category: american

Temptation and Redemption - 12 May 2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:06:26 -0500

The motif of temptation and redemption can be found in almost every area of the humanities and has played a central role in a significant number of works, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to season three of Glee.

For the first annual Carolina Emerging Scholars Conference, we invite papers exploring the complex relationship between temptation and redemption in literature and culture. Abstracts of 250 words or less are due by February 24, 2012. Abstracts should include name, the title of paper, institution, and contact information. For panel proposals, please list topics and titles of papers and an explanation of how these papers fit together. Also, please provide an abstract from each proposed panel member. We welcome submissions from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as independent scholars.

Decisions will be made by March 9, 2012. Conference guidelines will be emailed to participants upon acceptance. Visit our website at usclancaster.sc.edu/cesc.

Submit abstracts electronically via email to cescon@mailbox.sc.edu.

Call for Papers, "Digital Revolutions: Interpreting and Historicizing American Culture" (deadline 4/15; conference 10/12-13)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:55:10 -0500

Call for Papers
New England American Studies Association 2012 Conference
Providence, Rhode Island
October 12–13, 2012

Digital Revolutions: Interpreting and Historicizing American Culture

Recent developments in digital technologies have transformed the place of the humanities in American life. From online versions of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana to a daily John Quincy Adams Twitter feed to the Smithsonian’s publicly accessible Archives of American Art to the Women Writers Online Project, digital technologists are reshaping our sense of history, place, community, and identity. Digitization of America’s cultural heritage has also fundamentally transformed work in the humanities itself. From universities to libraries to cultural institutions, the information infrastructure has brought forth digital collaborations across disciplines and beyond the academy, as well as between scholars, educators, archivists and programmers. But it has also brought forward concerns about copyright, control and access to information and the future of print media.

Are such changes unprecedented? Prior evolutions in communications technology suggest otherwise. From broadsides to blogs, such changes have reshaped the way Americans interact and understand themselves both in the present and the past. The 2012 NEASA conference, Digital Revolutions, invites participants to consider what these developments are, how they are redefining work in the humanities and what previous media revolutions suggest for the future.

This conference will combine scholarly investigation of the cultural, political and economic significance of communications media with a series of panels, workshops and participatory forums that can take advantage of technologies now available to us. In addition to individual paper proposals, we also welcome submissions for roundtable discussions, hands-on workshops and multimedia sessions such as film screenings, online presentations and 5-minute lightning shorts.

Proposals should include a one page abstract and title, as well as the author’s name, address (including email), and institutional or professional affiliation. For panel proposals please include contact information for all participants, as well as a brief (no more than two page) description of the session topic and format. Submit proposals by April 15, 2012 to neasaconference12@gmail.com. Proposals or queries may also be sent to:

Sara Sikes, NEASA President
Massachusetts Historical Society, The Adams Papers
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA02215
ssikes@masshist.org

Tragedy/The Tragic in Asian American Literature

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:05:07 -0500

This panel will explore Asian American literary participation in the tragic mode. Reasons for this exploration include:
- the desire to explore some of the aesthetic dimensions of Asian American fiction that have long been neglected by critics.
- the desire to recuperate tragedy/the tragic for the 20th Century, where it has often been dismissed as no longer applicable
- the desire to break down longstanding binaries between existential and political approaches to the tragic.
- the desire to better understand possible political ramifications of tragedy/the tragic in the 20th Century
- the desire to examine the role of genre in knowledge production and ethics

Possible paper topics include, but not are limited to:
- any approaches/treatments of/responses to suffering in Asian American literature, by authors, readers, critics, narrators, or fictional characters
- a questioning of traditional Western claims to tragedy, through investigations of tragedy in Asian and/or Asian American literature
- Examinations of heroism in Asian American literature
- Explorations of the ways in which the tragic appears in Asian American literature
-The tragic as it manifests in Asian cultural values/belief systems.
- Ethics and suffering/grief/tragedy in Asian American literature
- Genre shaping in Asian American literature
- Attention to lyricism and imagism in Asian American fiction
- Negotiating hope in Asian American fiction
- The role of genre in knowledge production and ethics
- The tragic as it manifests in the 20th Century
- The tragic as it manifests in American literature
- The relationship of any of the above to transnationalism

Please send a 400 word abstract by email to sgardam@gmail.com by February 18, 2012.

Race and Metaphor in 19th/20th Century American Literature and Thought (MLA Boston; abstracts due March 10, 2012)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:18:32 -0500

Race and Metaphor in 19th/20th Century American Literature and Thought
MLA Special Session
January 3-6, 2013, Boston, MA
Abstract Deadline: March 10, 2012

This session takes up connections between metaphor and race, examining the ways that language and cognition influence the interactions between different racial and cultural groups. In doing so, it looks to extend awareness of the interactions between daily language and other discursive systems or practices—literary, social, political, scientific, and/or economic linguistic paradigms, for example—that inform and influence the discussion of race in daily language. In highlighting the relations between different discursive practices, the goal is to understand the ways in which language in general, and metaphor in specific, both conditions and perpetuates the relationships between different groups of people in an unequal manner. Further, unpacking the connections between language and identity will allow us to extend the ways in which Critical Race Theory can be utilized to examine the linguistic configurations that disguise the social forces perpetuating inequality. In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993), for instance, Toni Morrison engages the tensions created by race and metaphor:

Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological “race” ever was. [...] It seems that it has a utility far beyond economy, beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, and has assumed a metaphorical life so completely embedded in daily discourse that it is perhaps more necessary and more on display than ever before. (63)

Morrison is not alone in noting the relationship between race and metaphor; Ralph Ellison’s examination of white insecurity in “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” (1970) highlights the historic validation whites found in subordinating blacks:

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the “outsider.” (110-1)

In both Morrison and Ellison, the connection between race and metaphor becomes the means to demarcate the boundaries of inclusion and citizenship; the “utility” that Morrison connects to the metaphorical use of race refers to the implied assumptions within language that participate in maintaining the dominant ideology. In Ellison’s case, the observation that African Americans exist as a “metaphor for the ‘outsider’” points to the linguistic accrual of social and political power in language that occurs over time, specifically as this usage moves from a conscious to unconscious application.

This panel is interested in investigating the manifestation of these ideas in 19th and 20th century American literature and thought. It is open to papers focusing on the function of metaphor and race in individual works (poetry, prose, drama, film, etc.), papers addressing theoretical connections between race and metaphor, as well as papers that engage both simultaneously. How, for example, do individual authors dismantle racial metaphors in their work, or unconsciously (or consciously) make use of racial metaphors to structure ideas across individual or collective works? Are there different strategies employed by different groups of authors in addressing the negative ways in which racial metaphors silently supplement texts as well as the larger national discourse surrounding race? Similarly, how can George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s ideas concerning the mapping of the source and the target of conceptual metaphors be applied to the metaphorical performance and production of race?

Elizabeth Young, author of Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor and the Carl M. and Elsie A. Small Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College, will be the respondent for the panel.

Please send 250-500 word abstracts by March 10, 2012 to Thomas Morgan (tmorgan2@udayton.edu).

2012 PAMLA Special Session - Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:01:43 -0500

Creative texts are sought for an approved 2012 PAMLA Special Session - Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries.

The 2012 PAMLA conference will take place at Seattle University, Washington from October 19-21, 2012.

Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries.
This special session will feature readings from works that challenge traditional divisions between fiction and other media or between fiction and other forms (such as poetry or non-fiction.) Writers may present recently published works or works that are still in progress.

Submission Deadline: Saturday March 31, 2012.
Please submit your proposal online at http://www.pamla.org.

Southerners in Film SAMLA 2012 CONFERENCE (11-9 through 11-11-12)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:29:52 -0500

This regular session of the 2012 South Atlantic Modern Language Association invites papers on any aspect of southerners as represented in contemporary film, including essays that address the transnational turn in southern film, as well as issues of authenticity, mythology, and folklore in southern film. Other topics might include (but are not limited to) the southern documentary impulse, expressions of race, class and sexuality in contemporary southern film, adaptation and re-imaginings of southern literature, and new southern studies and southern cinema. We particularly welcome submissions speaking to the conference theme of borders, migration, boundaries, and memoir. By May 15, 2012, please submit abstracts along with a short CV by e-mail to Dr. James A. Crank at cranka@nsula.edu.

[UPDATE] Under Western Eyes: East Asia in Anglophone Fiction

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:53:18 -0500

Under Western Eyes: East Asia in Anglophone Fiction (Special Session proposal for MLA 2013 Boston, MA)
Increasingly important to the world economy as an engine of growth, the dynamic region of East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea) has for decades figured prominently in world media for its critical geopolitical position. But how has East Asia’s emergence onto the world stage been reflected in late 20th-century English-language literature? This panel invites papers on recent Anglophone fiction set in East Asia; please send abstract of 1-2 pp along with a current c.v. to Mary Goodwin (profgood@hotmail.com) by 15 March 2012.

Portals Literary Journal is accepting submissions for our Spring 2012 issue.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:29:21 -0500

2012 Call for Submissions
Portals is currently accepting submissions for our Spring 2012 issue.

Submission deadline: March 1, 2012.

Portals invites original critical essays and short creative fiction that explore comparative literary topics across cultural, regional, linguistic, and temporal boundaries for the Spring 2012 issue. This edition will be available in scholarly journal listings worldwide.

Formal requirements for original critical essays:

Papers should be in English.
In order to be considered for submission, essays must compare at least two texts from different linguistic traditions.
Citations should include both the original language and the English translation.
Papers should be no longer than 25 pages in 12 point font, and should be properly formatted and documented in MLA style.
Formal requirements for creative fiction:

An author may submit up to 3 pieces of any form of creative fiction with a limit of 10 pages per submission. Fiction must be of a comparative/critical nature.
General requirements:

All submissions are to be sent via e-mail as an MS-Word attachment.
Submissions must include a 250-word abstract and a cover sheet including name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, school affiliation, and current academic standing. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the proposal, since this will be a blind selection process.
Authors should be currently enrolled undergraduate students, graduate students or doctoral candidates.
Submissions must be original and previously unpublished.
To submit, send your submission as a .doc or .rtf attachment to: clsa[at]mail.sfsu.edu

Review Process:

Portals is published once a year in the Spring semester at San Francisco State University, in conjunction with the Comparative Literature Student Association (CLSA). All articles are reviewed in a double-blind process, and authors will be notified by email within 2 to 3 months of the submission deadline.

We encourage authors to read our journal thoroughly before submitting. Portals most recent issue and archives can be found here: http://portalsjournal.com

All inquiries and questions can be directed to our editors at: clsa[at]mail.sfsu.edu

Modern Family (MSA 14. Las Vegas. 18-21 Oct. 2012)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:25:18 -0500

The family—as a social institution, as field of study, as a body of representation and readership—has been underserved by theories of modernism. This oversight may stem from a perception that many of the moderns, such as the Greenwich Village avant-garde, were often averse to an institution they found inherently bourgeois and conservative. This panel invites papers that will consider the family as a center of modernist thought, aesthetics, and praxis.

How might family relate to the conference theme “spectacle,” a suggestion of that which prompts “curiosity or contempt” and even “marvel or admiration”? Can the family figure anything more than the negation of modernist conventions? How might the moderns radicalize family in keeping with their other impulses toward innovation and scandal? The panel welcomes projects dealing with any national literature or theoretical orientation, and encourages submissions to consider family as a broad term encompassing multivalent modes of organization.

Send a 250-word abstract and 1-page CV (as one email attachment) to wesley.beal@lyon.edu by Monday, March 19. More details about the 2012 meeting of the MSA are available here: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa14/index.html.

Wunderkino 2-- On The Varieties of Cinematic Experience; abstracts 4/11/2012; symposium 7/26-28/2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:16:40 -0500

Wunderkino (“wonder-cinema”) are moving images that ignite our curiosity and engagement, and help us to rethink questions of creativity, complexity, rarity and the multiple uses and understandings we might find in amateur and non-commercial films.

The 2012 Northeast Historic Film (NHF) Summer Symposium revisits the idea of Wunderkino, in a general call for proposals that aim to inform and expand our understanding of amateur and non-theatrical film. In 2011, the NHF Summer Symposium focused on assembling a “cabinet of cinematic curiosities.” This year, we are inviting proposals that feature amazing and extraordinary studies of amateur and non-theatrical films that offer lessons about culture, heritage, history, geography, performance, and the drama and comedy of social life. This year’s theme is an effort to draw upon the wide range of approaches that scholars, artists, filmmakers, and archivists are bringing to the study and use of amateur and non-theatrical film. We encourage (and expect) participants to incorporate interesting moving image excerpts as part of their presentations. NHF houses a 125-seat cinema with 35mm, 16mm, videotape, and DVD projection.

The NHF Summer Symposium is a multi-disciplinary gathering devoted to the history, theory, and preservation of amateur and nontheatrical moving images. For over a decade, the Symposium has been bringing together archivists, scholars, and artists in an intimate setting for three days of viewing and discussing lesser-known, amateur, and found films. NHF is located in Bucksport, a town of 5,000 on the coast of Maine (for more info on NHF, please visit: http://www.oldfilm.org). Presenters typically have 30-45 minutes in which to deliver their paper and engage in discussion with their colleagues. The symposium is open to archivists, artists and scholars from all disciplines. Please be advised that NHF is a non-profit organization. Unfortunately, we do not have resources to fund travel and lodging for conference presenters and participants. All presenters and participants must register for the symposium.

Please send 250-500 word abstracts outlining your paper ideas and a brief c.v. to the symposium organizers at the address below. We prefer e-mail submissions. We are happy to discuss your presentation ideas with you in advance of a formal submission. The Symposium Program Committee will begin reviewing proposals on April 11, 2012 and will finalize the program by May 11, 2012. Please send proposals and inquiries to: symposium@wunderkino.org

CFP: Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, Proposed Anthology, Due May 1, 2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:04:24 -0500

In the last decade, stories of dystopian societies have become increasingly prevalent in young adult fiction, and almost all question young people’s places within such societies. Works such as Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Lauren Oliver’s Delirium, Ally Condi’s Matched, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone are particularly concerned with how their adolescent female protagonists’ navigation of social mores and structures give them virtually no control over the outcome of their lives. For example, in The Hunger Games Trilogy, Katniss Everdeen has learned from growing up in Panem, a country that willingly sacrifices its children to maintain control of their parents, that masking emotion is key to survival. Other protagonists, such as Matched’s Cassia and Delirium’s Lena, directly confront experiences of love and desire in societies that have eradicated such feelings.

While these female protagonists challenge the audience’s preconceptions of what it means to be a young woman--someone who is preoccupied with consumer culture, dating dilemmas, and high school cliques--the use of the dystopian genre raises the stakes of adolescent struggles regarding identity, agency, and community. These authors specifically place female protagonists in settings where they must rebel against society to take any control over their own lives and to improve the societies in which they live. Thus, through the realm of dystopian fiction, these authors argue that rebellion against authority allows young women to defy both social and gender expectations in order to become active agents in their own lives, rather than being passive recipients of social mores.

This proposed anthology seeks papers that consider how female protagonists are represented in contemporary young adult dystopian fiction. How are the authors of young adult dystopian fiction consciously (or unconsciously) reinforcing or challenging stereotypical characterizations of female protagonists?

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

•young women as rebels, leaders, or instigators
•young women as the head of the family
•war and its impact on young women
•young women who reject/question socially-constructed feminine virtues
•young women who challenge what it means to be a young women in their individual societies
•role of environment and circumstance in YA dystopian fiction
•claiming female agency in a dystopian society
•female protagonists in YA dystopians compared to female protagonists in more conventional YA novels (i.e., Gossip Girl, The It Girl, or Uglies)
•adolescent female rebellion in YA fiction

We are currently seeking a book contract for this anthology. Please submit a 500-word abstract and a brief CV by May 1, 2012 to: Sara K. Day, Miranda Green-Barteet, and Amy L. Montz at yadystopianfiction@gmail.com.

CFP - International Journal of Engineering (IJE)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:52:06 -0500

Computer Science Journals (CSC Journals) invites researchers, editors, scientists & scholars to publish their scientific research papers in an International Journal of Engineering (IJE) Volume 6, Issue 3.

International Journal of Engineering (IJE) is devoted in assimilating publications that document development and research results within the broad spectrum of subfields in the engineering sciences. The journal intends to disseminate knowledge in the various disciplines of the engineering field from theoretical, practical and analytical research to physical implications and theoretical or quantitative discussion intended for both academic and industrial progress.

Our intended audiences comprises of scientists, researchers, mathematicians, practicing engineers, among others working in Engineering and welcome them to exchange and share their expertise in their particular disciplines. We also encourage articles, interdisciplinary in nature.

CSC Journals anticipate and invite papers on any of the following topics:

Aerospace Engineering

Agricultural Engineering

Biomedical Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Civil & Structural Engineering

Computer Engineering

Control Systems Engineering

Education Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Electronic Engineering

Engineering Mathematics

Engineering Science

Environmental Engineering

Fluid Engineering

Geotechnical Engineering

Industrial Engineering

Manufacturing Engineering

Materials & Technology Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Mineral & Mining Engineering

Nuclear Engineering

Optical Engineering

Petroleum Engineering

Robotics & Automation Engineering

Telecommunications Engineering

Important Dates - IJE CFP - Volume 6, Issue 3.
Paper Submission: March 31, 2012
Author Notification: May 15, 2012
Issue Publication: June 2012

For complete details about IJE archives publications, abstracting/indexing, editorial board and other important information, please refer to IJE homepage (http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/journals/IJE/description.php?JCode=IJE).

We look forward to receive your valuable papers. If you have further questions please do not hesitate to contact us at cscpress@cscjournals.org. Our team is committed to provide a quick and supportive service throughout the publication process.

A complete list of journals can be found at http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/bysubject.php

CFP - International Journal of Computer Science and Security (IJCSS)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:49:15 -0500

Computer Science Journals (CSC Journals) invites researchers, editors, scientists & scholars to publish their scientific research papers in an International Journal of Computer Science and Security (IJCSS) Volume 6, Issue 3.

The Journal of Computer Science and Security (IJCSS) is a refereed online journal which is a forum for publication of current research in computer science and computer security technologies. It considers any material dealing primarily with the technological aspects of computer science and computer security. The journal is targeted to be read by academics, scholars, advanced students, practitioners, and those seeking an update on current experience and future prospects in relation to all aspects computer science in general but specific to computer security themes. Subjects covered include: access control, computer security, cryptography, communications and data security, databases, electronic commerce, multimedia, bioinformatics, signal processing and image processing etc.

CSC Journals anticipate and invite papers on any of the following topics:

Authentication and authorization models

Bioinformatics

Communications and data security

Computer Engineering

Computer graphics

Computer Networks

Computer security

Cryptography

Data mining

Databases

Electronic commerce

Image processing

Object Orientation

Operating systems

Parallel and distributed processing

Programming languages

Robotics

Signal processing

Software engineering

Theory

Important Dates - IJCSS CFP - Volume 6, Issue 3.
Paper Submission: March 31, 2012
Author Notification: May 15, 2012
Issue Publication: June 2012

For complete details about IJCSS archives publications, abstracting/indexing, editorial board and other important information, please refer to IJCSS homepage (http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/journals/IJCSS/description.php?JCode=IJCS...)

A complete list of journals can be found at http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/bysubject.php

CFP - International Journal of Biometrics and Bioinformatics (IJBB)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:46:23 -0500

Computer Science Journals (CSC Journals) invites researchers, editors, scientists & scholars to publish their scientific research papers in an International Journal of Biometrics and Bioinformatics (IJBB) Volume 6, Issue 3.

The International Journal of Biometric and Bioinformatics (IJBB) brings together both of these aspects of biology and creates a platform for exploration and progress of these, relatively new disciplines by facilitating the exchange of information in the fields of computational molecular biology and post-genome bioinformatics and the role of statistics and mathematics in the biological sciences. Bioinformatics and Biometrics are expected to have a substantial impact on the scientific, engineering and economic development of the world. Together they are a comprehensive application of mathematics, statistics, science and computer science with an aim to understand living systems.

We invite specialists, researchers and scientists from the fields of biology, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics and such related sciences to share their understanding and contributions towards scientific applications that set scientific or policy objectives, motivate method development and demonstrate the operation of new methods in the fields of Biometrics and Bioinformatics.

CSC Journals anticipate and invite papers on any of the following topics:

Bio-grid

Bio-ontology and data mining

Bioinformatic databases

Biomedical image processing (fusion)

Biomedical image processing (registration)

Biomedical image processing (segmentation)

Biomedical modelling and computer simulation

Computational genomics

Computational intelligence

Computational proteomics

Computational structural biology

Data visualisation

DNA assembly, clustering, and mapping

E-health

Fuzzy logic

Gene expression and microarrays

Gene identification and annotation

Genetic algorithms

Hidden Markov models

High performance computing

Molecular evolution and phylogeny

Molecular modelling and simulation

Molecular sequence analysis

Neural networks

Important Dates - IJBB CFP - Volume 6, Issue 3.
Paper Submission: March 31, 2012
Author Notification: May 15, 2012
Issue Publication: June 2012

For complete details about IJBB archives publications, abstracting/indexing, editorial board and other important information, please refer to IJBB homepage (http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/journals/IJBB/description.php?JCode=IJBB).

A complete list of journals can be found at http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/bysubject.php

[UPDATE] CFP: Science Fiction/Fantasy/Legend NEPCA (6/1/12; Rochester, NY 10/26-27/12)

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:51:02 -0500

CALL FOR PAPERS
SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND LEGEND AREA
http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/
2012 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA)
St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York
26-27 October 2012
Proposals by 1 June 2012

Proposals are invited from scholars of all levels for papers to be presented in the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area. Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size) and may address any aspect of the intermedia genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or legends as represented in popular culture produced in any country, any time period, and for any audience. Please see our website (http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/) for further details and ideas.

If you are interested in proposing a paper or panel of papers, please send a proposal of approximately 300 to 500 words and a one to two page CV to both the Program Chair AND to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair at the following addresses (please note "SF/Fantasy/Legend Proposal" in your subject line):

Tim Madigan
Program Chair
tmadigan@sjfc.edu

Michael A. Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend Area Chair
Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com

The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is a regional affiliate of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. NEPCA is an association of scholars in New England and New York, organized in 1974 at the University of Rhode Island. We reorganized and incorporated in Boston in 1992. The purpose of this professional association is to encourage and assist research, publication, and teaching on popular culture and culture studies topics by scholars in the northeast region of the United States. By bringing together scholars from various disciplines, both academic and non-academic people, we foster interdisciplinary research and learning. We publish a newsletter twice per year and we hold an annual conference at which we present both the Peter C. Rollins Book Award and an annual prize.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation. Annual dues are currently $30 for full-time faculty and $15 to all other individuals. Further details are available at http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html.

[UPDATE] Principles of Uncertainty: A Conference on Critical Theory

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:34:14 -0500

“Principles of Uncertainty”

A Conference on Critical Theory

Keynote Speaker: Martin Hägglund

The students of the Department of Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center present the first annual interdisciplinary conference on literary theory to be held Friday, May 4, 2012. This conference is being given in support of the CUNY Graduate Center’s proposed certificate for Critical Theory, which is dedicated to the study of literary and critical theory.

We invite papers from all disciplines focusing on works from any period that explore the theme of uncertainty as it pertains to literary and critical theory.

This conference welcomes papers centering upon any individual theorist, period, or school of critical theory, as well as comparisons of various theoretical approaches, including, but not limited to literary theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, gender studies, and political theory. Some of the questions this conference seeks to answer include, but are not limited to:

· How is the meaning of a text uncertain?

· Is this uncertainty purposefully placed within a text or a by-product of the act of reading?

· How is this uncertainty demonstrated in the relationship between author and reader?

· How can uncertainty be understood not only with respect to literature but in ethical, gendered, political, and/or social terms?

· How is identity shown to be uncertain?

· How does an “undecidable” future impact present ethical and political actions?

· How is history (whether of language, narrative, and/or society) destabilized and called into question?

· How does language contribute to the uncertainty of meaning and interpretation?

· How does the theorist’s own writing present the reader with an example of uncertainty?

· How does uncertainty function in the methodologies of interpretation and the making of meaning?

· Can a text have a stable meaning or is it always uncertain?

Please submit a 300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by March 1, 2012 to uncertaintyconference2012@gmail.com. Proposals should include the title of the paper, presenter’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests. We also welcome panel proposals of three to four papers.

This conference is co-sponsored by:

The Writer’s Institute at the City University of New York Graduate Center: an un-MFA program devoted to bringing together the country’s most talented writers and today’s most celebrated editors.

The Doctoral Students’ Council: the sole policymaking body representing students in doctoral and master’s programs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Medical Economics in American Literature - [UPDATE]

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:18:23 -0500

Signaled in colonial portrayals of a New World rife with lush resources and intense mortal dangers to contemporary discourses surrounding public healthcare and its monetary costs/benefits---the country’s physical and economic “well being” have long been connected in the public psyche. Recognizing the symbolic possibilities behind this connection, American authors frequently used it to explore public and social issues affecting their nation and its citizenry. This panel seeks projects which explore such connections. Essays may pertain to any American literary period or genre. In addition, all cross-disciplinary and/or hemispheric approaches will be considered. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-The value or cost of wellness/disease
-Healthcare accessibility
-Economic influences on medical treatment
-Impact of diseases on economies
-Disability
-Medical Breakthroughs/Experimentation
-Doctor/Patient relations & medicine as a profession
-Lay-healers and non-traditional medical practices

Abstracts of 300-400 words should be submitted on or before Feb. 29th 2012 to heather.chacon@uky.edu. Please note that this is a provisional panel whose acceptance to MLA is contingent on approval of the MLA Special Sessions committee. Participants must be MLA members by April 7, 2012 to participate.

CONF: Wasted Spaces – University of Virginia – Charlottesville – FEB 17-18

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:59:21 -0500

Wasted Spaces
19th Annual German Graduate Studies Conference at the University of Virginia
Charlottesville (February 17-18)

Organizers: Charles Taggart and Rebekah Slodounik (University of Virginia)
Further Information: www.uvagermangradconference2012.wordpress.com
Charles Taggart: (cwt5z@virginia.edu)
Rebekah Slodounik:(ras9rb@virginia.edu)

In an age of heightened awareness over the depletion of natural resources pitted against an ever-growing and increasingly interconnected global population, the problematics of space have assumed a prominent position in contemporary discourse. The issue of space, including its definitions and uses, comes at a time in which current and future human endeavors face the challenge of a rapidly changing social and natural world. Our conference aims to explore different approaches towards space in discourse, culture, and the environment.

Program

FRI / Feb 17 / 2012 / Nau 101 / 5 p.m.

Professor Rochelle Tobias
(Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, The Johns Hopkins University)
"Rilke and the Landscapes of the Heart"

Opening Remarks: Rebekah Slodounik and Charles Taggart
Volker Kaiser (Department Chair)

SAT / Feb 18 / 2012 / Olsson Hall 120

8.30-9.00 a.m.: Breakfast

Panel I : Spatial Legacies
Moderator: Beatrice Waegner

9:00 - 9:30 Sven Frankowsky (Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster) –
Fruchtbar vergiftete Un-Orte bei David
Foster Wallace

9:30 - 10:00 Kerstin Steitz (University of Virginia)–
Memory Space: The Courtroom and the
Concentration Camp in Peter Weiss’s Die
Ermittlung. Ein Oratorium in 11 Gesängen

10:00 - 10:30 Lea Rekow (Center for Art and
Environment at the Nevada Museum of
Art)–
Extract: A Cultural Ecology of the
Colorado Plateau

10:30 - 10:45 Coffee Break

Panel 2: The Normative Undone
Moderator: Solvejg Nitzke

10:45 - 11:15 Sebastian Wilde (Universität Leipzig) –
Zur Störung der Wahrnehmung
normalisierter Räume durch
Naturkatastrophen

11:15 - 11:45 Danielle Pisechko (University of
Virginia) –
Homelessness and Home-loss:
Vergangenheitsbewältigung in deutscher
Gegenwartsliteratur

11:45 - 12:15 Bogumil Terminski (University of
Geneva)–
Development Induced Displacement and
Indigenous People’s Rights

12:15 - 13:45 Lunch

Panel 3: Unhallowed Spaces
Moderator: Gabriel Cooper

13:45 - 14:15 Kevin Boix (University of Virginia) –
The Berlin Sex Exchange: Homosociality
and Berlin Alexanderplatz

14:15 - 14:45 Michael Bryant (Indiana University) –
The Sacred and the Profane in Heinrich
Mann’s Professor Unrat

14:45 - 15:00 Coffee Break

Panel 4: A Sense of Space: Space and the Senses
Moderator: Danielle Verena Kollig

15:00 - 15:30 Jacob Denz (New York University) –
‘The Most Beautiful Manifoldness’:
Landscape and Kantian
Aesthetics in Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers and Die Wahlverwandtschaften

15:30 - 16:00 Geraldine Suter (University of
Virginia)–
Impersonal Use of Personal Space: The
Human Voice Box in Marcel Beyer’s
Flughunde

16:00 Closing Remarks: Rebekah Slodounik and
Charles Taggart

Call For Submissions: Chapbook Publishers Looking for Manuscripts

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:15:52 -0500

Hello,

Wormwood Chapbooks is now seeking chapbook manuscripts for publication. We publish both poetry and short story collections; for full details, please consult our submishmash, which can be found by following the link under the "submit" tab on our website:

www.wormwoodchapbooks.org

Please read the instructions carefully before submitting to Wormwood; also, please send all manuscripts via submishmash - not through e-mail.

Our reading time varies, but we try to read manuscripts within three months of the original submission date. Please do not inquire about the status of your submitted manuscripts unless 90 days have passed.

NOTE: This IS a paying market. Half of the proceeds of chapbook sales go to the author.

Thank you for taking the time to read this - we hope to see your work soon.

Regards,

Call for Submissions: Electronic & Print Journal Looking for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:10:13 -0500

A Few Lines Magazine is currently accepting submissions for its fourth issue, which is slated to come out in March or April. Our publication is growing rapidly, and our readership is larger than ever.

We accept submissions of poetry, flash fiction, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We read on a daily basis, so please feel free to submit at any time.

We're in the process of printing our second issue, and the electronic edition of our fourth issue is scheduled to release sometime within the next few months. Please feel free to flip through the pages of our past publications to get a sense of what we publish. We are not partial to any sort of aesthetic per se; we simply aim to publish literature.

So give us your best work. Our publication is a fantastic venue for emerging artists to showcase their work to a large audience. To submit, follow the link under the "Submit" tab on our website:

www.afewlinesmagazine.com

We look forward to reading through your submissions.

Jack Foster
Production Editor
JFoster.Editor@gmail.com
www.afewlinesmagazine.com

Buenos Aires Comics Conf 26 - 29 September, 2012

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:33:34 -0500

II International Comics Conference: Viñetas Serias 2012

Biblioteca Nacional – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina , 26 to 29 de September, 2012.

The Second International Comics Conference: Viñetas Serias 2012 will feature workshops, panels, round tables and plenary talks which explore different thematic areas of academic work. Thematic areas include: Graphic Humor (polítics, culture and society; comparative perspectives), Visual Arts, Sequential Narratives, Aesthetics, Experimentation / Innovation, and Language, The Comics Before the Comics, Politics, Ideology and Resistance, Transpositions and Dialogs between Visual Languages, Documents, The Graphic Novel and Biography, Collections, Archives and Sources, Subjectivity, Gender and Identity Construction, New Technologies and Editing, Comics and Pedagogy and the Publishing Industry and the Publishing Market.

Submissions:
Papers will be evaluated by the Conference Committee. The full papers should be sent to the Viñetas Serias email. The deadline for submission of applications is Monday, April 9, 2012. Notification of acceptance or rejection of papers will be made via email to the authors during the month of June. Proposals should be sent to: vinetas-serias@vinetas-sueltas.com.ar following the presentation guidelines that follow.

The papers may be submitted in Spanish, Portuguese or English.

Send the complete paper to the conference email using a WORD or RTF format.

Papers should not exceed 15 pages including images, footnotes and bibliography.

The presentations will be accompanied by a summary in English and Spanish of no more than 300 words.
Include up to 5 keywords and suggest up to two thematic areas for categorizing the paper.

Send two separate files simultaneously: one containing the abstract and the paper (title and notes) without indicating the author, pseudonym or institutional references, and the second containing paper title, author, institutional affiliation, country, email address and suggesting the two thematic areas of the conference where you think the paper could be presented.

The file containing the paper should be stored under a pseudonym and the number 1. Example: Caminante1.doc and second file with the paper title and author data as outlined above with the number 2. Example: Caminante2.doc. The two files must be sent in the same email.

Papers will be evaluated by a reading committee composed of specialists. Acceptance will be announced in June.

Organization of Panels and Workshops:
The accepted papers will be sent to the members of each panel before the Conference, to facilitate joint discussion. The panels and workshops will have a moderator who will present the issues and questions briefly introduced in the submissions received, and moderate the ensuing discussion.
With the exception of round tables, plenary lectures and panels, reading time available for each presentation is 15 minutes. Please observe this instruction strictly to ensure dialogue with the public and avoid delays in developing the program.
All papers will be published in digital form on a CD and on the conference website. Selected papers will be published in book form. Graphics and illustrations may not be included due to financial restraints.

Registration:
Registration fees will be announced in the next call for papers. Presenters and attendees will be able to pay for registration when checking in for the conference at the conference site / premises.

For more information, visit the site:
http://www.vinetas-sueltas.com.ar/congreso/circular2-2012.html

The South and Sexuality (MLA 2013) January 3-6, 2013 / Boston, MA

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:51:03 -0500

The South and Sexuality (MLA 2013)
January 3-6, 2013 / Boston, MA
Panel sponsored by the Southern Literature Discussion Group
This panel will explore the myriad roles sexuality has played in the literature, culture, and history of the U.S. South. Potential topics might include the intersections between class, race, gender and sexuality; social justice and sexual identity; the social geography of gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, and transgendered spaces; the institution of the family and the formation of sexuality; the ways in which the global economy, nationalism, and regionalism shape sexual identity; the erotics of friendship; reproduction and maternity; religion and sexuality. Given the multi-faceted nature of this topic, proposals of an interdisciplinary nature are particularly encouraged.

Please send a 500 word abstract by March 10, 2012 to Dr. Lisa Hinrichsen, Department of English, University of Arkansas, 333 Kimpel Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701 or lhinrich at uark.edu. Proposals and queries welcome before the deadline.

[UPDATE] MLA 2013 Boston “Race, Sex, Class, and Bawdy-House Life in 19th Century America” (Abstracts Due 15 March 2012)

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:45:11 -0500

This panel examines bawdy-house life and customs during an era of increased anxiety over race, sex, class, immigration, expansion, urbanization, and industrialization.

Topics and/or critical paradigms can include, but are certainly not limited to: miscegenation, class, disease, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, expansion, politics, temperance, manners, conduct, prostitution, gambling, race, gender, abolitionism, feminism, religion, sporting life, critical race/queer theory and reader-response.

Send 1-page abstract and brief bio as Word attachment to Rebecca L. Williams, rebelwill7@gmail.com, with ‘MLA 2013’ in subject line.

[REMINDER] Post-Graduate Student Conference on English Literature and Translation Studies 17-18 May 2012

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:26:36 -0500

English Literature and Translation Studies:
An interdisciplinary/international postgraduate conference
17th-18th May 2012 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 250 word abstract should be submitted as an email attachment to eltsconferences@gmail.com or elts@cankaya.edu.tr by March 5th, 2012. In your email, please include your name, affiliation, email address, phone number, title of paper, and a brief biographical statement.
For further details please visit: www.elts.cankaya.edu.tr
For all enquiries please do not hesitate to write us an email: eltsconferences@gmail.com

[UPDATE - NEW DATE] Works in Progress: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, June 1, 2012

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:30:06 -0500

The English Department at the University of Cincinnati invites you to submit proposals for an interdisciplinary academic conference held on June 1, 2012 focusing on the value of sharing works in progress as a means to increase experimentation, build community, and test new ideas. Rather than soliciting finished products from participants, we seek work that shows its seams, represents thinking in action, invites revision, and resists closure. In other words, don’t hide your process; advertise it.

Changing concepts of materiality, influencing everything from mediums to social communication, have highlighted the importance of process to all forms of production. In this spirit, we encourage projects that take process seriously, that understand process—how things are made, how ideas cohere, how writing happens—as a legitimate and compelling object of study. Projects could include but aren’t limited to explorations of the academic and the technical; pedagogical, artistic and scholarly experiments and practices; and reflective, theoretical, rhetorical, creative, or critical works.

We encourage presenters to experiment with the genre of their presentations. Presenters should feel welcome to take advantage of multimodal delivery. Presentations might take the form of a PowerPoint project, a short film, an interactive discussion or workshop, some combination of these, or other possibilities.

Proposals for individual and panel presentations might address any of the following:

• Non-linear narratives
• Multi-author works
• Reconsidering ownership
• Law in the digital age
• Piracy and plagiarism
• Digital technology
• Transcending conventional mediums
• (Re)use/mediation/mix/vision
• Mash-ups and multi-modalities
• Text-in-progress
• Work that is self-conscious about process
• Restructuring spaces
• Collaborative art
• Questioning “the finished project”
• Re-envisioning embodiment and materiality
• Persona and social networking

Panel proposals should include a coversheet containing panel title, each presenter’s name, the name of a moderator, presentation titles, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, requests for technology, and anticipated format of presentation (papers, multimodal, interactive, workshop, etc.); the second page should include abstracts of 250-words for each presentation (3 to 4) and a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole.

Individual proposals should consist of two pages. On the first page, include name, presentation title, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and details of any technology you may require, and the anticipated format of presentation (paper, multimodal, interactive, etc.).; the second page should contain a 250-word abstract.
Please do not include identifying information on second page (abstracts).

Individual presentations should not exceed twenty minutes; panel presentations should plan for 80 minutes total (including Q&A time).

Mindful of the financial pressures we all face, there will be no fee to attend or present at this graduate conference.

Send proposals and queries to uccompconf@gmail.com.

Conference website: http://uccompconference.blogspot.com/

THE AMERICAN WEST IN FILM AND LITERATURE: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:32:22 -0500

For a Casebook of Critical Essays I am looking for scholarly essays from qualified scholars on aspects of the West in film or literature in various genres or critical approaches such as the 21st Century Popular Western, the post-West, the postmodern West, the Beat West, the Urban West, Non-“Western” films or novels about the West, Perceptions of the West, Feminist Reactions to Western texts, or studies relating to New Western History or new Western environmentalisms. Studies of individual authors and works are welcome as well. Send me solid, theory-based studies pointing in new directions for Western studies.
PROPOSALS ACCEPTED THROUGH APRIL 2012
FULL-LENGTH PAPERS THROUGH JULY 2012

Please email 1-2 page proposals and a short vita to:
Dr. Paul Varner
English Department
Abilene Christian University
psv07a@acu.edu

LGBTQI Graduate Students and Academia

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:15:31 -0500

The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2013 MLA annual meeting (Boston, Jan. 3-6, 2013). Please send abstracts (ca. 250 words) to Ervin Malakaj (emalakaj@wustl.edu) by March 10.

LGBTQI graduate students encounter a variety of barriers – structural, institutional, covert, implicit – as they prepare to enter the profession, which remains an unchanged challenge for many young scholars. We invite scholars from all stages of their academic career to submit proposals for papers that call attention to areas where higher education is falling short of its commitment to equality, diversity, accessibility, visibility, and integration. We welcome papers that would contribute to a larger discussion about how these barriers can be identified and suggestions for how they can be overcome.

"Theory Mad Beyond Redemption": The Post-Kantian Poe (Abstracts Due: April 30)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:36:37 -0500

A call for papers for a special issue of _The Edgar Allan Poe Review_, forthcoming in Fall 2012, and guest-edited by Sean Moreland, Devin Zane Shaw, and Jonathan Murphy.

The editors invite original essays that address the influence of German Idealist and Romantic thought upon Edgar Allan Poe. While it has become a critical commonplace that Poe both makes use of and mocks many elements of German Idealism, there has been scant discussion of the specificities of Poe’s complex, and often vexed, treatments of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Poe studies enjoyed a brief revival of the “French Poe” following the psychoanalytic and deconstructive interventions of Lacan and Derrida, but the anti-theoretical backlash of the past two decades has tended to extradite Poe back to his country of origin, restoring his “American Face” at the cost of recognizing the transatlantic influences that indelibly shaped his writing. This collection will focus on Poe’s indebtedness to, as well as his critical distance from, German Idealist and Romantic writers, but its intent is not to delineate, as Hansen and Pollin (1995) have done, the “German Face” of Poe, so much as it is to reintroduce the theoretical aspect of Poe’s artistry back into the critical conversation.

We especially welcome papers that consider the relationship between Poe’s reception of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy (including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, and the Schlegels) and that of his American literary contemporaries (including Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, and Melville); articles that examine the role of Coleridge and Carlyle, Cousin and de Stael in disseminating German Idealism upon American shores; and essays that interrogate more recent peregrinations of German philosophy in Continental theory, especially as they pertain to a reconsideration of Poe’s literary legacy.

We require a 250 word abstract and a brief bio by no later than April 30, 2012, and the finished paper (Chicago-style, no more than 9000 words including endnotes) by July 15, 2012. Abstracts, papers,and questions should be directed to: theorymad@gmail.com.

[UPDATE] Call for Environmental Literature

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:30:03 -0500

Kudzu Review is looking for environmental essay, art, fiction & poetry for issue 1.2, Summer Solstice!

DEADLINE CHANGE:
March 1st!

We look for savvy, sharp, well polished literature that captures life in a post-natural world, & publish work, bi-annually, that is outstanding and motivated by concerns with human’s place in the world.

Visit the site for details: www.kudzureview.com

Somaesthetics Essay Prize 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:48:06 -0500

The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University is pleased to announce its first annual Somaesthetics Essay Prize competition. The award for the 2012 prize will be $500. Essays should be academic in style and focus on the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics from such perspectives as philosophy, aesthetics, art history and theory, literary and cultural studies, dance, design, music, theatre, cognitive science, gender and sexuality studies, sports, movement, and health studies. The prize essay will be recommended for publication in an upcoming special issue of the philosophical journal Pragmatism Today on somaesthetics.

Submissions should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words in length, including notes and references, and should be e-mailed in Word format to bodymindculture@fau.edu. The deadline for submission of essays is September 1, 2012, and the prize winner will be announced in December 2012. Essays will be evaluated by an interdisciplinary panel of judges appointed by the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture.

For more details, including bibliographies on somaesthetics, please visit http://www.fau.edu/bodymindculture/Somaesthetics_Essay_Prize.php.

CFP for the Spring 2012 issue of The Projector: A Journal on Film, Media, and Culture

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:11:04 -0500

The Projector is a peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to the study of the intersections between media and culture. We are currently seeking essays for our Spring 2012 issue. We are particularly interested in scholarship that engages in interdisciplinary analyses of media texts, including those that examine media from a cultural studies, political economy, qualitative audience research, industry analysis, feminist, queer theory, or critical race theory perspective. We invite essays that engage with theoretical debates in media and cultural studies, as well as those that engage in critical examinations of aesthetic practices. We are also interested in essays that examine alternatives to corporate media.

Research articles should be approximately 25 pages and follow MLA guidelines for formatting and citation. Manuscripts or inquiries should be submitted to cbaron@bgsu.edu. Submissions must be received by April 1, 2012 for consideration.

For more information on The Projector and the types of essays we are looking for, please visit our journal at http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/theatrefilm/projector/09-01-2010/index.h....

Word Meets Image: The Graphic Novel (3/31/2012; 10/19/2012-10/21/2012)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:42:42 -0500

This special session invites papers on the graphic novel and related genres of literature that combine graphic elements with textual elements. Papers that examine the history of the graphic novel, that theorize the rapidly evolving visual rhetoric of this form of literature or that investigate some other aspect of the genre are welcome.
Please submit paper title, 500-word proposal, and 50-word abstract online at www.pamla.org/2012/ by March 31, 2012.
PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) is the western regional affiliate of MLA. The 2012 conference will take place October 19-21 at Seattle University, Seattle, Washington
Please note that while you need not be a member of PAMLA to propose a paper, you will have to become a member by May 1, 2012 if your paper is accepted and you wish to attend the conference. You will also have to pay the separate conference fee by September 15 if you wish to attend the conference, deliver your paper, and be included in the conference program.

[UPDATE:Extended Deadline and New Email Address] “Rough Music”: Representing Violence (March 31, 2012)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:05:10 -0500

CFP
“Rough Music”: Representing Violence – an interdisciplinary graduate conference sponsored by the Southern Methodist University Department of English on
March 31, 2012

In The Plague of Fantasies, Slavoj Žižek describes Lacan's readings of classical, literary, and philosophical texts as "a case of violent appropriation…displacing the work from its proper hermeneutic context." And yet, he argues, "this very violent gesture brings about a breathtaking 'effect of truth'" and "a shattering new insight."

This conference, hosted by the English Department at Southern Methodist University, invites graduate students to interpret and explore the function of violence in all of its multitudinous forms, including, but not limited to, its function in literature. We invite proposals for consideration that reflect any and all interdisciplinary explorations of violence as trope, historical event or discursive technique.

Papers may engage violence from a variety of directions and deal with violence in any of the arenas in which it arises: politics, cultural studies, class, ethnic and racial discourses, gender, religion or in the very act of writing itself. Papers might examine questions such as:

• How do physical acts of violence obfuscate systemic violence? How does literary writing participate in or act against that obfuscation?
• How is violence enacted in, on or through a text?
• Why do some texts marginalize violence, pushing it off-screen, while other texts foreground it, making it a central part of their subject or, at times, the subject itself?
• What happens to a subject who is subjected to violence, physically or systemically?

The keynote speaker for this conference will be Dr. Richard Rankin Russell, Associate Professor of English at Baylor University. Dr. Russell specializes in 20th century British and Irish literatures. Among his numerous publications, Dr. Russell’s most recent book, Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (2010) was published by Notre Dame University Press. It received the 2011 SCMLA award and 2010 SAMLA award for best book published by a member of the association.

Please submit a 250-word abstract for your 20-minute presentation to smugradconference@gmail.com by February 15, 2012. Please specify your institutional affiliation, if applicable, and any technological requests.

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment, Volume 4 (annual)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:45:42 -0500

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment (RAE), an annual published by AMS Press, is accepting articles for volume 5, due out the spring of 2014. Articles received by Nov. 15, 2012 will be considered for this volume; articles received after this date will likely be considered for a later volume. Please visit the following link for a description of RAE's scope and focus, and for detailed submission guidelines:

http://www.amspressinc.com/rae.html

Volumes 1 and 2 of RAE are now available at www.amspressinc.com.

Send quiries and questions to Brett McInelly (brett_mcinelly@byu.edu).

Kurt Vonnegut (Critical Insights essay collection); abstracts due 30 March 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:18:26 -0500

Critical Insights: Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Robert T. Tally Jr.

Call for proposals

The editor of Critical Insights: Kurt Vonnegut seeks proposals for essays on any aspect of Kurt Vonnegut’s life and work. Please send proposals of 250–300 words, along with a brief CV listing previous publications, to robert.tally@txstate.edu by March 30, 2012.

If accepted, contributors’ final essays of 6,000–7,000 words will be due on August 31, 2012.

This volume will appear part of the "Critical Insights" series, published by Salem Press (a division of EBSCO). The series is intended for use by high school and undergraduate students, providing them with a comprehensive introduction to the work of a single author that they are likely to encounter, discuss, and study in their classrooms. Critical Insights: Kurt Vonnegut will help students build a foundation for studying Vonnegut’s writings in greater depth by introducing them to key texts, concepts, contexts, critical approaches, and critical vocabulary found in the scholarship on Vonnegut’s life and work. Essays should be written in a clear and concise style that is accessible to adolescents and young adults, avoiding terminology with which students may be unfamiliar (or, if some jargon is necessary, cogently defining these terms within the body of the essay), and illustrating key concepts with examples and quotations from primary and secondary sources.

Please contact Robert Tally at robert.tally@txstate.edu with any questions.