In the light of the material turn in the humanities and social sciences, there has been an increasing interest in material contexts, embodied experiences, and situated forms of knowledge. In this context, Ursula K. Heise  emphasizes the urgency of developing an ideal of “eco-cosmopolitanism,” or environmental world citizenship, observing that it is ‘imperative to reorient current U.S. environmentalist discourse, ecocriticism included, toward a more nuanced understanding of how both local cultural and ecological systems are imbricated in global ones’ (2008, 59). Heise’s remark envisions individuals and groups as a part of planetary “imagined communities,” with both human and nonhuman members.

The Carson McCullers Society is pleased to announce an open call for panel papers on any topic related to the life and works of Carson McCullers for one of two guaranteed panels at the American Literature Association (ALA) conference in San Diego, California, on May 21-24, 2020. Papers that approach McCullers’ works from interdisciplinary, comparative, and disability or gender studies perspectives are especially sought; however, all topics will be considered.

Call for Papers

Mystery/Detective Fiction Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

41st Annual Conference, February 19-22, 2020

Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.southwestpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2019

Call for Papers

Disability Studies Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

41st Annual Conference, February 19-22, 2020

Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center

Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.southwestpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2019

The American Comparative Literature Association's 2020 Annual Meeting will take place at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Chicago, March 19th-22nd, 2020.

Proposed Panel

Organizer: Desmond Harding

Co-Organizer: Nicole Sparling Barco

Emerging Subjects: Transnational Modernism and the Urban Imaginary

CALL FOR PAPER PROPOSALS:

READING W.D. HOWELLS (1837-1920) A CENTURY LATER

NEMLA, Boston, MA, March 5-8, 2020 

Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature,in conjunction with Nimrod International Journal and the Tulsa City-County Library, seeks paper and roundtable proposals for the Tulsa Day of YA, which will be held at the Tulsa City-County Library on from the evening of February 21 to the afternoon of February 22, 2020.

Cultural, geographical, political, social, emotional, linguistic, and economic borders, among others, define and determine different aspects of our identities, cultures, and social lives along with literatures and arts. In a world charmed by 'globalization', interdisciplinary studies in humanities and social sciences has thrown further lights on the definitions, conceptualizations, roles and functions of borders. They are understood not only in terms of limits, restrictions, and divisions but also in terms of opportunities, possibilities, and reconstructions.

The MOSF Journal of Science Fiction is accepting submissions for a special issue on environmental studies and science fiction to be released in the summer of 2020. 

Can the Other Speak? Productive Difficulties in Ethnic and Postcolonial Literature

Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

March 5-8, 2020

Boston, MA

Deadline for paper abstracts: September 30, 2019

Contact: Misun Dokko mdokko@lagcc.cuny.edu

Our 2020 NeMLA panel emerges from Gayatri Spivak’s seminal question, “can the subaltern speak?” Following Spivak’s response to this question, we will investigate moments when subalterns cannot speak or have difficulty speaking. Our inquiry into these moments will build on and sharpen conversations about otherness with respect to literary texts and beyond.

“Transsexualité, transidentité: un tabou français?” (“Transsexuality, transidentity: a French taboo?”[1]): such was the title chosen by the online French news magazine France Infofor an article published in 2015[2]that discussed the lack of visibility trans(gender/sexual) people still experience in French society. Indeed, there has been an increasing visibility of trans individuals in film and TV in recent years.

Call for Abstracts

ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2020

Conference Dates: March 19th-22nd 2020, Sheraton Grand Hotel, Chicago IL

Abstract submission deadline: Sept 23, 2019 (9 a.m. EST)

Memory and Materiality in Postcolonial and Postsocialist Literatures 

(https://www.acla.org/memory-and-materiality-postcolonial-and-postsocialist-literatures)

It’s a commonplace to say that realism is having a moment again, or that realism has never left. This seminar recognizes both that realism is always important and that realist critical projects have proliferated in the past decade. The majority of these renew our interest in literary realism as an aesthetic tradition. Where realism was previously defined in contrast to modernism, naturalism, or more speculative genres, what distinguishes this recent revival in realism seems to be its increased interdependence with these other aesthetic categories and modes. Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism, for instance, takes realism not as a static epistemological or narrative structure, but as an increasingly affective mode of estrangement.

Northeast Modern Language Association

Boston, March 5-8, 2020

Feminist Theologies in American Literature

The American Religion and Literature Society seeks proposals for presentations on literary expressions of feminist theologies broadly construed. We welcome presentations on any period, genre, or form of American literature, and those regarding any religious orientation. We particularly encourage papers on works of literature 

-       that examine the power, enfranchisement, religious ideas, and practices of women

-       that consider how religion subverts or reinforces androcentrism and patriarchy