category: childrens literature

[Extended Deadline] THE WORD MADE TEXT (SAMLA, Nov. 8-10, Atlanta)

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:01:48 -0400

Religion and Literature: This panel explores the ways religious print texts—scriptures, devotional texts, prayer books, hymnals, etc.—are presented in other literary texts, such as fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction.

Topics could include: How do authors write about religious texts? How are literary characters (fictional or not) affected by reading religious texts? How do religious texts open or close access to the divine? How do authors delineate the different effects of textual and oral religious traditions (sermons, hymns, memorized creeds, etc.)? Does it matter whether the religious text is online instead of in a book? How do authors measure the worth/quality of their own texts alongside that of established religious texts? How do they understand the function and/or the potential of literature as compared to the function and power of religious writing? In what ways are religious texts treated as objects—material objects, literary objects, objects of study, objects of analysis, etc.?

Papers on literature from any part of the world and related to any religious tradition are welcome.

By June 17, 2013, please submit a one-page abstract along with your school affiliation, rank/position, and any A/V requests to J. Stephen Pearson, The University of Tennessee, at stpears11@gmail.com.

SAMLA 85 in Atlanta: Contemporary American Creative Non-Fiction

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:37:57 -0400

ADVANCED WRITING
Contemporary American Creative Nonfiction
The genre of creative nonfiction— exemplified both by engaging, intellectual essays and by narrative with attention to literary style—has received increasing scholarly and public attention. Moreover, such writing is taking new forms—on the page, as in the past, and on the web as well. This panel highlights and celebrates creative non-fiction composed for both page and screen. Papers on any aspect of writing, writing about, or teaching creative nonfiction are welcomed, and papers that connect to this year’s special focus are especially encouraged. By June 27, 2013, please send abstracts of 300 words or so and a brief bio to Diana Eidson at deidson@gsu.edu

[DEADLINE APPROACHING] CFP Marginalised Mainstream 2013: Fading and Emerging [17 June]

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:12:15 -0400

Senate House, University of London
12-13 September 2013

Plenary speakers include:
Dr Kate Macdonald (Ghent University), Professor Nicola Humble (University of Roehampton) and Professor Yvonne Tasker (University of East Anglia)

‘Fading and Emerging: Tracing the Mainstream in Literature and Popular Culture’, the second annual Marginalised Mainstream conference, seeks to explore the issue of fading and emerging in culturally significant popular forms that have been subject to critical marginalisation. How does the mainstream itself foster fading and emerging? How are vanishing and appearance dealt with in popular narratives?

In literature, characters fade into the background or erupt onto the page with sudden violence to affect the plot. The deus ex machina is a staple of thrillers, but where else (and how) is it incorporated? Cinema and photography have offered a unique space to experiment with the concept of fading and vanishing, both literally and figuratively, but also traces and mirages - pressing half images against the psyche invites shadows in and encourages us to see what was never there (think Hitchcock’s Psycho). Metaphors, such as dawn and twilight, shadows and pools of light, abound. Such devices have been used in storytelling since the popular myths of the ancient world. This conference seeks to understand their significance.

We invite submissions from postgraduate students, early career academics and established researchers working in the fields of literature, cultural studies and elsewhere in the humanities to answer these questions and beyond. The aims of this conference strive not only to consider fading and emerging as aspects of narrative but also outside of the fictive world: how and where are trends and fads begun? Why are icons so attractive? What sparks crazes, new styles and popular movements in storytelling, fashion or music? And what is the cause of the more recent trend of remaking and rebooting older films and franchises?

These issues are often the subject of academic marginalisation, which begs the question: what trends can we see in academia? What causes a subject to fall out of favour? And why do so many academics fall prey to the idea that something is only worth studying after it has fully emerged?

We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of the theme of fading and emerging that could include, but are not limited to:

• Fictional traces
• Cross-referentiality/intertextuality
• Revelations/concealment
• Appearances and apparitions
• Vanishing and waning
• Dawn/twilight
• Wallflowers and supporting characters
• Thresholds, closets, windows
• Deus ex machina
• Fade-in, fade-out
• Styles, trends and movements
• Generic inception/genesis
• Fads and crazes
• Failure and success
• The icon – the ‘It’ girl, the ‘It’ film
• Popular re-emergence
• Re-reading, re-viewing and revising
• Remakes and reboots

It goes without saying that writers, texts or topics need not be canonical. In addition, we actively encourage papers discussing writers, texts and visual media that engage with mainstream cultures from around the world.

Panels will follow the format of three 20-minute papers followed by questions.

Abstracts of no more than 350 words are invited by Monday 17th June 2013. Acceptances will be sent out by Monday 24th June 2013. Please email abstracts and a cover sheet including your name, university, contact information, plus a brief biographical paragraph about your academic interests or any enquiries to marginalisedmainstream@gmail.com.

Conference organisers: Brittain Bright, Emma Grundy Haigh and Sam Goodman

Conference website: www.marginalisedmainstream.com

NeMLA Harrisburg, Apr. 3-6, 2014: Is There a Future for the Standard Edition?

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 01:33:48 -0400

Is there a Future for the Standard Edition?
Session 14120, NeMLA 2014 Convention, Harrisburg PA, April 3-6, 2014

Calling all editors of scholarly ’Works’ editions, and anyone interested in the value and possibilities of such projects under the regime of digitalization and amid shrinking university press budgets. Is the author-based, multi-volume, hard-copy standard edition (becoming) a thing of the past? If so, what(if anything) has been lost? What possibilities exist for perpetuating functions we value on new platforms? What models exist for hybrid paper/digital editions? Are we adequately training tomorrow’s editors?

Brief abstracts by September 30, 2013, describing your proposed contribution to the roundtable and your current interest in scholarly editions.

Rolling CFP: The Phoenix Papers

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:18:38 -0400

We are pleased to announce the rolling CFP for articles and reviews for our online peer-reviewed, open access journal, The Phoenix Papers (ISSN 2325-2316). We welcome articles on fandom and media topics as well as reviews of anime, manga, books, movies, video games, TV series, web series, musical albums, performances, and other pop culture media products. We encourage scholars at all levels of achievement, whether affiliated with an institution or independent, to contribute to our journal. Contributors have been academics, independent scholars, students, and industry professionals.

We accept submissions throughout the year with quarterly publication (January, April, July which also includes our conference proceedings, and October). Articles may be on any topic relevant to US or global fandom and/or media studies. In general, reviews should be of items from 2009 onward with precedence given to those from the current year. Articles can focus on topics from any time period. If you wish to contribute, please go to the Contact Us page. For articles, please include a 200-250 word abstract and institutional affiliation, if any, in your message. For reviews, please indicate the item to be reviewed, why it is a significant or interesting work, and what approach you intend to take. Those selected for inclusion will be notified shortly afterward.

All articles and reviews must follow our Style Guide.

Our journal is open access. There will never be a fee for authors or readers.

Please feel free to send us any questions you may have via the Contact Us page.

ISSN: 2325-2316

Marking and Re-marking: Tracing the Tattoo in Crime and Detective Narratives (edited collection of essays)

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:27:17 -0400

Proposals of 250 words are sought for an upcoming collection: ‘Marking and Re-marking: Tracing the Tattoo in Crime and Detective Narratives’, edited by Katharine Cox (Cardiff Metropolitan University) and Kate Watson (Cardiff Metropolitan University). It is anticipated that this collection will bring together a variety of scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds to consider historic and contemporary meanings of tattoos in crime and detective narratives.

The editors seek proposals that will explore the symbolic, transformative and palimpsestic nature of the tattoo in crime and detective narratives. While there is a rich tradition of tattoos and crime bound up with penal histories, the collection seeks to examine these narratives but also trace this movement of images, inscriptions, clues, bodies, symbols and meanings in contemporary texts. We encourage articles from a range of historical periods, media, ‘texts’ and academic disciplines (including, but not limited to anthropology, history, literature, and criminology).

The editors particularly welcome proposals on the following topics:

• Tattoos and textualities
• Illustrated men and/or painted ladies
• Scarification and branding
• Tattoos and/in media
• Women writing tattoos
• Tattoos and the graphic novel
• Colonial and post colonial tattoos
• Tattoos and adaptation
• Covering, layering, masking tattoos
• Children’s crime literature
• Tattoos, gender and sexuality
• Body modifications

Procedure for Submission

A 250 word proposal should be sent to the editors at kcox@cardiffmet.ac.uk and kwatson@cardiffmet.ac.uk by August 19, 2013. Please include biographical note, affiliation and 4-5 keywords. Full-length essays will be solicited from these proposals, with final essays due by April 15, 2014.

Essays should include a 50-word abstract and 4–5 keywords, and be between 15 to 20 double-spaced, typed pages (approximately 5,000 to 6,000 words) in Times or Times New Roman font with minimal formatting. Manuscripts should follow the Chicago Style Manual. Manuscripts should not be under consideration elsewhere.

The Photographic Moment in Literature; SAMLA 2013; Nov 08-10; Atlanta

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:34:07 -0400

This special session invites papers that explore the interplay of literature and photography, particularly as manifested in the photographical logics operating within the literatures that predate the advent of photography. What is the place of the ocular (the photographical/the photographic image) in literature? How are self-reflexivity, interiority, memory, and subjectivity performed as photographic moments within literature? What does the insertion of a photographic moment suggest in terms of interruptions, digressions, or linear movements within a novel? How does the stillness of a moment in a play borrow or differ from the stasis of a photograph? What, if any, are the coincidences of poetic and photographic lenses? How do the paradoxes of temporality—of a fleeting moment captured for eternity—affect our perception of the literary and the photographic image? How might images of death (dying) be remediated in literature through the scope of photography? How do concepts in photography affect our theoretical, historical, and cultural engagements with literary texts, and vice versa? Submissions that approach any of these questions or that engage with related topics on literary and ocular (photographic/photographical) networks are welcome.

By June 23, 2013, please submit 200-300 word abstracts to Tripthi Pillai (Department of English, Coastal Carolina University) and Elizabeth Howie (Department of Visual Arts, Coastal Carolina University). Please submit your materials as .docx/.doc or .pdf attachments via email to tpillai@coastal.edu and ehowie@coastal.edu.

Call for Chapters - Home: Concepts, Constructions and Contexts (Edited Volume)

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 06:07:12 -0400

We are looking for contributors to our volume of critical essays on _Home: Concepts, Constructions and Contexts_ (working title). The book aims to provide an interdisciplinary overview of, as well as new approaches to, existing notions of home in its many different facets. The two editors of the collection are literary and cultural studies scholars; approaches from other disciplines, such as history, sociology, urban studies, art, media and visual studies, architecture, legal studies, philosophy, psychology, etc., are, however, highly encouraged. The book contract has been secured with a reputable German university press. Aimed date of publication is Fall 2014.

The book will be divided into three sections. Please send in proposals for chapters that you envision will fall into one of these.

Section A: Concepts

• An interdisciplinary overview of current research on notions of home
• Etymological definitions of home
• Diachronic conceptualizations of home/homelessness, belonging/unbelonging
• Phrases, derivatives, sayings – e.g. “home sweet home”, “home is where the heart is”, homesickness, etc.

Section B: Constructions

• Historical formations from 18th century to the present day
• Aesthetic (literary/textual, visual, medial, artistic, cultural, etc.) representations of home
• Government rhetoric and policies, e.g. “urban renewal” projects
• Legal aspects of/perspectives on “home” and housing rights, squatter’s rights, etc.
• Philosophical discourses, e.g. Kant’s notion of hospitality, etc.
• Psychological understandings, e.g. Freud’s unheimlich/uncanny
• Discourses of gender, race and sexuality
• Urban and rural studies

Section C: Contexts

• Historical case studies and their depictions in literature, film, media, etc.
• Experiences of forced migration, expulsion, exile, eviction and forced resettlement and their representations in literature, film, media, etc.
• Settler colonies and post-colony mentalities
• Indigenous contexts, e.g. the Stolen Generation in Australia
• Diaspora and Hybridity
• Architecture, urban planning, e.g. critical regionalism, “new urbanism”
• Eco-critical perspectives

Please e-mail proposed chapter abstracts of 300 – 500 words and a short CV to both Prof. Dr. Cecile Sandten (cecile.sandten@phil.tu-chemnitz.de) and Dr. Kathy-Ann Tan (kathy-ann.tan@uni-tuebingen.de) by July 31, 2013. The deadline for completed chapters (6,000 – 7,000 words) is March 31, 2014.

Representing Conflict in Postcolonial Literature and Film. (proposals due by September 30, 2013)

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 23:35:25 -0400

Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
45th Annual Convention
April 3-6, 2014 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

This panel invites critical submissions on the subject of war and violent conflicts as represented and narrativized in postcolonial literatures and cinema of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How does the representation of war violence in these texts charge, complicate and/or empower our reception and resistance to it? Which formats or aesthetic genres are most suited to tell the ‘truth’ of war? How do gender, sexuality, age, disability and distance from the zone of violence inflect the experience and memorialization of conflict? What kind of narratives of resolution, non-war and peace are made available through literary and cinematic texts? How might they be translated usefully from mere disciplinary discourses into public and political discourses?
Papers might address but are not limited to:
- narrativization of ethnic conflict, international war, 'the war on terror', terrorism, insurgency, and other modes of conflict.
- Conflict and memory.
- War and gender.
- Rhetorics of resistance to violent conflicts in literature & cinema.
- War and disability/debility.
- War and peace/non-war.
- Ecocriticism and war.
Please submit abstracts of not more than 300-500 words and a short bio by September 30, 2013 to Sreyoshi Sarkar at sreyoshi@gwu.edu or Kavita Daiya at kdaiya@gwu.edu.

Kaleidoscope Volume 5, Issue 2 (2013): "Time" (Deadline 30 June 2013)

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:46:32 -0400

Call for Papers

Volume 5, Issue 2 (2013): "Time"

Kaleidoscope is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal (ISSN 1756-8137) edited by postgraduates at Durham University. Working under the auspices of the Institute of Advanced Study (www.dur.ac.uk/ias), Kaleidoscope is designed to foster communication between postgraduates in different disciplines, to promote excellence in interdisciplinary research, and to raise awareness of the IAS as a public forum for interdisciplinary scholarship.

The Institute of Advanced Study publishes a new research theme each year. Submissions relating to the theme are particularly encouraged, from postgraduates and post-doctoral scholars from all disciplines. The theme for the academic year 2012-13 is “Time”.

Examples of subjects invited for submission include, but are not limited to:
•Nature and Geometry of Time
•Narrating Time
•Experiencing Time
•Reconstructing Time
•Time and the Present
•Scaling Time

More information on possible approaches and research interests of the current IAS Fellows can be found at IAS Subthemes website: www.dur.ac.uk/ias/time

Recognising that different disciplines apply different styles and standards of writing, we welcome material of individual or collaborative authorship in a variety of formats, including (but not restricted to):

Full-length articles (7000-10000 words) of original scholarship in your discipline. Articles should be comprehensible to those from outside your field.
•Shorter articles reflecting on how the current theme relates to your discipline, or reflections on how your work is informed by working across disciplines;
•Short book reviews (1000 words);
•Review essays (4000 words).

The final deadline for submissions for the current IAS theme will be 30th June 2013.

Brief guidelines for contributions to Kaleidoscope are provided below, but more detailed guidance can be found on our Submission Guidelines pages.

Manuscripts should be sent as email attachments in MS Word (2003 or 2007) format to editor.kaleidoscope@durham.ac.uk Submissions must be accompanied by a short abstract, and a brief biography outlining your institutional affiliation and research interests (100 words maximum), include any permissions obtained for reproduction rights (e.g. of lengthy quotations, pictures) that fall outside of Fair Dealing (Point 3 of Authors Copyright Agreement).

Only contributions formatted according to the Kaleidoscope template will be accepted. The template follows The Chicago Manual of Style (15th Edition); please refer to our Submission Guidelines pages and to www.chicagomanualofstyle.org for further information.

By submitting a manuscript to Kaleidoscope you acknowledge that the work is original, has not appeared in print and is not under consideration elsewhere and you agree to the terms of Kaleidoscope Author’s Copyright Agreement.

Best wishes,

Kaleidoscope Editorial Team

Girls After the Apocalypse (NeMLA, April 3-6, 2014)

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:55:18 -0400

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 3-6, 2014
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

Girls After the Apocalypse

In the 1990s, Octavia Butler published two novels - _Parable of the Sower_ and _Parable of the Talents_ - in which an adolescent girl hyperempath establishes her own religion in an America of a new world (dis)order of religious fanaticism. In 2008, Suzanne Collins published the first of _The Hunger Games_ trilogy, in which another adolescent sparks a revolution against a fascist government that reigns over what used to be the United States. Most recently, in 2012, NBC began airing _Revolution_, a television series in which the young heroine unifies a fractured resistance movement in the oppressive regime of Monroe (formally the northeastern U.S.). Although the causes of apocalypse differ, at the center of each of these texts is a young adult female who challenges contemporary concepts of the adolescent girl. Indeed, these texts each re-conceptualize female adolescent identity as empowered, intelligent, independent, (often) deadly, and fundamental to the reproduction of culture in ways that extend beyond a biological framework. However, these heroines often remain situated within a discourse of family, albeit one that expands to incorporate the extended family of the revolution/resistance movement.

This panel seeks papers that explore any literary or television/filmic representation of girls after apocalypse. Papers might consider how such texts reconfigure gender roles and/or gender identity, as well as how they may simultaneously reify gender stereotypes. Papers may also address the relationship between the heroines and the texts’ cultural criticisms, exploring whether/how the sex of the protagonist informs the texts' socio-historical or ecological critical analyses. How, in short, is gender being re-constructed in a post-apocalyptic world? Considerations of these protagonists within intersections of race, class, sexuality, nationality, and/or religion are also particularly encouraged, as are feminist or ecofeminist approaches.

Email 300-word abstract to Julie Cary Nerad at Julie.Nerad@morgan.edu by September 30, 2013. Please provide a brief bio (including academic affiliation and contact information). Also, note any A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration).

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. http://www.nemla.org/convention/2014/cfp.html

About NeMLA 2014:

The 2014 NeMLA convention continues the Association's tradition of sharing innovative scholarship in an engaging and generative location. This capitol city set on the Susquehanna River is known for its vibrant restaurant scene, historical sites, the National Civil War museum, and nearby Amish Country, antique shops and Hershey Park. NeMLA has arranged low hotel rates of $104-$124.

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, _The Tenth of December_, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as: "the best book you'll read this year." NeMLA's Keynote Speaker will be David Staller, Producer and Director of Project Shaw. Mr. Staller presents monthly script-in-hand performances of Bernard Shaw's plays at the Players Club in New York City.

Scary Stuff: Pedagogy of Horror (edited collection of essays on teaching the horror genre) 7/15/13

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:29:32 -0400

Scary Stuff: Pedagogy of Horror is a collection of essays exploring both pedagogical theories and practices of teaching the horror genre. Essays may speak to fiction or film and should have a length of 3,500-5000 words including MLA format end citation. Send a 500 word abstract or completed essay to frances.auld@uwc.edu.
In a popular culture environment saturated with horror and a real world environment negotiating acts of atrocity on a regular basis, how does the horror genre fit into the college classroom? This collection explores the richness, creativity, and problems of using this genre in humanities classes, as well as the use of horror texts to teach interdisciplinary coursework. We will explore how horror fiction and film are currently being used in literature, writing, or film classes in order to teach foundational concepts in these disciplines. Essays will examine the value (or lack thereof) that students and the academy assign to this genre’s visual and written texts.
This collection will be edited by Assistant Professor Frances Auld of the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County and Professor Douglas Ford of the State College of Florida-Manatee. Deadline for submissions is 7/15/13.

[UPDATE] Idle/Stasis: Call for Prose, Poetry, Art--deadline extended to June 15

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:39:18 -0400

The twinned concepts of idle and stasis have recently been brought to the forefront of political conversations in Canada because of the Idle No More grassroots movement, which is one of the many manifestations of a protest culture encircling the globe. No longer silent in the face of the continuing effects of colonialism and its derivative hierarchical structures, indigenous populations and other citizens are registering their discontent, while fostering networks of solidarity. The notions of action and inaction saturate the very way we have come to conceive of the world today, a world in which productivity and efficiency are valued over health and well- being, technology provides instant access to information, and fast food is available all hours of the day.

Despite this, we see a growing impulse to slow down. The rise of the slow food movement, the popularity of practices like yoga and meditation, and the trends of non-violence and pacifism all attest to this desire for slowness. It is in this context that the 2013 issue of Transverse welcomes submissions that consider “stasis” and “idle” as descriptors and concepts. How are “stasis” and/or “idle” configured as slowness and passivity, or as urgency and action? Is slowness a luxury for the few, or is it a rejection of the capitalization of time? Must slowness be opposed to efficiency?

Transverse welcomes submissions from all academic disciplines of every period— Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the pre-conquest, the colonial time, and everything from Early Modern, Modern, to Postmodern and Contemporary theory and subjects—as well as unaffiliated scholarship, and approaches from the creative arts like photography, graphic arts, and creative writing.

Submissions may address the above questions, the following themes, or other related areas:
• Popular social movements: Idle No More, Occupy, Arab Spring
• Idle & stasis as status quo
• Idle as morbidity, alienation or resignation
• Idle and gender relations
• Idle as sustainable ethics and theories of subjectivity
• Stasis as political, social & moral crisis
• Stasis as balance, reciprocity & equilibrium
• Sumak Kawsay/ buen vivir or good life
• Counter-discourses to capitalist logistics of productivity, production, progress & use value
• Colonial production of idleness and idle subjects
• Non-violence & passivity as resistance
• Slow movements: food, sex (tantric sex), reading, transportation, etc.
• In-between states, slow transition and stagnation
• Stillness in contemplation, meditation, prayer, & mysticism
• Stasis and the stations in monasticism and early Church Fathers
• Etymology & linguistic play: meaning of idle in Old English and Middle English
• Psychoanalysis & the slow process of analysis
• Disease: slow death, AIDS, degeneration
• Queer theory & slow change
• Trauma, memory and the body
• The line between stasis and ec-stasis
• Time capsules as testimonies to cultural stasis

Please send submissions and a brief biography of fewer than 50 words in one Word document to transversejournal@gmail.com by June 1, 2013 for digital and print publication in the autumn of 2013. Please note that video and audio submissions will only appear online, with mention in the print publication.

Prose submissions should be a maximum of 5,000 words, double-spaced, in MLA citation style. Please include a brief abstract of your work and up to 10 keywords along with your prose submission. A maximum of 3 poetic works should be submitted on separate pages in the same document. For further specifications and instructions on how to submit a visual, video, or audio piece, please contact transversejournal@gmail.com or refer to our call for visual submissions. Submissions in English and French welcomed.

Call for Visual Submissions

Transverse, a web and print journal on critical and comparative themes accepts visual art submissions for its fall 2013 issue with the theme of Idle/Stasis. Visual artists at any stage of their artistic development, with or without academic affiliation are called on to consider this year’s theme in the media of their choice.

Unlike cinematic art, still pictures like photography, drawing, painting, printing (and their digital equivalents) have a certain ‘stasis’ inherent in the two-dimensionality of the final output. The attempts and techniques applied to dislocate the limitations of the arrested moment and flat space, which have informed most of the 20th century art, entered a new cycle with the advances of the digital media in the last fifteen years, re-dressing old and bringing up new questions.

Transverse is seeking visual art submissions considering the implications of “idle” and “stasis” on any of the conceptual, technical/technological, or narrative level. Please refer to the general CFP for additional details. The submissions can use any media that can be reproduced on the printed page or viewed in the web format of the journal. Photographic and graphic art works or their sequences are limited to 3 distinct pieces submitted electronically in the following formats: tif, gif, jpg. The minimum resolution required is 300dpi, the maximum size of the submissions 6’’ x 8’’. Submissions with insufficient resolution for print may be considered for the online publication only. Video and audio submissions are limited to 3 distinct pieces of a maximum of 10 minutes each submitted electronically in the following formats: avi, flv, mpeg, mp3, m4a, wma, wav, and wmv. Visual art pieces containing audio or video components will only appear online, with mention in the print.

Please send visual submissions as separate files, as well as a short description including submission titles, the year of their production, and your biography of fewer than 50 words in one Word document to transversejournal@gmail.com by June 1, 2013 for digital and print publication in the autumn of 2013.

The Adolescent Girl in Early 20th Century American Women’s Writing (NeMLA 2014)

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 18:46:06 -0400

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 3-6, 2014
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

Contact: leslie.allison@temple.edu

This seminar will investigate the shifting figure of the adolescent girl in early 20th century American women's writing. From 1900-1960, the adolescent girl, as an identity category, underwent huge cultural changes. In the early 1900s, adolescent girlhood was barely acknowledged as a developmental stage, whereas by 1945 the teenage girl had emerged, as one newsreel put it, “an American institution in her own right.” With the legalization of birth control in 1960, the adolescent girl was poised to challenge American anxieties about body politics, economic consumption, and national identity, and she continues to do so today.

Yet although the rise of girl's studies as a field has produced rich investigations of popular representations of adolescent girlhood in film and male-produced texts in the first half of the twentieth century, little attention has been paid to how women writers during this time period were collectively negotiating girlhood in their works. How did women in the early 1900s write girl bodies compared to women in the 1930s? The 1940s? Were the central tensions of puberty the same in the 1920s as the 1950s, or were there crucial differences? Did women writers reinforce cultural norms of adolescent girlhood in their works, or did they create new, resistant models of girlhood? This seminar, then, seeks to create a space for such an exploration. I particularly welcome a dialogue that would put women writers of “adult fiction” (such as Willa Cather, Tillie Olsen, Gwendolyn Brooks, etc.) in conversation with women writers of “juvenile fiction” (Carol Ryrie Brink, Beverly Clearly, Madeline L’Engle, etc.). Selected panelists would circulate papers of 10-15 pages in advance of the conference.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a brief 150 word bio by September 30, 2013, to Leslie Allison at leslie.allison@temple.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2013

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, The Tenth of December, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as: “the best book you’ll read this year.” NeMLA’s Keynote Speaker will be David Staller, Producer and Director of Project Shaw. Mr. Staller presents monthly script-in-hand performances of Bernard Shaw’s plays at the Players Club in New York City.

Registration open for "Legacy: Mythology and Authenticity in the Humanities" - A Postgraduate Conference

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 11:52:19 -0400

This conference focuses on the influence of cultural ‘legacies’ within current humanities research. By highlighting the work of postgraduates and early career researchers, this interdisciplinary conference will examine the various ways in which ‘legacies’ are created, restructured, perpetuated and even rejected. It will also question whether newer disciplines respond to cultural mythologies by establishing their own ‘legacy’ as a means of achieving academic authentication.

The recent confirmed identity of Richard the III, Faber’s choice of cover illustration for its anniversary issue of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and the recent film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit are just a few of the numerous examples that demonstrate how cultural legacies evolve within academic research and the public forum.

These inherited cultural legacies are continually being redefined, rebranded and reevaluated, creating a cyclical pattern that challenges the ways in which we approach and define them. This brings into question the social and political significance of ‘legacy’ and its relevance within the humanities, both as a research theme and as a lens by which to view the progression of our respective disciplines.

The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion with Professor Dominic Shellard the Vice-Chancellor of De Montfort University, Dr Will Buckingham of the School of Humanities at De Montfort University, and Mr Sam Causer of the Leicester School of Architecture.

Conference Date: 28 June 2013
Registration Deadline: 21 June 2013
Conference Fee: £15 including lunch and refreshments

Visit our website to see our programme
dmulegacyconference.wordpress.com

Email: dmulegacyconference@gmail.com

Centre for Adaptations Centre
Centre for Textual Studies
De Montfort University
The Gateway
Leicester, UK, LE1 9BH

Death and Decay (deadline 4th October 2013)

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:16:11 -0400

This call for papers invites submissions on the subject of ‘Death and Decay’ for the third edition of HARTS & Minds, an online postgraduate journal for students of the Humanities and Arts, which is due to be published online in Winter 2013-14.

Our first edition and further information can be found at www.harts-minds.co.uk and you can get updates on our journal at www.facebook.com/hartsandminds.

Submissions should adhere to the guidelines available on our website. You can either send us an abstract (approximately 300 words in length) and a completed article (no longer than 6000 words) OR you may provide an abstract (300 words) and a synopsis outlining the structure and argument of your intended article (approximately 1500-2000 words).

You must use the article template available on our website to format your article.

All submissions should be sent with an academic CV to editors@harts-minds.co.uk by Friday 4th October.

Subjects may include but are not limited to the following:

-Rituals and rites of the dead in various cultures
-Burial practices
-Death and dying in literatures
-Visual Death; in art, photography, illustration, in film and television, on stage
-Death personified: the Grim Reaper, Yama & Lord of Naraka, Hel, Hades etc.
-The geography of death; real or mythological
-Disease, decay, apocalypse
-The undead, reincarnation, immortality
-The death of discourse, language, the author, God
-Death as taboo
-War and death
-The future of death in a posthuman world.
-Death of Language
-Moral death
-Death: presence and absence
-Afterlife, textual afterlives.
-Hauntings, the undead, vampires, zombies.
-Eschatology
-The value of Death: what makes a justified or honourable death?
-Dirt and debris, Wrecks and ruins, Flotsam and Jetsam
-Fear of death
-Elegy, Obituary, the Funeral March, Eulogy
-Monuments, Memorials and the Archive
-Suicide, both literal and metaphorical.
-Medical humanities

Please consider that HARTS & Minds is intended as a truly inter-disciplinary journal for the Humanities and Arts and therefore esoteric topics will need to be written with a general academic readership in mind.

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

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 22:06:07 -0400

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

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

DEADLINE EXTENDED: JUNE 14. Please send a 250 word abstract and to panel organizer Janessa Toro
(jltz85@mail.missouri.edu). Conference Program Deadline has been extended: June 28; Conference Registration: July 12.

[UPDATE] San Joaquin Valley Journal Submission Deadline Extension -- August 1, 2013

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:13:13 -0400

The San Joaquin Valley Journal is seeking articles for its fourth issue. SJVJ is an online, peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the Department of English at California State University, Stanislaus. The annual journal offers a forum for the discussion of literature, critical theory, rhetoric and composition, pedagogy, and issues relevant to teaching in academe. SJVJ is particularly interested in scholarly essays that engage issues and ideas in connection with the literature and culture of the San Joaquin Valley. In view of its regional emphasis, SJVJ also welcomes profiles on San Joaquin Valley writers, creative nonfiction, book reviews, faculty interviews, and commentaries related to the southern portion of California’s Central Valley.

Manuscript guidelines:  Submissions must be written in English. Submissions should be no longer than 25 pages in length and must include a brief abstract (not to exceed 250 words). Submissions must use MLA style. Documents should be double-spaced on 8-1/2 x 11-inch pages with 1-inch margins. Documents should also use 12 pt. Times New Roman font. Journal articles must include parenthetical references, a works cited page, and endnotes.

To facilitate blind review, the author’s name and essay title should appear only on the coversheet. Submissions are evaluated by members of the SJVJ editorial staff. Submissions must include an electronic copy. Send the electronic copy via email to adorsey@csustan.edu. Mail paper submissions to San Joaquin Valley Journal, Department of English, California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA 95382. Submission deadline extension: August 1, 2013.

Authors retain the copyright to work accepted for publication but grant SJVJ unlimited right to reproduce or publish the work in whole or in part.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contempory Culture (Open Submissions)

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 18:29:03 -0400

Open Issues

Contact: Reconstruction Submissions Editor

We are continually accepting submissions for upcoming Open Issues, and can promise a prompt reply.

Submissions may be created from a variety of perspectives, including, but not limited to: geography, ethnography, cultural studies, folklore, architecture, history, sociology, linguistics, psychology, communications, music, philosophy, political science, semiotics, theology, art history, queer theory, literature, criminology, urban planning, gender studies, education, graphic design, etc. Both theoretical and empirical approaches are welcomed.

Return to Top»

Guest Editor of Upcoming Themed Issue

Contact: Reconstruction Managing Editor

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture is always interested in proposals for future Themed Issues. If you are interested in proposing a Themed Issue, please review our FAQ for Prospective Guest Editors and contact the Reconstruction Managing Editor for further information.

Changes in Bullying in Pop Culture

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:18:40 -0400

Bullying has been a hot topic in recent years in terms of education, social media, and garnering awareness and protection of all persons from bullying. While being bullied or picked on used to be considered something of a rite of passage of elementary and high school, it is now considered a serious offense and can result in school expulsion and criminal charges. The scope of bullying within popular culture has also changed radically; depicting scenes in television or movies regarding bullying is now considered offensive and come with a warning at the start of an episode.

This proposed collection would seek voices of a number of authors to share their thoughts and critical analyses of bullying within popular culture and the changes that have occurred in its depiction. An example is to look at the dramatic chases in movies such as Back to the Future or Forrest Gump in which the male protagonists are mercilessly chased and assaulted by bullies. Another example is to consider the bullying that takes place in the Harry Potter series (books and movies) and to consider how it is used as a tool and why, in its minimal use, it is deemed acceptable for children. Authors can also look critically at the role of race, gender, ethnicity, or other factors in bullying. Ideas outside of these categories or inquiries generally pertaining to the topic at hand can certainly be submitted.

The purpose of such a collection is multifaceted. As a faculty member at a university, one of my teaching assignments is that of Adolescent Literature courses. Understanding the role of bullying and other childhood behavioral concerns is a significant focus of a young adult literature course and anti-bullying programs have become such a phenomenon that entire courses can (and are) being developed around this theme. The text that I am proposing could serve as a reader for any type of similar course: popular culture, young adult literature, children’s literature, popular American culture, and many more.

There has also been an increase in the number and scope of books depicting (fictionally or non-fictionally) bullying behaviors among children, teens, and adults. But, to my knowledge and research there is not a collection of scholarly essays addressing these concerns within the scope of popular culture and American society. I believe that such a collection could have a potential place with a variety of readers: teachers, teachers in training, graduate students, high school students, and undergraduate students. Undoubtedly this collection could also be used as a research tool for those interested in the subject area.

Any inquires or 250 word abstracts on their topic of interest can be sent to Dr. Abigail Scheg (Elizabeth City State University) at bullyingpopculture@yahoo.com with a due date for abstracts August 1, 2013. McFarland Press has expressed interest in publication of this collection.

[UPDATE]: CfP: The Common Denominator -- A Postgraduate Conference in British Cultural Studies, 20-22 MArch 2014

Fri, 31 May 2013 07:23:35 -0400

In ancient Greece, the Pythagoreans worshipped perfect numbers and turned them into musical scales. Two thousand years later, Nicolaus Copernicus still heard their sound in the perfection of the universal spheres. Numerologists, alchemists and the Gnostics all attempt to explain the mysteries of the universe with the precision and beauty of mathematics. And what would the voluptuous garments displayed in Renaissance painting be without the clear lines and structured order of geometry? Already these few examples show that mathematics has always been more than is commonly represented in popular culture in the wider British context.

Organised by members and PhD students of the Institute for British Studies of Leipzig University, the aim of this three-day interdisciplinary conference (20-22 March 2014) is to bring together researchers from diverse academic and professional disciplines. By establishing mathematics as the common denominator between the individual panels, the links between mathematics and cultural studies are brought into focus. The conference will explore the reception and representation of mathematical concepts across such diverse fields as popular culture, literature, linguistics and didactics.

We invite proposals of 250-300 words for papers of 20 minutes length from postgraduate students and established scholars. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to the following fields:

Philosophy: mathematics in history, philosophy and religion, e.g. John Dee

Politics: mathematics and gender, the British Empire, and Bletchley Park

Popular Culture: mathematics and their influence on everyday life, recreational mathematics

The Arts: representations of mathematics in film, the Fine Arts, music, architecture, the aesthetics of mathematical symbols

Literature: representations of mathematics and mathematicians in literature, mathematical imagery

Proposals should include up to four keywords and indicate a critical approach or theoretical framework. Owing to the international character, the conference language is English. Please e-mail your submissions either as a word document or PDF by 30 June 2013 to the following address:

denominator@uni-leipzig.de

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers, Felicitas Hanke, Franziska Kohlt, Andrea Radziewsky, Rita Singer, and Kati Voigt.

For further information, please go to

http://denominator-2014.tumblr.com/

"Enchanted Places", Imagined Childhoods: A Symposium on Children's Literature and Psychoanalysis

Thu, 30 May 2013 13:19:06 -0400

Featured Author: Jerry Spinelli
Saturday, September 20, 2014
University of Pennsylvania

In a blend of gritty realism and casual magic, Spinelli locates his stories in the places where ordinary children live--old cities, dreary suburbs and school classrooms--then enchants these places with transcendent language and characters who radiate courage and bold eccentricity. His stories confront difficult and conflictual themes like poverty, homelessness and urban race relations, as well as mourning and social ostracism, but they do so without sentimentality. Spinelli's characters are never victims, but are tough survivors and often moral and spiritual heroes in his and their imagined worlds.

It is a challenge to psychoanalytic theory and practice to acknowledge the "enchanting"role of language on a day to day basis as we practice our "talking cure," as well as to go beyond our normative developmental narratives in order to account for the survivors, the exceptions, and the morally courageous characters who have emerged from difficult environmental circumstances to transform their own lives and the lives of others in the process. This symposium will provide an opportunity for explorations of language, of "enchantment" in psychoanalysis and literature; of the reciprocal acts of imagination between author and reader involved in creating works of children's literature; and, the possibilities for transformation of the painful realities of ordinary childhood in both psychoanalysis and literature. It will provide a forum for Jerry Spinelli's work, for the work of other authors, as well as for works of theoretical, clinical and literary interest. Academics, psychoanalysts, graduate students and psychoanalytic candidates are encouraged to submit original papers on any aspects of the above.

Guidelines for submission:
Completed drafts only: 8-10 pp. No abstracts or proposals.
Names and identifying information on separate cover sheet only.
Deadline: February 15, 2014
Send papers to Elaine Zickler, PhD, at mezickler@gmail.com

Bodies in Place: Disability and the Environment in American Literature (NEMLA, April 3-6)

Wed, 29 May 2013 13:05:18 -0400

Bodies in Place: Disability and the Environment in American Literature

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 3-6, 2014
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

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.

Deadline: September 30, 2013
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

NEW ACADEMIA: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory ISSN 2277-3967 (PRINT)

Wed, 29 May 2013 03:09:32 -0400

CALL FOR RESEARCH PAPERS
INTERACTIONS FORUM’S
NEW ACADEMIA - (ISSN 2277-3967) (PRINT)
AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND LITERARY THEORY
Vol.II Issue III: JULY 2013
NEW ACADEMIA – is a refereed journal and is published by Interactions Forum quarterly. The Journal strives to publish work of high quality in Literature written in English Language across the World, English language and literary theory. The aim of the journal is to give space to scholars and researchers to publish their works. We are always keen to receive submissions from scholars, academicians and researchers in the form of Research Papers, Articles, Poems, Short Stories, Interviews and Book Reviews. Submissions are accepted all the year. The work should be unpublished and not have been submitted elsewhere for publication.
Editing requirements:
• Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides.
• Title of the paper: bold, title case (Capitalize each word), centered.
•
• Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12.
• References: Please follow MLA style strictly. Don’t use Foot Notes. Instead use End Notes.
• Titles of books: Italics.
• Titles of articles from journals and books: “quoted”.
• Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only.
• The paper should not usually exceed 14 pages maximum, 5 pages minimum in single spacing.
• Each paper must be accompanied by i) A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or send for publication ii) Abstract of paper about 100-200 words and iii) A short bio-note of the contributor(s) indicating name, institutional affiliation, brief career history, postal address, mobile number and e-mail, in a single attachment. Please don’t send more attachments. Give these things below your paper and send all these things in a separate single MS-Word attachment.
• The papers submitted should evince serious academic work contributing new knowledge or innovative critical perspectives on the subject explored.
• Each contributor will get a complimentary copy of the issue.
• Rejected papers won’t be sent back to the contributor.

Send your contribution to- newacademia.if@gmail.com
Deadline of submission- 15 JUNE 2013.
Web Site: http://www.interactionsforum.com/new-academia

Shakespeare and Global Girlhood Seminar (abstract deadline July 1, 2013)

Tue, 28 May 2013 13:11:36 -0400

How does Shakespeare’s cultural capital influence the discourses of girlhood? The study of girls and girlhood has gained prominence in the past 20 years, marked by the rise of Girls’ Studies and the proliferation of interdisciplinary publications devoted to girlhood. In the United States, the 1994 publication of psychologist Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia was a flashpoint in the legitimization of girlhood studies, linking one of Shakespeare’s tragic girl characters to the definition of Western female adolescence as a period of crisis. Since then, the name “Ophelia” has become powerfully associated with organizations who aim to “save” girls from bullying, eating disorders, and mental health issues (among other threats). International efforts explicitly dedicated to empowering women and young girls—such as the United Nations’ Resolution to designate October 11 the International Day of the Girl Child—reflect the idea that addressing the needs of young women is a global concern. In light of this increased awareness of the status of girls, events such as the assassination attempt of Pakistani blogger Malala Yousafzai—just two days before the first International Day of the Girl Child—reveal the profound and fundamental oppression facing many girls and their advocates worldwide. These tensions inform feminist scholarship on contemporary perspectives on Shakespeare’s girls, as modern productions and adaptations are increasingly set within a global context. Despite the wealth of feminist scholarship on girls in Shakespeare, however, the extent to which Shakespeare’s cultural capital is used to articulate or authorize popular, political, and national definitions of girlhood has not received significant attention.

This seminar explores the ways in which Shakespeare is employed to define girlhood within and across national and cultural boundaries. When, how, and why does Shakespeare intersect with questions of girlhood? How does Shakespeare reflect, validate, or undermine debates over girls and girlhood? How are representations of girls in relation to Shakespeare (in adaptation, popular citation, or pedagogical practices) employed in conversations on global citizenship and/or national identity? We are particularly interested in papers that identify Shakespearean influence in the study of girls and girlhood in advocacy, education, performance, artistic production (by, about, or marketed towards girls), cross-national politics, neoliberal subjectivity, citizenship, material culture, and health.

Proposals should be sent to mkostihova01@hamline.edu and a.balizet@tcu.edu by July 1st, 2013. Please include name, email, affiliation, brief bio, preliminary abstract (250 words) and title of your contribution.

For more information on the conference, please visit: http://www.shakespeareanniversary.org/?-Shakespeare-450-

[UPDATE] New Crops, Old Fields - (Re)Imagining Irish Folklore

Mon, 27 May 2013 09:49:05 -0400

Keynote Speakers :
Prof. Diarmuid Ó Giolláin (University of Notre-Dame)
Prof. Harry White (University College Dublin)
Prof. Luke Gibbons (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)

From our homes to our houses of government, from our schoolyards to our stadia, from our galleries to our gable walls, folklore is being re-imagined in all aspects of everyday life in Ireland. Today, with globalised, media-centric culture, the folk traditions take on new lives in music, literature, theatre, radio, film and television, advertising and tourist industries. The ancient stories and characters still find a place within the new multicultural Ireland and their depiction continues to evolve. Irish folklore has been made new again, in a regenerating of the tradition, where the old and the new, the oral, the textual and the visual intermingle.
This conference aims at exploring the rich traditions of Irish folklore, and looking at the various ways it is being, has been or indeed was, re-purposed and reinvented. We hope to bring together researchers at various stages of their careers, both professional and postgraduate, working on any and every aspect of the folklore of Ireland, its reappropriation and dissemination up to the present day or indeed the reuse of traditions. We welcome proposals from researchers in the fields of Agriculture, Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Dance, Drama, Ecology, Film Studies, Folklore, Geography, History, History of Art, Languages, Literature, Media Studies, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and Theology, Tourism Studies.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) the reuse of legends,
myths, beliefs, folktales, songs, rhymes and riddles, music, dance, sayings and proverbs, customs, oral history, etc in:

- the Visual Arts (paintings, sculptures, dance, etc) and iconography
- Film, Television and Radio
- Advertising, tourism, the diaspora and folklore around the world
- Politics
- Literature, in English or as Gaeilge
- Children's Literature
- Food and drink
- Music
- Theatre and performance
- comparative approaches of the reuse of Irish folklore and international folklore
- urban folklore

There will also be performances from Irish musicians and storytellers.

Please submit proposals of 300 words and a short biography to newcrops@qub.ac.uk by 15th June 2013.

2013 SAMLA Women's Studies Panel

Mon, 27 May 2013 08:47:40 -0400

The 2013 SAMLA Conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on November 8-10, 2013. The Women's Studies Panel is entitled "Contemporary American Women Writers: Confronting Changing
Times."

The last forty years have witnessed a number of changes in US political, social, and economic history. Some subjects that have been at the center of commentary, both popular and scholarly, include globalization, lifestyle/social class change, environmental degradation, religious discrimination, war, and civil/human rights. Increasingly, women’s studies scholars have been examining the portrayals of such matters in the work of creative writers. This panel aims to further the discussion and explore contemporary political, social, and economic changes and their manifestations and/or influences on American women writers and their work. Particularly welcome are proposals that consider
the intersections of gender, race, and class in relation to these
changes.

In general, papers for this panel might examine 1) specific writers who embody these or similar matters in their works; 2) the engagement of women’s studies with an increasingly digital and networked world (in keeping with the conference theme, “Cultures, Contexts, Images, and Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds”); or 3) broader issues in women’s studies. Possible questions for consideration: How are lifestyle and social class changes reflected in recent literature? What images of environmental activism exist in fiction? How is a “culture of war” portrayed in creative writing? How are high-speed technologies and transnationalism examined in US women’s writing? All theoretical and critical approaches, including feminist, Marxist, and postmodernist, are welcome. If any audiovisual equipment is needed, please include a list of the
equipment with your proposal.

By June 15, 2013, please send an abstract of 250 words and a brief bio to Robin Brooks, University of Florida, at rbrooks@ufl.edu.

Fragile Futures - A Special Issue of the English Academy Review (Routledge/Unisa) - SUBMISSIONS BY 31 MARCH 2014

Mon, 27 May 2013 06:55:02 -0400

FRAGILE FUTURES

A Special Issue of The English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies, Issue 31.2, October 2014
Guest editor, Marc Botha (Durham and Pretoria)

CALL FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS
DEADLINE: 31 MARCH 2014

The characteristic fragility of human existence has always been marked by a deep ambivalence regarding the future. On the one hand, ceaseless crisis and catastrophe appear to justify a pervasive pessimism, while on the other, it is difficult not to marvel at the seemingly boundless human capacity for novelty, invention and change. Literature, in particular, has the unique capacity simultaneously to exemplify and critically examine the fragile co-existence of utopian and dystopian visions of the future. Indeed, the literary imagination has the ability to negotiate the multiple valences of the past, the contingencies of the present, and alternate visions of the future.

The English Academy Review proposes to investigate the relation between literature, fragility, and the future in a special issue on Fragile Futures. We invite essays of up to 5000 words which interrogate how literature, criticism and theory have or might be able to clarify historical fragilities and to confront the fragility of the future, to offer forms of regional or global resistance to crisis or catastrophe, and to foster resilience and hope with respect to the fragile future with which we are all confronted.

Submissions should reach The English Academy Review by 31 MARCH 2014 and should be submitted electronically as a Word document to englishacademy@societies.wits.ac.za as well as in hardy copy to the following address:
English Academy Office
P.O. Box 124
Wits
2050
Johannesburg, South Africa

Please see the journal’s website at Taylor and Francis for further information on the preparation of manuscripts. (http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=racr20&pa...)

Characters migrate

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:09:38 -0400

This international conference follows the two previous ones organized by ERIBIA on Happy Endings and the Unfinished in 2009 and 20111: next we shall deal with these characters that “live on” beyond the endings written by their authors and who overstep the limits of the work in which they have been created.

“Characters migrate,” Umberto Eco wrote2, explaining that some characters (by no means all of them) leave the text in which they were “born” to migrate to a space in a universe which is very difficult to delineate. Thus Little Red Riding-Hood, d’Artagnan or Ulysses “become individuals with a life apart from their original scores” and “even those who have never read the archetypal score can claim to make true statements about them” (9). They have become “true for the collective imagination because over the course of centuries we have made emotional investments in them” (10). Some form of fixity is necessary for these migrating characters who can become “role models for our life” (10). In the postmodern novel studied by Brian McHale, borrowing a character is used for breaking the realist framework and highlighting the intertextual dimension of a text.
For Eco and McHale, these migrations do not alter the literary entities since their very characteristics, known by everyone, inform the text and/or the reader. The question of this transposition as a writing strategy will be addressed. The conference will also study characters that evolve as they migrate from one text to the other and will also discuss what is at stake when a fictional character is thus revisited or rewritten. Papers will focus on the different transformations or non-transformations of these migrant characters. These can appear in another text by the same author at another stage of their fictional lives, like Federica Potter in the universe invented by A.S. Byatt in her tetralogy (The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman) but also Juliet, the protagonist in Alice Munro’s three short stories in the collection Runaway. While being part of the same narrative universe, some characters can also move from the foreground to the background: this is the case for Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, the main protagonists in Changing Places, who reappear in a minor role in Small World, a Romance and Nice Work by David Lodge. Conversely, Jane Gardam makes one of her secondary characters in Old Filth the main protagonist of The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Characters can also go on evolving within their own narrative universes but in allographic texts. Thus sequels, the function of which, according to Genette, is to exploit the success of a work often considered as complete when it was first published, and to set it going again with new episodes (Palimpsestes, 223), to the adventures of a famous character take up endless pages of contemporary novels: for example, some of Emma Tennant’s many novels, but also more recently, Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean and Death in Pemberley by PD James. In the same vein, new insights and interpretations on canonic characters abound: the March sisters’ father in Geraldine Brooks’ March, Jane Eyre’s pupil in Emma Tennant’s Adèle. For its part, Ronald Frame’s Havisham puts the spotlight on the most famous of Victorian fiancées. The migration to an allographic text can also take the form of a “trans contextualization” (Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, 12), when a character reappears in another context, in another period, like in Will Self’s Dorian, another place or even another sub-genre, like Elizabeth Bennett as a zombie huntress in Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Character migrations can also be studied in filmic adaptations and their successive remakes. Within the framework of this intermedial praxis, as director Patricia Rozema said in an interview about her Mansfield Park, “interpretation is impossible to avoid. It must be openly declared by the filmmaker (writer and director) but 'imposing meaning' is impossible to avoid”3. Thus the choice to have two coloured actors play Heathcliff in the latest Wuthering Heights by Andrea Arnold is a good example of this somewhat radical re-interpretation of the main character in Emily Brontë’s novel when he migrates to another media.

Papers on one of the above-mentioned characters or other migrant-characters in contemporary anglophone literature are especially welcome, as well as those dealing with the following topics:
- the character in a cycle or series,
- the character in a prequel/sequel/coquel,
- the character in a transposition/rewriting,
- the character in a cinematic adaptation.

Abstracts of about 300 words, preferably in English, are to be sent with a short biography (200 words maximum) to armelle.parey@unicaen.fr and isabelle.roblin@univ-littoral.fr before September 1st, 2013.

2013 Northeast Regional Meeting: “Literature of Luther: The Individual, Freedom, and Grace” (November 8-9, 2013)

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:56:52 -0400

It has been almost 500 years since Martin Luther penned his Ninety-Five Theses. It is in view of this upcoming anniversary, and in recognition of the extraordinary impact of Luther on the modern world, that we submit this Call for Papers on the Literature of Luther.

We seek papers on Luther’s own literature and the literature that has been demonstrably impacted by Luther. We would like to hear papers that explore Luther’s impact on themes such as the individual and the institution, authority and doubt, the problem of faith, the human will, print and propaganda, etc. We are also interested in papers that reflect on Luther as a modern voice.
Along with this theme we will also accept papers that address Christianity and literature in general.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. J. Patrick Hornbeck II: “‘The Most Foul Buffoon’: Early English Responses to Martin Luther.”
Dr. Hornbeck is Assistant Professor of Theology and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Selected papers will be published in a conference volume. Please email one-page abstracts and session proposals by July 15 to NECCL@sfc.edu Dr. John Edwards and Dr. Edward Wesley, co-Chairs.

Conference Dates: November 8-9, 2013

UPDATE/MAY 23RD 2013

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:00:57 -0400

TYCA-NE 2013 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

October 3-5, 2013

Hyatt Morristown / Morristown, NJ

Program by Bergen Community College

TYCA-NE of the National Council of Teachers of English is currently seeking presentation proposals for its October 2013 Conference in Morristown, NJ. Presentations should focus on some aspect of the TYCA purpose: “the intellectual and pedagogical growth of English teachers and administrators in the two-year college throughout the northeast region.” Our theme for this year’s conference is:

R/evolutions: Addressing Pedagogical and Institutional Change in Higher Education

The TYCA-NE 2013 Conference asks us to define what changes are taking place, to anticipate future changes and to consider collaborative ways to implement changes, not only in our local institutions, but also in our communities.

Join us in New Jersey this year, at the center of our TYCA region. Morristown is known as the seat of the Revolutionary War, a tactical setting chosen by General George Washington as he led his Continental Army to encamp during the harsh winters. For two pivotal winters, the area served the Patriots who helped change America. Today, Washington Headquarters is maintained and preserved for its critical military history.

What kind of changes are you seeing at your institutions, can you see more changes evolving, and how are you addressing them? Proposals may address the following topics:

Pedagogical Changes:

Readiness, Remediation and Redesign
Developmental Acceleration, Supplementation and Contextualization
In Defense of Fiction
Future of Creative Writing
Using Whole Books with Thematic Content
Flipped Classroom
K-12 English Curriculum Changes
HS-College Collaborative Initiatives
Crafting Authentic Writing Experiences
Beyond First Year Writing
Online Teaching and Learning
Effective E-Materials and Resources
Virtual Innovations and Interactions
New Ways to Teach Writing
Transforming Assessment

Institutional Changes:

Serving more students with fewer resources
Changes in current policies and legislation regarding developmental education
Increasing use of adjunct labor
Changes as a result of administration overhaul
Political change and how it affects community colleges
Faculty bargaining and the future of tenure-track positions
Reaching out into the college community and implementing strategies for retention

We are interested in presentation topics that include revolutions in pedagogical thinking, planning and collaboration.

Format Options:

20 minute talk, discussion, or workshop followed by questions and answers;
60 minute full-panel discussion for groups of two or more followed by questions and answers;
Presentations may be combined with other proposals by the Program Planning Committee;
Computers, LCD projectors, wireless connections and on-site tech support will be provided.
Proposal Requirements:

200-250 word abstract elaborating on both the topic and format of the presentation;
50 word title and description for the conference program and schedule;
Type of session (i.e. 20 min workshop…) and specific audio-visual and technical requests;
A brief biography and contact information of each presenter.

TYCA Northeast hopes to foster creativity, collaboration and innovation. While traditional proposals will be accepted, non-traditional presentations are greatly encouraged and may receive priority consideration.

Proposals should be submitted by June 17, 2013. Presenters will be notified of proposal acceptance by June 30, 2013 and must register for the conference by August 31, 2013. Full submission instructions can be found on the conference website at www.tycanortheast.org/. The registration deadline for the conference is September 10, 2013.

Conference Registration Deadline: September 10, 2013

[EXTENDED DEADLINE] The Marginalised Mainstream: Fading and Emerging NEW DEADLINE

Thu, 23 May 2013 05:06:55 -0400

Second Annual Marginalised Mainstream Conference: Fading and Emerging, 12-13 September 2013 NEW DEADLINE: 17 June 2013

‘Fading and Emerging: Tracing the Mainstream in Literature and Popular Culture’, the second annual Marginalised Mainstream conference, seeks to explore the issue of fading and emerging in popular literature, films, and other media that have been subject to critical marginalisation. How does the mainstream itself foster the process of fading and emerging? How are vanishing and appearance dealt with in popular narratives?

In literature, characters fade into the background or erupt onto the page with sudden violence to affect the plot. The deus ex machina is a staple of thrillers, but where else (and how) is it incorporated? Cinema and photography have offered a unique space to experiment with the concept of fading and vanishing, both literally and figuratively, but also traces and mirages - pressing half images against the psyche invites shadows in and encourages us to see what was never there (think Hitchcock's Psycho). Metaphors, such as dawn and twilight, shadows and pools of light, abound. Such devices have been used in storytelling since the popular myths of the ancient world. This conference seeks to understand their significance.

We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of the theme of fading and emerging that could include, but are not limited to:

• Fictional traces
• Revelations/concealment
• Dawn/twilight
• Wallflowers and supporting characters
• Vanishing and waning
• Deus ex machina
• Fade-in, fade-out
• Styles, trends and movements
• Generic inception/genesis
• Fads and crazes
• The icon – the ‘It’ girl, the ‘It’ film
• Popular re-emergence
• Disappearance
• Re-reading (or re-viewing)
• Remakes and reboots

Keynote speakers: Dr Kate Macdonald (Ghent University), Dr Nicola Humble (University of Roehampton), and Professor Yvonne Tasker (University of East Anglia)

Panels will follow the format of three 20-minute papers followed by questions.

Abstracts of no more than 350 words are invited by Monday 17 June 2013. Acceptances will be sent out by no later than Monday 24 June 2013. Please email abstracts and a cover sheet including your name, university, contact information, plus a brief biographical paragraph about your academic interests or any enquiries to marginalisedmainstream@gmail.com.

Conference organisers: Brittain Bright, Emma Grundy Haigh and Sam Goodman

Conference email: marginalisedmainstream@gmail.com

Conference website: www.marginalisedmainstream.com

NeMLA 2014: Post-9/11 Narratives of American Im/Emigration

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:49:29 -0400

POST-9/11 NARRATIVES OF AMERICAN IM/EMIGRATION

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 3-6, 2014
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Host: Susquehanna University

How is the reality of post-9/11 America being captured in contemporary immigrant stories? Are contemporary authors telling stories of American immigration, exile, or both simultaneously? This panel seeks to elucidate the ways in which 9/11 and its lingering aftermath is figured in recent immigrant fiction while examining themes and trends emerging in this growing body of literature. Please send inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts (preferably MSWord or PDF attachments) to Katie Daily-Bruckner, dailym@bc.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2013
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, The Tenth of December, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as: “the best book you’ll read this year.” NeMLA’s Keynote Speaker will be David Staller, Producer and Director of Project Shaw. Mr. Staller presents monthly script-in-hand performances of Bernard Shaw’s plays at the Players Club in New York City.

Reconsidering Sigourney: Essays on Lydia Sigourney (edited collection)

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:32:12 -0400

The co-editors seek essays that showcase the breadth and vigor of the new scholarship on Lydia Sigourney. Though Sigourney was one of the most popular, productive and consequential authors of America’s nineteenth-century (poet, entrepreneur, educational reformer, and essayist), serious critical attention to her work languished until the latter decades of the twentieth-century when the field of American literature and culture underwent the significant revision and revitalization. Her works have been critical to many of these reconsiderations --- whether of romanticism, American identity, the history of the book, disability studies, and, most recently, of the new aesthetics --- but there has yet to be a volume of essays that collects and represents this work.
Interested contributors please send a 300-400 word abstract (as an attachment in Word) and full contact information, including affiliation, to mkete@uvm.edu or Epetrino@fairfield.edu. Abstracts are due by August 1st. Final full drafts will be due January 30, 2014.

[UPDATE] “Making Meaning at the End of the World: Apocalyptic Texts” SAMLA Nov. 8-10 Abstracts by 6/7

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:14:37 -0400

SAMLA Convention 2013
November 8-10, 2012
Marriott Atlanta Buckhead Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia 2013

“Making Meaning at the End of the World: Apocalyptic Texts”
Chair: Lynne Simpson, Presbyterian College
Affiliated Group: College English Association

As R.E.M., that great band from Athens, Georgia, famously sang, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” What is driving our current American obsession with the apocalypse? Papers that explore imagined endings from environmental disasters to zombie invasions are welcome. What do apocalyptic literature, television, and film mean for us culturally, and what might we discern from these often cautionary tales? Please send abstracts of around 500 words to Lynne Simpson at lsimpson@presby.edu by June 7.