This panel will examine the function of nostalgia in class-conscious writing, specifically its role in the construction of working-class identities, both fictional and otherwise. To that end, presentations will gauge the efficacy of nostalgic representation in terms of literary aesthetics and/or political imperatives. Using literary texts as a lens, topics might include (but are not limited to):

Interrogating Intersectionality in a Global Perspective, An International Symposium

Proposals are invited for a Symposium, "Interrogating Intersectionality in a Global Perspective" to be held at Liverpool Hope University (UK) on 21 June 2019.  The symposium seeks to interrogate the potential and limitations of Intersectional approaches within a global context.  It is part of an AHRC funded International Networking Project that seeks to scope the potential and limitations of intersectionality in relation to both theory and praxis. In keeping with this broad-based agenda, the organisers seek contributions from any discipline and welcome interdisciplinary approaches.

Stonewall at 50: A Roundtable (guaranteed session)

Sponsored by the Sexuality Studies Forum

Approaches might include, among many others: coalitions; activism; queer and trans of color critique; pride; shame; state violence; police brutality; mythologies; New York City; urbanism; gentrification; history; genealogies; nightlife; periodization; gay liberation; visibility.

150-word abstracts and CVs by Friday, March 15, 2019

Contacts: 

Seeking Submissions for New Open Access Online Journal

The Journal of Epistolary Studies (JES) aims to be the premier international publication venue for all scholarship epistolary. The purpose of JES is to publish quality research in all areas of epistolary study, bringing together scholarship of letters and letter writing from across disciplines and historical time periods. Social, historical, literary, linguistic, bibliographical, and material approaches to letters and letter writing all will be considered. JES will offer a forum for academics researching a major genre hitherto not served by major periodical publication. It will be an articles-only journal published bi-annually in the spring and fall.

STR 2019: Tara Building, Mary Immaculate College, University of LimerickMay 10th & 11th 2019 Call For Papers: Conversations Through Time: Intersectional, Intergenerational, Interdisciplinary Keynote Speakers:Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, Ulster UniversityDr. Emilie Pine, University College Dublin Theatre and performance practices have often been called upon as ways to understand contemporary discourses. Now more than ever academics and theatremakers need to use art and the analyses of various mediums to explore and explain the world in which we live.

The Margaret Atwood Society is putting together a roundtable to discuss The Handmaid's Tale sequel at next year's MLA. Unfortunately, the book will come out after MLA's session proposals are due. Thus, send an abstract of 150-250 words (on the lens through which you anticipate reading the novel) and a brief biography to Karma Waltonen, kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu.

THE THOMAS HARDY SOCIETY

PATRICK TOLFREE STUDENT ESSAY COMPETITION 2019

“HARDY NOW”

Welcome to this year’s Patrick Tolfree essay competition, open to students of any academic level over the age of 18 and living anywhere in the world.

In line with the projected theme of the Autumn/Winter 2019 issue of the Thomas Hardy Journal, the theme of this year’s essay competition is “Hardy Now”. We invite entries of 3,000-4,000 words that reflect on “the contemporary purchase” (Kornbluh and Morgan 2015) of Hardy’s writing. These might focus on a Hardyan theme with particular resonance today, such as:

Middle English language and literature’s status is a perennial matter of debate, whose immediate political subtexts include race, class, gender, and nation. Middle English texts themselves categorize barbarous tongues, mother tongues, lay and learned languages. How do medieval linguistic taxonomies politicize identity and territory, medieval or postmedieval? Can we locate concepts like the vulgar tongue and vernacular eloquence in our current critical lexicon? What is at stake in contemporary deployments of categories like classical, vernacular, or sacred language and world, national, provincial, or cosmopolitan language? How do these and other linguistic terms participate in the broader cultural politics of labels like barbarism and civilization?

We are delighted to announce the interdisciplinary workshop “Gen(d)eration: Gender and Construction of Subjectivity”. The event is funded by the Durham Centre for Academic Development (DCAD) and will take place at Durham University on 10 May 2019.

The workshop will focus on the interconnections between gender and cultural studies (literature, art, history, philosophy, social sciences, etc.) and will be looking at how the construction of gender is connected to, and interwoven with, writing, capitalism, globalization, trauma, therapy, ethics, transformation and autopoiesis, to name a few.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Gender and Capitalism

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Conference in the BerkshiresCatalyzing 21st Century Discourse and Engagement on RaceJune 11-14, 2019Keynote Speaker: Nikki Giovanni (Biography)World-renowned activist, commentator, educator, poet, and writer

Over_Seas: Melville, Whitman, and All the Intrepid Sailors

July 3-5, 2019

School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon

Herman Melville (1819-1891), sailor and writer, plowed the ocean as a tablet to be read, gazing at the white page where unfathomable characters surface to the eyes of the puzzled reader. “Captain” Walt Whitman (1819-1892), on the other hand, writing “in cabin’d ships at sea,” broke open and passed the divide between in- and out-of-doors, as he urged his book to “speed on.” Both were born 200 years ago.

Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (LLIDS), an open access academic e-journal, invites original and unpublished research papers and book reviews from various interrelated disciplines including, but not limited to, literature, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, law, ecology, environmental science, and economics.

Recent critical focus on media and technology maps efforts to create a dynamic classroom that at its best enriches the teaching and learning at the university. But the long-standing interest in media as a means to reach students and enhance delivery also points to an absence in current scholarship, which has not been attentive to that same media as content in the humanities classroom.

Despite the incidence of climate change scepticism amongst right-wing politicians in the United States and elsewhere, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Writing in the journal Utopian Studies in 2016, the Californian science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson observed that: "Climate change is inevitable - we’re already in it - and because we’re caught in technological and cultural path dependency, we can’t easily get back out of it ...