewing. Final selection will be made only if the papers are recommended for publication by the reviewers.

PS THE COLLECTION OF ESSAYS WILL BEAR ISBN NO AND WILL BE PUBLISHED BY SCHOLARS’ CO OPERATIVE, INDIA.