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(Abstracts due Sept. 30) Calvino's Contexts: The Influences On and The Influences Of Italo Calvino (NeMLA Apr. 2014)

updated: 
Monday, September 9, 2013 - 8:48am
Northeast Modern Language Association

This panel seeks papers for the upcoming NeMLA in April 2014. In the years since his death, the stature of Italo Calvino has only continued to grow. While his status as an Italian writer was never in doubt, the global range of his work is still being explored. This panel invites papers interested in pursuing this framework, political and historical, national and transnational, literary and philosophical. The influences on Calvino's fictions were immense, and the influence of his fictions have been equally immense. This panel seeks to better understand these influences. Please email abstracts by Sept. 30 tojackiec159@hotmail.com

NeMLA 2014: Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Literature

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Monday, September 9, 2013 - 6:37am
NeMLA 2014 Session CFP

Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Literature: NeMLA 2014 Panel

This panel seeks papers that focus on contemporary female writers working in the tradition of fairy tale. Possible topics include fairy tale and the body; role of the fairy tale in memory and healing; authority and transgression; place of the fantastic in modernity; fairy tale as an alternative account of history; potential of the fantastic to disrupt, redefine, and subvert power structures; restructuring of language by the female storyteller. Please send 250-word abstracts and bios to Natalia Andrievskikh, nandrie1@binghamton.edu

[UPDATE] Extended Deadline: Games of Late Modernity (Leusden, NL: January 15-17 2014)

updated: 
Monday, September 9, 2013 - 3:58am
Tilburg University / Huizinga Research Institute / ISVW

The end of this year will be marked by the 75th anniversary of Johan Huizinga's classic study of the Homo Ludens. Its main thesis is as striking as it is simple: Culture is founded on and as a form of play. Huizinga's historical, philosophical and anthropological aim was to understand play as a 'totality'. The element of play can be observed in all different aspects of culture, ranging from seemingly innocuous leisure activities to the uttermost serious and advanced systems, such as the financial world, political institutions, mass media and warfare.

[UPDATE] Extended Deadline: Games of Late Modernity (Leusden, NL: January 15-17 2014)

updated: 
Monday, September 9, 2013 - 3:51am
Tilburg University / Huizinga Research Institute / ISVW

The end of this year will be marked by the 75th anniversary of Johan Huizinga's classic study of the Homo Ludens, arguably the single most important Dutch contribution to the international scholarly field of the twentieth century. As the subtitle – A Study of the Play Element in Culture – indicates, Huizinga inquires into a fundamental characteristic of human culture and society. The main thesis of the book may appear to be as striking as it seems to be simple: Culture is played from the very first till the very last minute. Culture is founded on a form of play while at the same time being an expression of play. Huizinga tried to understand play as a 'totality'.

[UPDATE] New Voices 2014 Graduate Student Conference- Origins, Identity, and Authenticity - 01/30/14 - 02/01/14 - Atlanta, GA

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Sunday, September 8, 2013 - 8:55pm
New Voices Graduate Student Conference

New Voices is an interdisciplinary graduate student conference hosted by Georgia State University's English department and sponsored by the department's Graduate English Association. The conference is designed to provide emerging and experienced graduate scholars in the humanities with a forum for sharing their latest research. While the conference has a different suggested theme each year, adherence to the suggested theme is not at all necessary to be considered for inclusion in the conference. New Voices invites papers on all topics and themes related not only to English studies, but all other humanities disciplines as well as the social sciences and political science.

Engineering the Body in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (NeMLA, April 3-6, 2014, Harrisburg, PA; deadline September 30)

updated: 
Sunday, September 8, 2013 - 3:24pm
Lisa Perdigao

NeMLA, April 3-6, 2014, Harrisburg, PA

Engineering the Body in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Discussing the impact of modernization and new technology on society, Tim Armstrong notes that the body became a "site of crisis" that required an "intervention through which it might be made the grounds of a new form of production" (4). Drawing on Armstrong's claim for the modern period, this panel will examine how contemporary texts represent this "desire to intervene in the body" (6) and the results of those endeavors, both the possibilities and risks.

NeMLA 2014 Roundtable: Pedagogical Approaches to the Literature of the Caribbean Diaspora

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Sunday, September 8, 2013 - 1:09pm
Kim Evelyn

NeMLA 2014 Roundtable: Pedagogical Approaches to the Literature of the Caribbean Diaspora

Roundtable format: 3-6 participants give brief, informal presentations (5-10 minutes) with the remainder of the session given to a conversation between the participants and the audience.

Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Kim Evelyn at kim_evelyn@my.uri.edu by September 30, 2013.

This roundtable invites submissions on pedagogical methods and strategies for teaching Caribbean diaspora literature in North America. (That is, not only from authors living in and writing from the Caribbean, but those living abroad, second-generation Caribbean diaspora writers, etc.)

NeMLA 2014 - Multicultural Folklore in Contemporary Fiction: Tracing the Roots

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 3:35pm
Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Apil 3-6

The panel's emphasis is on the process by which folklore moves, changes and remanifests itself over time and through culture. Panel submissions may explore topics from the realms of Comparative Language and Literature, World Literature or Composition and Rhetoric Studies. Additionally, a multicultural folklore examination of texts from a Women's and Gender Studies, Disability Studies, African American Studies or Queer Theory Lens is applicable. Please send brief abstracts to Caroline Burke .

[UPDATE] America Abroad: Forging an International Commons, C19, March 13-16, 2014

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 2:31pm
John Mac Kilgore, Florida State University; Daniel Grace, UC-Davis

We invite submissions for a panel on nineteenth-century US literatures concerned with "abroadness," that is, any topic dealing with the way that Americans abroad—as travelers, refugees, diplomats, journalists, expatriates, or laborers—forge common binds (real or ideological) with or in other nations.

But we also want to think of America abroad in a more conceptual sense of away from home—not within its own domain or customary identity, foreign to itself, but discovering a commonness defined through interactions beyond the boundary, transformed through foreign involvement; and in the sense of in circulation/exported—America as a concept inherently part of dispersed global traffic.

Changing Rape Culture through Literature

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 2:04pm
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

45th Annual Convention
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - April 3-6, 2014

Changing Rape Culture through Literature

Conference on the Harlem Renaissance

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 1:29pm
Paine College

The Department of Humanities at Paine College is requesting proposals for the annual Conference on the Harlem Renaissance to be held on our historic campus in Augusta, GA. The theme for 2013 is "Midwives and Mavericks: Architects, Artists, and Critics of the Renaissance." The focus for presentations will center on the literature, history, philosophy, art, and music, as well as inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches to the lives, work, and impact of a variety of architects, artists, and critics of the Harlem Renaissance Era.

Roundtable: Power, Privilege, and the Politics of Recoherence (NeMLA)

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 1:10pm
Sara E. Murphy and Don Rodrigues / NeMLA 2014

What happens when, in a work of poetry or prose, a hegemonic order is cracked, disrupted, reconstituted, and reshaped; in the words of Jamaica Kincaid, 'Do you ever wonder why some people blow things up?' We invite participants for a roundtable session that will explore the idea that 20th and 21st century authors who write from positions of deprivilege often explicitly engage in performative illogicality and disorientation as a tactic of epistemological re-formation within their texts.

Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies (new Palgrave Macmillan book series)

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 12:19pm
Robert T. Tally Jr., series editor

Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies is a new book series from Palgrave Macmillan focusing on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. The spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences has occasioned an explosion of innovative, multidisciplinary scholarship in recent years, and geocriticism, broadly conceived, has been among the more promising developments in spatially oriented literary studies. Whether focused on literary geography, cartography, geopoetics, or the spatial humanities more generally, geocritical approaches enable readers to reflect upon the representation of space and place, both in imaginary universes and in those zones where fiction meets reality.

[UPDATE] Deadline extended: Utopia in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

updated: 
Friday, September 6, 2013 - 9:01am
University of North Georgia Arts and Letters Conference 2014

Utopia in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

University of North Georgia – Dahlonega, GA
February 28 – March 2, 2014
proposal deadline: September 30, 2013

From early ideas of a perfect human condition to a more modern conception of technological or social nirvana, visions of utopia have permeated our histories. Their genesis is often in response to social and political struggle, or is a reaction to imperfect reality. They are commentaries on the aspirations of our predecessors and present dreamers for the potential that lives within us all. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine how human experience and culture has impacted our idea of utopia in the present, in times and places past, and in the future.

[Update] Representing the Contemporary Youth in Teen Television Drama

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Friday, September 6, 2013 - 5:37am
45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) , Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

From Beverley Hills 90210 to Gossip Girl and Glee, the genre of the teen drama series has added a unique and multi-faceted dynamic to the American television landscape. The popularity of this genre stems from the way in which it challenges and dramatizes the realities of its young viewers, presenting them with a fantastical reality which is defined by melodrama, materialism and excess. This quality of the genre often causes adult viewers to dismiss the teen drama series as a product of guilty pleasure television.

21st Annual NINE Conference on the Historical and Sociological Impact of Baseball (March 12-15, 2014; abstracts due Dec. 2, 2013

updated: 
Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 4:45pm
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture announces the 21st Annual NINE Spring Training Conference on the Historical and Sociological Impact of Baseball

Wednesday, March 12-Saturday, March 15, 2014

Fiesta Resort Conference Center
2100 South Priest Drive
Tempe, Arizona

Call for Papers

The 21st Annual NINE Spring Training Conference invites original, unpublished papers that study all aspects of baseball, with particular emphasis on history and social policy implications. Abstracts only, not to exceed 300 words, should be submitted by December 3, 2013, to tstrecker@bsu.edu .

February 27-28th, 2014 Mardi Gras Conference- Masking the Self: Secrets, Disguise, and Mysteries

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Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 10:23am
Louisiana State University English Graduate Student Association

The 24th annual Mardi Gras Conference invites scholars to investigate discourses on secrecy, anonymity, rumor, masking/masquerading, and mysterious places in literature and writing--along with discovering the hidden treasure in the king cake.

Masquerading, secrets, and intrigue feature prominently as themes of the Carnival celebration from Venice to New Orleans. In Venice, elaborate Carnival masks enable revelers to celebrate in disguise, while in New Orleans, the tradition continues with many masked krewes. For these krewes, not only is the identity of their king unknown by the public, the theme of their parade remains a guarded secret until the day of the event, creating an air of mystery and suspense.

[UPDATE] Bodies in Place: Disability and the Environment in American Literature (April 3-6 2014); Proposals due 9/30

updated: 
Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 9:16am
NEMLA 45th Annual Convention (Harrisburg PA, April 3-6))

This panel seeks a broad range of papers exploring how disability challenges normative constructions of the body-environment dyad. For example, how does disability-centered American literature negotiate the relationship between embodiment and emplacement? How might literature by people with disabilities contribute to a more inclusive ecocriticism? How might we re-examine 'canonical' American environmental literature through a disability studies lens? Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and brief bio to Matthew Cella at mjcella@ship.edu.

[UPDATE] Postcolonial Filmmaking in French-speaking Countries

updated: 
Thursday, September 5, 2013 - 8:08am
Black Camera

Black Camera invites submissions for a Close-Up devoted to a critical assessment of Postcolonial Filmmaking in French-speaking Countries to be published Fall 2014.

We seek essays on films by African filmmakers that challenge "absolute otherness" in postcoloniality. Consider, for example, films by Ousmane Sembène, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Merzak Allouache, Moufida Tlati, Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Jean-Marie Teno, Sylvestre Amoussou, Mahmoud Zemmouri, and Nadia El Fani.

Lynn Nottage Anthology Deadline: 10/15/2013

updated: 
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 10:35pm
Jocelyn L. Buckner (Chapman University) and Aimee Zygmonski (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Call for Papers: "Lynn Nottage Anthology"
Deadline: October 15, 2013
Editors: Jocelyn L. Buckner (Chapman University) and Aimee Zygmonski (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Contact Email: nottageanthology@gmail.com

[UPDATE] Representing Law in Ethnic American Literature (NeMLA 2014)

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Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 5:37pm
New England Modern Language Association

This session will explore representations of law in twentieth century ethnic American fiction—for example, law and legal figures in Charles Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, Louise Erdrich's deployment of crime novel conventions in The Roundhouse, etc. How do ethnic American writers deploy aspects of law in their works, and to what ends? How does the law define and codify particular groups as "races," and how do ethnic American writers complicate, subvert or deconstruct these legal modes of identification? In fiction, how is the law made to account for specific bodies and/or behaviors? And how do particular legal treatments differ from familial, communal, and societal interpretations of identities, bodies, behaviors etc.?

The Folklore of the Susquehanna River

updated: 
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 1:11pm
Northeast Modern Language Association

Please consider the following Call for Papers for this year's NeMLA conference in Harrisburg, PA:

The Folklore of the River
This panel will investigate the folklore of the Susquehanna River. Topics may include jokes, tales, foodways, festivals/celebrations, folk art, folk music, occupational folklore, urban legends, etc. While history and economy are clearly important aspects of river life, this panel is more concerned with cultural lifestyle and expression. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to James Reitter (james.reitter@dc.edu).
The Deadline is 9/30/13.

-James Reitter
Dominican College, Orangeburg NY

BOSS: Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies, First Issue

updated: 
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 11:35am
BOSS: Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies

BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies is a new open-access academic journal that publishes peer-reviewed essays pertaining to Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's immense body of work and remarkable musical career has inspired a recent outpouring of scholarly analysis. BOSS will create a scholarly space for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy. We seek to publish articles that examine the political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that have influenced Springsteen's music and shaped its reception. The editors of BOSS welcome broad interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to Springsteen's songwriting, performance, and fan community, as well as studies that conform to specific disciplinary perspectives.

38th Annual PAC Conference: 27-29 March 2014, Ocean Creek Resort, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

updated: 
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - 11:23am
The Philological Association of the Carolinas

Email proposals along with a brief abstract and CV by 10 December 2013.

We welcome papers and panels on any topic of interest to literature and language scholars. Past sessions have focused on English, American, world and multiethnic literatures, as well as on linguistics, composition, and pedagogy.

Panel proposals must include a letter of justification along with the session title; brief abstracts in English of all proposed papers; and the names, email addresses, and institutional affiliation of all participants.

Postscript (pachome.org/wp) is the peer-reviewed journal of the organization, which publishes scholarly papers, provided contributors become PAC members.

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