cfp.english.upenn.edu

“Commemorations,” observes Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “sanitize further the messy history lived by the actors. They contribute to the continuous myth-making process that gives history its more definite shapes: they help to create, modify, or sanction the public meanings attached to historical events deemed worthy of mass celebration.” The 2004 bicentenary of Haitian Independence was, in this sense, a failure: it was interrupted in Haiti by the ouster (again) of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was overtaken by an international political discourse that once again treated Haiti as an a-historical site of spectacular, incomprehensible violence. The bicentennial did, however, become the occasion for a more promising project, a renewed academic interest in Haiti’s significance for competing models of cultural nationalism, cosmopolitanism, creolization, diaspora, and postcolonial and anti-imperial transnationalism. It is in this context that literary critics have explored the extraordinarily wide-ranging literary treatments of Haiti, from nineteenth-century narratives of Leonora Sansay and Martin Delany to contemporary narrative fiction by Dany Laferrière and Edwidge Danticat.

This seminar considers the representation of Haiti’s history in literary texts from the nineteenth century to the present day. We invite submissions that explore one or more of the following:

* Haiti and the cultural geographies of black diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism
* Haiti and the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and/or Europe
* comparative national, racial, and sexual identifications
* performance and passing
* Haiti as colonial romance
* legacy and inheritance
* hauntings and returns
* Memorializations of Haitian Independence and the Louisiana Purchase
* Haiti and the reiteration of memories

American Comparative Literature Association http://www.acla.org/acla2010/
Please note that proposals must be submitted through the ACLA website to be considered: http://www.acla.org/acla2010/?page_id=6

Recent Jewish American Literature and Trauma

Papers are invited for a proposed panel at the 2010 ALA Conference in San Francisco (May 27-30, 2010).

Much academic research has already been devoted to the problematic representation – in literature, film, and other forms of art – of primary traumatic experiences such as genocides or personal moments of crisis. Critics have also focused on the so-called inherited, transmitted, intergenerational, or transgenerational traumas that affect the second generation after the disaster. In the context of Jewish American literature, the second generation after the Shoah is represented by well-known authors such as Art Spiegelman, Melvin Jules Bukiet, and Thane Rosenbaum. Few critics have considered, however, exactly how – or whether – that historical burden also casts its long shadow over the subsequent generations. This panel would therefore like to investigate the ways in which the legacy of the Holocaust (possibly in conjunction with other traumata) is represented in the literary work of third and fourth generation Jewish American authors after the Shoah, writers such as Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Judy Budnitz, Nathan Englander, Dara Horn, Joseph Skibell, Aryeh Lev Stollman, Ehud Havazelet, and others.

Please send an abstract of 250 to 300 words, together with a brief CV, to Philippe.Codde@ugent.be by November 27, 2009. Make sure to mention all necessary contact information, as well as any need for audio-visual equipment. Papers should be approximately 20 minutes.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Multiculticanada 2010
Imagining and Representing Identities in Canada: Words and Images of The Cultural Mosaic
University of Alberta

The Canadian Literature Centre (CLC), the Canadian Studies Institute (CSI) and the students of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies of the University of Alberta are pleased to invite you to the first edition of the Multiculticanada graduate students colloquium. The event, which will be the first of a series of gatherings, will be held on March 19, 2010.
Canada has become a source of inspiration for numerous countries in terms of integration and multiculturalism. As a result, we would like to take this opportunity to explore the way in which texts, images, and other mediums express the idea of Canada as a cultural mosaic and the controversial questions that come with the notion of multiculturalism and the concept of “transcultural.”
With this in mind, we would like to invite you to submit abstracts that deal with literary texts, visual works or other media that underscore or problematize questions of multiculturalism and the “transcultural” in Canada. The presentations should be approximately 15 minutes and should be delivered in English or French. They could focus on the following research topics:
- The way in which literary and visual works paint an image of Canada as a nation
- The representation of fractures within the heart of multiculturalism
- The manner in which migrant literature participate (or do not) in reinforcing the cultural mosaic.
- The relationships between migrant cultures and the Canadian mythography.
- The representation of multiculturalism in arts, media and politics
The choice of the keynote speaker is to be announced.
Please send your proposals (250 words maximum) by e-mail to multiculticanada2010@gmail.com by January 4, 2010.
Following the conference, certain papers will be considered for publication in the journals TranscUlturAl and Alternative francophone.

Allegory has long been situated in a metaphorical-metaphysical scheme that presumes a hierarchical relationship between word and meaning. One way to rethink this relationship is to consider allegory as intrinsic to language itself (rather than as some meaning located outside of language) and how this view might challenge a hierarchical structure of reference. By bracketing this hierarchical relationship, we can consider the allegory of language itself. Allegory enables one to say two things at once, what one says in words and what one says other than in words. Allegory thus speaks a language that is also other to itself. Many works of language can be read “allegorically” as saying two things at the same time, or as Northrop Frye described it, “contrapuntally.” Questions this seminar may consider include: How does counterpoint draw attention away from hierarchical relations. How would this be a healthy turn for the study of allegory? Would the study of pidgin and creole literatures benefit from a contrapuntal approach? How would this resistance to hierarchical meaning apply to other “languages,” like music and art, in addition to literature. Could the cultural contexts of colonialism, imperialism, and diaspora be read differently if read contrapuntally? Allegorically? All thoughtful considerations of this general topic are welcome.
PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACT DIRECTLY TO ME AND TO THE ACLA CONFERENCE SITE.
Conference website: http://www.acla.org/acla2010
NOTE: The ACLA offers a unique and productive conference style in which 12 participants meet for two hours each morning of the conference (3 days). In our seminar, participants will deliver a paper and respond to one other paper, and we will leave ample time for discussion each day. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Seminar title: Afffectivity and Aesthetics of the Postnational across Literature, Cinema, and Theory

The term “postnational” is deployed here to reflect the indeterminate time that sur-vives the nation in which various forms of singularities occur, arrive, and/or are anticipated both within and across national spaces, institutions, and arts. This panel explores the potential of the postnational as a means of critically questioning the currently fashionable terms of transnationalism.

While transnationalism has critiqued the privileged status of the national, it has, through its focus on spatial movement or travel, retained the category of the national. Does its engagement with identity politics and strategies of representation neglect the potential of affective and aesthetic change? Does it run the risk of endorsing globalized biopolitical control?

Considering these issues in the light of the “postnational” will lead us to ask: How are senses divided or redistributed across heretofore alienated bodies, insignificant incidents, and untimely encounters? How can we rethink the relations or non-relations among aesthetics, historiography, and temporality? How can texts and artworks redeem the potential of affectivity or jouissance for creating new values against the grains of both national and neoliberal control? In short, what aesthetic and affective interventions can redeem the buried potential of the postnational?

Proposals due: Nov. 23 2009

Submit paper proposals online via the ACLA 2010 website:

http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

[Don’t forget to select "Affectivity and Aesthetics of the Postnational" as the seminar title from the top down menu]

For more information about the seminar, contact:

Jecheol Park (USC) jchlpark@yahoo.com
Mayumo Inoue (University of the Ryukyus) mayumoin@gmail.com

For more information about the conference, see:

http://www.acla.org/acla2010/

ACLA Seminar: Toward a Gendered Analytics of Diaspora: Interrogating Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Diasporic Cultural Productions

Extended deadline for submission of paper proposals: Monday, Nov. 23

ACLA Annual Meeting, April 1-4, 2010
New Orleans, LA

Seminar Description:

In his article “Diasporas,” James Clifford argues that traditional theories of diaspora tend to privilege male experiences by prioritizing traveling over dwelling, displacements over placements; his remedy would be to focus on an alternative of female diasporic experience. Further, Gayatri Gopinath argues in her book, Impossible Desires that the postcolonial queer diasporic body in diasporic cultural productions mobilizes a memory of violence that dominant, exclusionary historiographies of the nation actively erase. In light of such recent expressions of the need to recenter the female and the queer diasporic vantage-points as analytical frames for re-theorizing diaspora, this seminar invites papers on diasporic cultural productions (including fiction, memoirs, and films) which critically engage the lens of gender and/or sexuality to represent diasporic experiences.

Paper topics might include but are not limited to: the female and/or queer diasporic subject as cultural producer and/or as a material-discursive site of counter-memory; relationships between home and travel, domestic and public spaces; tropes of nostalgia and return; constructing the past by writing the self, history, and the nation; intersections among gender/sexuality and class, religion, race, ethnicity, and/or caste.

Please select the seminar title, "Toward a Gendered Analytics of Diaspora: Interrogating Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Diasporic Cultural Productions" from the drop-down menu on the ACLA submissions website in order to submit 250 word paper proposals no later than November 23. Also, please don't forget to specify your A/V needs (if any) on the submissions website. The ACLA submissions website is as follows:
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

If you have any questions, please contact Soumitree Gupta (soumitree.gupta at gmail.com).

For further details of the conference, please see the ACLA website:
http://www.acla.org/acla2010/

Jewish literature is a vital piece of what has come to be considered important American literature. Many authors of Jewish descent have chronicled their experiences as immigrants living in America, as well as their experiences living as Jewish- Americans and establishing a Jewish identity in a culture that is predominantly of European descent. How has Jewish identity manifested itself in literature? How has it influenced other American authors in their writing? Is the concept of a Jewish identity still recognizable in literature today?

CT Review is looking for academic essays on the works of Allen Ginsberg, Elie Wiesel, and Bob Dylan exploring how Jewish identity has manifested itself in American culture and literature, as well as an address on how Jewish culture and identity have influenced American literature and whether or not it has assimilated with American culture and become unrecognizable in society today.

Submission Guidelines

Connecticut Review is a semi-annual journal published since 1967 under the auspices of the Board of Trustees for the Connecticut State University. Connecticut Review invites submission of poetry, literary plays, short fiction, translations, creative nonfiction, essays, interviews, and academic articles of general interest.

Submission Guidelines:

• Work should be 2,000 to 4,000 words.
• Submit two copies of each piece.
• The first page of each poem, story, essay or other should include the name, address, phone number, and email address in the upper left corner.
• Poets should submit no more than five poems.
• Translated work must be accompanied by appropriate written permissions from author or publisher.
• Typed manuscripts should be on 8.5 x 11 paper in MLA style when appropriate.
• Color photography and color artwork should be submitted as slides or transparencies. The title, date of composition, size of original, medium, and name and address of the artist should be indicated. Black and white photography and art work should be labeled in the same way. Work with vertical orientation is preferred and should be indicated.
• Each submission must be accompanied by a brief autobiographical statement.
• Send SASE for reply only. Manuscripts will be recycled. Mail without a return address on the outside envelope will not be opened.
• The reading period for Connecticut Review is 1 September through 31 May.

Send all submissions labeled by genre to:

Meredith Clermont-Ferrand, Senior Editor
Connecticut Review
CSU System Office
39 Woodland Street
Hartford CT 06105-2337

ACLA Seminar: Toward a Gendered Analytics of Diaspora: Interrogating Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Diasporic Cultural Productions

ACLA Annual Meeting, April 1-4, 2010
New Orleans, LA

Seminar Description:

In his article “Diasporas,” James Clifford argues that traditional theories of diaspora tend to privilege male experiences by prioritizing traveling over dwelling, displacements over placements; his remedy would be to focus on an alternative of female diasporic experience. Further, Gayatri Gopinath argues in her book, Impossible Desires that the postcolonial queer diasporic body in diasporic cultural productions mobilizes a memory of violence that dominant, exclusionary historiographies of the nation actively erase. In light of such recent expressions of the need to recenter the female and the queer diasporic vantage-points as analytical frames for re-theorizing diaspora, this seminar invites papers on diasporic cultural productions (including fiction, memoirs, and films) which critically engage the lens of gender and/or sexuality to represent diasporic experiences.

Paper topics might include but are not limited to: the female and/or queer diasporic subject as cultural producer and/or as a material-discursive site of counter-memory; relationships between home and travel, domestic and public spaces; tropes of nostalgia and return; constructing the past by writing the self, history, and the nation; intersections among gender/sexuality and class, religion, race, ethnicity, and/or caste.

Please select the seminar title, "Toward a Gendered Analytics of Diaspora: Interrogating Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Diasporic Cultural Productions" from the drop-down menu on the ACLA submissions website in order to submit 250 word paper proposals no later than November 13. Also, please don't forget to specify your A/V needs (if any) on the submissions website. The ACLA submissions website is as follows:
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

If you have any questions, please contact Soumitree Gupta (soumitree.gupta at gmail.com).

For further details of the conference, please see the ACLA website:
http://www.acla.org/acla2010/

Seminar Organizers: Allison Carruth, University of Oregon; Heather Houser, Stanford University

We invite paper proposals for ACLA's 2010 Annual Conference, "Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms," to be held 1-4 April, 2010 in New Orleans, LA.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Proposals are due Monday, November 23, 2009.

How should we understand the “culture of cities,” to cite historian Lewis Mumford, in the context of recent environmental and public health challenges? The industrializing city has often been imagined as cancerous in promoting both human illness and metastatic growth. This seminar will interrogate the relevance of this idea to the aesthetic forms that major cities inspire today; and we will examine how different urban imaginaries conceptualize the complex entanglements of ecology, health, and justice. In dialogue with the conference theme, the seminar will focus on the creolization of “city” and “country” spaces. Do neo-pastoral ideals inform cultural and material developments taking place within city limits? Do urban texts (and projects) enable new forms of “urban-rural synthesis,” to borrow from James Machor? And how do contemporary cities reshape earlier notions of beauty and ugliness? We invite well-developed theoretical papers as well as those that examine specific late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of literature, film, urban design, and new media. Papers might also engage questions of de-urbanization, revitalization, gentrification, environmental justice, urban farming, and global labor flows.

Proposals of 250 words must be submitted through the ACLA website by Monday, November 23, 2009
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

Please select the seminar title, "Re-Conceiving the Urban: Public Space and Public Health," when submitting.

Feel free to contact Heather Houser, houserh@stanford.edu, if you have any questions.

The ACLA's conferences use a seminar format in which most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day for the three days of the conference. This enables intensive discussion, participation, and collaboration.

Southwest/Texas Popular & American Culture Associations 31th Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM

February 10-13, 2010

The 2010 SW/TX PCA/ACA Conference will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Hyatt Regency downtown (see hotel information below)

The American Indian/Indigenous Film Area is looking for panels, papers, screenings of Indigenous films + discussion, and workshops on topics related to American Indian, First Nations, and Indigenous film. At this time we are accepting proposals in general areas but also are looking for papers in these particular topics: Tracey Deer's film; Sherman Alexie's Business of Fancy Dancing; Hollywood; film/media as used for language/culture revitalization/sovereignty, and documentary.

If you have specific ideas for topics, workshops, or panels that are not listed here, please submit those as well.

Native filmmakers, scholars, teachers, students, professionals, and others are encouraged to participate. Graduate students may wish to submit papers for fellowships and awards.
Further information regarding the conference (listing of all areas, hotel, registration, tours, etc) can be found at http://swtxpca.org/documents/130.html. Register early for a discount rate and to reserve space at the conference hotel—rooms fill quickly.

Hyatt Regency Albuquerque
30 Tijeras
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Phone: 1.505.842.1234
Fax: 1.515.766.6710

Please pass along this call to friends and colleagues.

31st Annual Conference February 10-13, 2010
Southwest/Texas Popular and American Culture Association
http://swtxpca.org/
Deadlines: Priority Submission and Registration: November 1, 2009
Final deadline for Proposals and Panels: December 15, 2009
Final Conference Registration: December 31, 2009 (All participants must be registered by this date).

Please send 100-200 word abstracts to:

M. Elise Marubbio,
Associate Professor & Director Augsburg Native American Film Series
Area Chair, American Indian/Indigenous Film SW/TX PCA/ACA
CB 115
Augsburg College
2211 Riverside Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55454
(612) 330-1523
marubbio@augsburg.edu

Hybrid Realism?

Several studies over the last 30 years have troubled the stereotype of realism as monological and disciplinary. George Levine, in 1981, emphasizes that “realism posits ‘mixed’ conditions,” and he has more recently read certain realist novels as staged duels between competing epistemologies. Marshall Brown, also in 1981, explains realist narrative as a product of “interplay” between “Jakobson’s metonymic and sequential order” and “metaphorical or substitutional order”; as “the ordered or hierarchical intersection of contrasting codes”; and as “a structure of ordered negations perceived within the text quite independently of any relationship between the text and what is assumed to be its ‘world.’” More recently, Lilian Furst has described the realist novel as “a record . . . of a past social situation and as a texture made up of verbal signs” which, “far from canceling each other out, . . . overlap in an inescapable and reciprocally sustaining tension that forms the core of realism’s precarious enterprise.” Is realism really a clash of competing codes? Opposed styles of knowledge? Content that challenges form?

This panel proposes a discussion of realism as a mixture or hybrid form, or as a product of tension between various codes, epistemologies, or other narrative modes, or even between content and form. Submissions dealing with realism in the context of any period, national literature, or genre, are welcome.

For questions, contact Geoff Baker at gabaker at csuchico.edu. To submit a proposal by November 23, 2009, please visit http://www.acla.org/acla2010/ and follow instructions for submission.

Call for Papers and Proposed Sessions
34th Annual Conference
The International Association for Philosophy and Literature
to be held at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada,
24-30 May 2010
Topic: CULTURES OF DIFFERENCES: national / indigenous / historical

For submissions and more information, please visit http://www.iapl.info/
Deadline for Submissions: 30 November 2009.

Conference 2010: Fractured Images / Broken Words

Multi-Disciplinary Postgraduate Symposium hosted by the Department of English & Creative Writing, Lancaster University 12th June 2010

Keynote Speakers: Professor Terry Eagleton (Lancaster University) and Andy Diggle (http://www.andydiggle.com).
Featuring art installations by Christine Dawson

Call for Papers:
Visual and multi-modal texts are an integral element of both popular and literary culture, contemporary and past. This conference invites papers which engage with the notion of text and image, through, for example critical examination of graphic novels, television, film, illustrated texts or adaptations. We actively welcome papers with an interdisciplinary approach, allowing for a collision of meaning and interpretations of both text and image. We’re particularly interested in – but not limiting our remit to – topics which focus on the fusion of word and image, and perhaps on the gaps which can be perceived between, and within, visual and textual representation. Where do textual spaces exist? Where do word and image meet? Where do they separate? Where does meaning fuse? Where does it disintegrate?

As the conference title suggests, we’re also interested in the duplicitous and unstable nature of texts and images and would also like to explore issues such as: How words and / or images be
misappropriated, misused or misdirected to create alternative and
divergent meanings; The fragility of meaning created by words and / or images; Problems of reading and interpretation.
This conference will provide a stimulating environment for postgraduate students and other researchers to present work and to share and discuss ideas stemming from the examination of texts employing varied representational modes, adaptations and interactions between text and image. We hope to encourage speakers from multiple disciplines, working across historical, cultural and literary periods, and with a wide range of texts.

Suggested topics, themes and disciplinary approaches include:
- Film Studies
- Cultural Studies
- Literary Studies
- Language
- Propaganda Texts
- Journalism/Photo-Journalism
- Graphic Novels & Picture Books
- Children & Young Adult Literature
- Television
- Identity
- Ownership of Truth
- Authenticity
- Biographical Texts
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- Sexuality
- Translation
- Gaps and Silences
- Absences
Or, any other topic which the conference title inspires.

To download our Call for Papers as a poster:
http://www.lancasterluminary.com/images/updated%20CFP.gif

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted by 15th February 2010, to the organisers at:
conference@lancasterluminary.com. Please include the title of your paper, your name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a brief summary of your research interests.

Conference Fees:
£40 for speakers
£20 for other delegates

Registration forms are available to download at
http://www.lancasterluminary.com/contents/registration%20form.doc. You may send forms through the post to the address given, or alternatively, you
can email them to : conference@lancasterluminary.com. Payment for the conference will be handled via our online system. Please check back for details on this, which will be available shortly.

The growth of a transnational Latin American / Latino/a community has necessitated a re-envisioning of pan-ethnicity and of national identity. In fact, Roman de la Campa suggests that Latino/as reside in type of ”split state” which includes not only specific national histories and identifications, but also “the ontological plurality that comes from deriving an identity from more than one American imaginary.” While focusing specifically on Pan-Latino/a and transnational identity, we will examine the ways in which cultural productions (re)negotiate, conflate or threaten social, economic, racial, cultural, political, and/or gendered differences among Latino/as. Additionally, papers may explore how this split state of Latino/a (or Pan-Latino/a) identity reconstructs or deconstructs traditional notions of national identity. This panel welcomes papers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives.

Due December 5, 2009

To read the call for proposals: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/conference/forumoncitizenship/callforproposals

NYU's Program in Educational Theatre is a leader in applied theatre. Through our extensive curricular offerings (which range from undergraduate to doctoral programs of study), we, as practitioners, are constantly investigating dialogical forms of theatre through which it is possible to explore social activity, pedagogy, politics and citizenship. These aspirations drive applied theatre, a movement involving the use of drama and theatre in non-traditional venues that promote citizenship within varying communities.

The goal of this forum is to facilitate a dialogue on citizenship and applied theatre contexts through exploring the field of arts-based community engagement. The forum will also investigate the perceived boundaries and barriers for artist/educators committed to understanding the roles and responsibilities of citizens in both local and global communities.

Forum participants will engage in workshops and sessions exploring the link between applied theatre and citizenship; use theatre to critically reflect on historical events, discovering their influence on contemporary culture, public policies and our individual lives; and develop a language of possibility within a narrowly defined, outcome-based culture.

For our 2010 Forum, we invite artists, educators, representatives from arts organizations and researchers to share and discuss their work.

Proposals should address one or more of the following questions and/or sub-questions:

1) What is a citizen artist?

•What is the contemporary role of citizenship in arts education and/or applied theatre?
•Who is the citizen artist, and what are their responsibilities in citizenship education?

2) How can drama provide a forum to explore ideas of global citizenship?

•What are innovative strategies for using drama to stimulate dialogue, interaction and change?
•How is theatre being used to rehabilitate people in prisons, health facilities, and elsewhere?
•How can applied theatre encourage global citizenship for participants of all ages?

3) How do we prepare future artists/educators for work in applied theatre?

•What ethical questions should the artist/educator consider in their work?
•In what ways are aesthetics important in applied theatre? How do we negotiate a commitment to both the process and product of applied theatre work?
•How do artist/educators assess participants' understandings in an applied theatre project?
We are accepting proposals in one of four formats:

1. Paper Presentations: Participants should submit a title and 100-word abstract articulating the ways in which the paper relates to one or more of the conference questions. Papers will be selected for moderated panels based on topic areas at the discretion of the conference committee. Each panelist will have 15 minutes to present their work, followed by a moderated discussion between fellow presenters and conference participants.

2. Workshops: Participants should submit a title and 100-word description of their workshop, articulating the ways in which the workshop relates to one or more of the conference questions. In this context, a workshop is defined as an interactive experience between the conference participants and the workshop facilitator(s), not as a lecture/demonstration. Workshops will be given 90-minute time slots.

3. Performance of Applied Theatre Project: Participants should submit a title and a 100-word abstract of a scene, or excerpt of an applied theatre project (20 minutes maximum) for presentation and reflection at the conference. Abstracts should articulate the ways in which the performance relates to one or more of the conference questions. Performance submissions featuring all age groups are welcomed and encouraged.

4. Narratives: Participants should submit a title and 100-word abstract of a narrative presentation that illuminates an applied theatre project. Media that supports the narratives are encouraged for presentation and reflection at the conference. In this context, a narrative presentation refers to one's experience and personal account of an applied theatre project. Abstracts should articulate how the narratives relate to one or more of the conference questions.

All technical requests must be included in the proposal. Please understand, due to limited space and resources, the committee may not be able to accommodate all requests.

Submissions are due January 5th, 2010. Please submit proposals to: applied.theatre.forum@gmail.com

You will receive a confirmation email when we receive your proposal. Notification of accepted proposals will be emailed on or before February 15, 2010. Submissions must include a picture and 50 word-biography of each presenter.

For more information about Steinhardt's Program in Educational Theatre, please visit: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/edtheatre

Seminar Organizers: Allison Carruth, University of Oregon; Heather Houser, Stanford University

We invite paper proposals for ACLA's 2010 Annual Conference, "Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms," to be held 1-4 April, 2010 in New Orleans, LA.
Proposals are due Friday, November 13.

How should we understand the “culture of cities,” to cite historian Lewis Mumford, in the context of recent environmental and public health challenges? The industrializing city has often been imagined as cancerous in promoting both human illness and metastatic growth. This seminar will interrogate the relevance of this idea to the aesthetic forms that major cities inspire today; and we will examine how different urban imaginaries conceptualize the complex entanglements of ecology, health, and justice. In dialogue with the conference theme, the seminar will focus on the creolization of “city” and “country” spaces. Do neo-pastoral ideals inform cultural and material developments taking place within city limits? Do urban texts (and projects) enable new forms of “urban-rural synthesis,” to borrow from James Machor? And how do contemporary cities reshape earlier notions of beauty and ugliness? We invite well-developed theoretical papers as well as those that examine specific late-twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of literature, film, urban design, and new media. Papers might also engage questions of de-urbanization, revitalization, gentrification, environmental justice, urban farming, and global labor flows.

Proposals of 250 words must be submitted through the ACLA website by Friday November 13, 2009
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

Please select the seminar title, "Re-Conceiving the Urban: Public Space and Public Health," when submitting.

Feel free to contact Heather Houser, houserh@stanford.edu, if you have any questions.

The ACLA's conferences use a seminar format in which most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day for the three days of the conference. This enables intensive discussion, participation, and collaboration.

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Friday, February 26th, 2010

Future Theory, Present Praxes
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Thinking and Acting "Timely"

"The affirmation of the future to come: this is not a positive thesis. It is nothing other than the affirmation itself, the "yes," insofar as it is the condition of all promises or of all hope, of all awaiting, or all performativity, of all opening toward the future, whatever it may be..."
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever

"When resistance ceases to appear on the central stage of historical development ...and is relegated on the contrary to a marginal, synchronic, and transversal dimension, we can no longer perceive an idea of potency (puissance), a position of antagonism or an instance of liberation. Apparently, the only solution remains the star of redemption or that of messianic time. As for us, we refuse to return to the fleeting shadows of that desperate generation."
Antonio Negri, The Porcelain Workshop

The aim of this graduate conference is to investigate the diverse ways in which concepts and ideas surrounding "the future" infuse modern and contemporary cultural production and instigate critiques and analyses of present situations. In a time of radical breaks and paradigm shifts, what constitutes the present is not marked by ontological certainties, but remains part of an "unfinished project," a shifting discursive space of translation and transformation that, as Frederic Jameson explains, "...concentrate[s] a promise within a present of time and [offers] a way of possessing the future more immediately within that present itself" (A Singular Modernity).

If our present is so bound up with desire and anxiety for the future, does this enable or inhibit our abilities to implement change? Does waiting for a messianic radical alterity to come position the future as a transcendental ideal and limit the potency of the global multitude as Negri suggests? Or does the open-endedness such a concept espouses serve as a necessary model for a postmodernity that refuses and critiques the simplistic and dangerous assumption that narratives and identities can be fixed and knowable?

The tension between future orientations and present activity calls forth questions such as: how does the future inscribe itself into theoretical and artistic discourse as a transcendental ideal, or as imminent arrival? How exactly have ideas about futurity been articulated and by/for/to whom? What sorts of praxes do we encounter at the limits of critical thinking and what thresholds do they open so that we may actively participate in the shaping of a present? How do we negotiate our individual and collective pasts with the immanent arrival of what is to come? What kinds of minoritarian/counter futures have been/can be articulated and do they resist the normative boundaries of end-based thinking or promulgate their own teleologies?

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Derrida and the ethics of the "perhaps"
• subjunctive identities (national, gendered, political)
• eco-aesthetics and geopolitics
• the past in the future: memory and nostalgia in cultural production
• borderlands prophecy
• conspiracy narratives and apocalyptic fictions
• imagined/imagining communities
• novelty and the commodification of newness
• dystopias/utopias and science fiction: the archaeologies of the future
• the contingency of change and hope: from Barack to Zizek

To propose a paper, please submit a cover page with your name, institutional affiliation, contact information (mailing address, phone number and email), and a 250 word abstract of the paper. Presentations will be limited to twenty minutes.
Keynote Address by Dr. Imre Szeman (Canadian Research Chair, Cultural Studies. University of Alberta).
Submission deadline for abstracts is December 15, 2009.
Please send abstracts and all other inquiries to: future@uoguelph.ca.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~future/

In the last twenty years, the arrival of African, Asian, Latin American and Eastern European immigrants has turned Italy from a country of emigration into a nation that now hosts one of the most diverse immigrant populations in Europe. This new reality deserves attention and analysis.

Although this remarkable social change has given impetus to a consistent body of emergent theoretical, scholarly, and cultural production, up until today there has been little analysis that systematically combines the literature on immigration and multiculturalism, the colonial experience, and the development of Italy’s cultural, political, and social history in light of that experience. In the Italian context, the term “postcolonial” is rarely employed to explore the historical continuum and cultural genealogy that link the colonial past to contemporary history and society. Even less often is a theoretical understanding of postcolonial studies encouraged which analyzes the specificity of the Italian context away from the more traditional Anglophone paradigm.

The organizers welcome papers across a wide range of subject disciplines, which focus on Italian postcolonial contemporaneity, and more specifically on one or more of the following categories:

· Colonial historiography
· Multiculturalism, ethnicity, race
· Meticciato, hybridity, historical and contemporary racism
· Exoticism, orientalism, and the colonies in the collective imaginary
· Rereading of Italian literary and cultural canon
· Colonial and postcolonial citizenship
· Contemporary cinema and colonial films
· Remapping spaces, rethinking periphery/metropole
· Memory and quotidian hi/stories
· Anti-colonialism and resistance strategies in contemporary Italy
· Subaltern Others of Italy
If you have questions please contact Caterina Romeo (romeo.caterina@gmail.com) or Cristina Lombardi-Diop (cldiop@yahoo.com). To receive full consideration, proposals must be submitted by Friday, November 13, at the website of the American Comparative Literature Association (http://acla.org/acla2010), where you can learn more about the conference format.

THE CAPE & THE COSMOPOLITAN: READING ZOË WICOMB

14-16 April 2010
University of Stellenbosch

CONVENORS:
Meg Samuelson (Stellenbosch) & Kai Easton (SOAS)

CONFIRMED EVENT:
Public reading by Zoë Wicomb

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Dorothy Driver (Adelaide)

Abdulrazak Gurnah (Kent)

Following the success of the first colloquium, Zoë Wicomb: Texts & Histories, co-hosted by SOAS and the University of York in London in 2008 (see link: http://www.soas.ac.uk/events/event46091.html), the University of Stellenbosch, together with SOAS, is delighted to announce the second collaborative conference on Wicomb’s fiction and criticism.

This 2010 conference returns Wicomb to the Cape both literally and in terms of focusing scholarly attention on the site of her native space where so much of her fiction has converged. Along with this emphasis on the local, however, the conference aims to consider more cosmopolitan connections, to engage with the Cape and its history of global intersections. In doing so, it follows Wicomb in exploring ‘how setting functions much like intertextuality’ for the postcolonial writer, who, by introducing ‘dialogue between texts … brings into being the interconnectedness of the human world in a divided society’.[1] Building on the original London event, “The Cape and the Cosmopolitan: Reading Zoë Wicomb” promises to be an extended interdisciplinary and interregional dialogue on and around Wicomb's work.

We invite abstracts of papers that fall directly within ideas of ‘The Cape and the Cosmopolitan’, or engage with it at a tangent in relation to Wicomb’s fictional texts, her cultural criticism, or in terms of the contexts and intertexts of her fiction from various disciplinary angles. How, for example, do those of us working in different fields ‘read’ Wicomb? What kinds of contributions might Wicomb’s literary representations make to research in other disciplines (such as history, anthropology, political science, etc) and vice versa? How can we productively situate Wicomb’s fiction alongside other ‘Cape’ and ‘Cosmopolitan’ literary texts and how do authors in other genres and regions respond to her fiction? How might we tease out ideas of intertextuality in Wicomb’s work – whether in light of local Cape archival histories and fictions or more obviously cosmopolitan literary, historical or geographical traces?

Some may wish to explore comparative or connective readings between Wicomb and other writers or to draw on her cultural criticism to read other texts that resonate with the conference theme; others might look at questions of readerships, reception, publication and authorship and/or consider how Wicomb’s writing is positioned in relation to national and transnational canons We would also welcome papers that (among other possible topics or approaches) address questions of cultural translation; trace the connective histories that enable Wicomb’s imaginative straddling of South Africa and Scotland; explore Wicomb’s inscription of the Cape at the intersection of Africa, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean or the ways in which her fiction can be read within constructs of “African literature”; and engage the various forms of exile (including that of the liberation movement) represented in or informing her writing.

The conference aims to create a forum not only for dialogues between disciplines but also between emergent and established researchers. To this end, we wish to encourage in particular participation by graduate students and recently graduated scholars.

FURTHER CONFERENCE DETAILS:

Conference panels will be held in a single venue rather than in parallel panels to promote a sustained and substantial conversation between participants. In addition to scholarly presentations and keynote addresses, the conference will also feature panel discussions between writers who engage with the Cape and/or the Cosmopolitan.

We hope to be able to offer some financial support to selected graduate student presenters, and those wishing to apply for such support should please submit a separate motivation (approx. 1 page in length) along with their abstract. Depending on the success of our funding applications, a minimal conference fee might be imposed. The convenors plan to publish selected conference proceedings in journal and/or book form following the conference, and participants will be invited to submit revised papers to be considered for publication.

Please submit abstracts of approximately 300 words by 5 December to: Wicombconference@sun.ac.za. Our selection process will be finalised by 23 December, though if an earlier response is required for funding applications, please do indicate this when you send your abstract.

The conference website is currently under development and can be accessed at: http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/Arts/Departments/english/news... or via “News & Activities” on http://www.sun.ac.za/english.

Conference Committee: Meg Samuelson (Stellenbosch convenor), Kai Easton (SOAS convenor), Lucy Graham, Jeanne Ellis, Grace Musila, Lynda Spencer, Tina Steiner

Graduate Assistants: Grant Andrews and Grace Kim

[1] Z. Wicomb, ‘Setting, Intertextuality and the Resurrection of the Postcolonial Author’. Journal of Postcolonial Writing 41.2 (2005): 144-55.

In historical periods of intense political unrest or in calls for social reformation, the written word has encompassed the energy and fervor of such revolutionary moments. From the political pamphlets distributed during the French Revolution to the Industrial Revolution that marked a monumental shift in the United States and around the world in regards to labor laws and technological advancements, the idea of “progress” and pushing social expectations forward into a new mode of thought has permeated our culture for centuries. However, as scholars sit in the 21st century and contemplate the social reforms of the past, how do we recognize this notion of “progress”? Do we in fact see instances of a move forward that mark a world improving in social, religious, sexual, and educational acceptance? Or does this same drive for “progress” exist in a constant struggle that never reaches an actual change in our culture? However one defines “progress,” the question still remains as to the implications of such a label as “progress” and what this means for us in the 21st century as we experience a new wave of social reformation that calls for change in our political, educational, sexual, religious, and literary culture.

AGSE invites submissions from graduate students of all disciplines on topics that address, complicate or illustrate the concept of “progress.” Please send abstracts of 250 words in .doc format to agse2010@gmail.com. Please include your full name, contact information, as well as institutional and departmental affiliation. Presentations will be 15-20 minutes in length and can be either a reading of a research paper/original creative work OR an oral presentation (visuals are encouraged).

The deadline for submissions is January 9, 2010.

AGSE welcomes Dr. Kevin Gilmartin as a special guest speaker for the Paths of Progress (?) Conference. Dr. Gilmartin, a professor of English at California Institute of Technology, is a well-known scholar of British Romantic literature. His 1996 book Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteen Century England extended and complicated the understanding of British literature in the Age of Revolution by offering a more nuanced and finely-grained account of the politics of culture. His recent book Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in English 1790-1832, explores how social and political unrest broadly reshaped the role of the writer in society. He is currently a Visiting Professor of Romantic Literature at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, UK .

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Conference: “Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies”

November 19-20, 2010
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Conference Co-Chairs:
Sarah Brophy, Associate Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, School of the Arts, McMaster University

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15, 2010

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore how visual cultural practices image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmermann's call for “radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres” (2000, p. xx). Our aim is to explore how health, disability, and the body are theorized, materialized, and politicized in forms of visual culture including photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media. Accordingly, we invite proposals for individual papers and roundtables that consider how contemporary visual culture makes bodies political in ways that matter for the future of democracy. Proposals may draw on fields such as: visual culture, critical theory, disability studies, health studies, science studies, autobiography studies, indigenous studies, feminisms, queer studies, and globalization/transnationalism.

CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
*Rebecca Belmore,* internationally recognized Anishinabekwe artist, Vancouver (exhibitions of her performance, video, installation, and sculpture include: Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts);
*Lisa Cartwright,* Professor of Communication and Science Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (/Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture/; /Moral Spectatorship: Technologies of Voice and Affect in Postwar Representations of the Child/)
*Robert McRuer,* Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC (/Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability/; /The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities/);
*Ato Quayson,* Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto (/Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation/; /Relocating Postcolonialism/).

The conference will also feature /Scrapes: Unruly Embodiments in Video Art,/ an exhibition curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki, at the McMaster Museum of Art.

POSSIBLE THEMATICS:
1. Technologies
-- medical technologies (e.g. medical imaging, drug therapies, prosthetics and other devices) and their implications for embodiment, subjectivity, community, kinship, and politics
-- corporeality and the senses as sites/forms of knowledge-making
-- biopolitics and surveillance
-- the relationship between “old” and “new” technologies
-- how technologies mediate social spaces of embodiment and interaction
-- interrogations of the human and posthuman in medicine, science, and art

2. Cultural Production
-- cultural pedagogy; the production of knowledge in sites of cultural production (e.g. galleries, festivals, classrooms, online, etc.)
-- counter-publics (e.g. disability culture)
-- indigenous modes of cultural production
-- diasporic/transnational issues and practices
-- new representational modes (e.g. digital arts, graphic memoir)
-- documentary practices
-- “doing politics in art” (Bennett)

3. Disability
-- medical, scientific, and cultural discourses of disability
-- performing and witnessing embodied difference
-- interrogations of impairment
-- genetics, reproduction, eugenics
-- dis-ease and disorder
-- “ability trouble” (McRuer)
-- “radical crip images” (McRuer)

4. Affect
-- explorations of “ugly feelings” (Ngai), “aesthetic nervousness” (Quayson), “moral spectatorship” (Cartwright), “empathic vision” (Bennett), and “seeing for” (Bal)
-- relationships to medicalization, regulation, and surveillance
-- affect as generative/productive in relation to concepts of ethical spectatorship and witnessing
-- relationships between corporeality and theorizations of nature as dynamic and agentic (Barad, Grosz, Haraway)
-- can we/should we move beyond the theories that posit /negative/ affect as a prime site for ethics?
-- affect and global politics: representations of global mobilities, violence, war, terrorism

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:
We kindly invite submissions from scholars, artists, health professionals, community members, and activists in all areas and disciplines.
Concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Proposals for the following formats will be considered:
1) Individual papers: 15 minutes in length
2) Roundtables: 4-5 participants, including a designated moderator and a plan for facilitated discussion of ideas
All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Individual paper submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words
3) paper title and a 300-500 word abstract; the description of the paper’s content should be as specific as possible and indicate relevance to one or more of the conference thematics.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

Roundtable submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information for each participant
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words for each participant
3) roundtable title and a 500 word proposal. The proposal should both indicate the relevance of the roundtable to one or more of the conference thematics and outline the organization of the proposed discussion.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

All submissions should be sent via email attachment to viscult@mcmaster.ca by January 15, 2010. Please use the subject line “proposal for Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats.

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals to arrive by January 15, 2010.
Address: Sarah Brophy & Janice Hladki: Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture Conference
c/o Department of English & Cultural Studies
Chester New Hall 321
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9
Fax: 905-777-8316

ACCESSIBILITY:
Presenters are encouraged to explore ways to make physical, sensory, and intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. Suggestions include: large print (18 point font) copies of handouts, large-print copies of paper or panel outlines, and/or audio descriptions of any film or video clips and images. Presenters are also encouraged to consider open or closed captioning of films and video clips.

POST-CONFERENCE PUBLICATION PLANS:
Papers from the conference will be considered for a special issue of /The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies/.

CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP:
Sponsored by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (John Douglas Taylor Fund).

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS/PROPOSALS
38th Annual National Conference
April 8-10, 2010
L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington, D.C.
WHO’S COUNTS & WHO COUNTING?

The National Association for Ethnic Studies invites abstracts/proposals for papers, panels, workshops, or media productions from people in all disciplines and interdisciplinary areas of the arts, business, social sciences, humanities, science and education on politics, community and ethnicity. How do classifications of race and ethnicity define our lives? How are they part of our individual and collective thinking? How do they become statistics? In contrast, how do issues of race and ethnicity defy demarcation? How do race and ethnicity challenge the interests and power struggles implicit in shaping definitions?

250-word abstracts/proposals are invited to submit by December 1, 2009, which relate to any aspect of the conference theme, with the participant’s institutional affiliation and mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address. The abstract/proposal must indicate whether the presentation is an individual paper or a complete panel presentation and if A/V equipment is needed.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Abstracts must be submitted electronically to: http://www.ethnicstudies.org/conference.htm
Select the “Submit Abstract” link to proceed to the online submission form.

NOTE: A separate abstract must be submitted for each presenter (even co-authored papers, roundtable presentations and pre-arranged panels) with complete contact information.
Pre-arranged panels must include at least three presenters/speakers, but no more than five and must provide their own panel chairs. Panels with fewer than three or more than five presenters will not be considered.
All program participants must pay full conference registration fees and 2010 NAES membership dues.
Notifications on proposals will be mailed in late fall/early winter 2009.

ABOUT NAES:
The National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) was founded in 1972. It provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars and activists concerned with the national and international dimensions of ethnicity. The Association welcomes scholars and teachers at all educational levels, students, librarians, civic and governmental leaders, community activists, and all persons interested in ethnicity, ethnic groups, intergroup relations, and the cultural life of ethnic minorities.

The 2010 annual conference will create a lively forum for the discussion of issues related to ethnic communities, including, but not limited to the following: the 2008 presidential election; American Indian federal recognition; sovereignty and recognition in a global economy; counting in the 2010 census; undocumented workers; LGBTQ rights; unincorporated communities; immigration at the local level; census and racial/ethnic identities; human trafficking; negotiating dual citizenships; limited citizenships; redistricting; census data and its impact on resource access; higher education; student loans; citizenship; health care by the numbers; philanthropy and ethnic communities; defining minorities and majorities; affirmative action issues; defining and supporting art; women’s resources; economic ramifications of census results.

Keynote speakers at the 2010 annual conference will include: Congressman Mike Honda (D- CA); Dr. Donna Brazile (Author of Cooking with Grease & Political Strategist); Dr. Hiroshi Motomura (UCLA Law School)

Toni Morrison Society panels at

American Literature Association
21st Annual Conference

Dates: May 27-30, 2010

Location: Hyatt Regency San Francisco
In Embarcadero Center
5 Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, CA 94111

Conference Director: Alfred Bendixen
Texas A & M University

Conference Fee: For those who pre-register before April 15, 2010: $85
($50 for Graduate Students, Independent Scholars, and Retired Faculty)
After April 15, the fees are $100 and $60

Participants must be members of the Toni Morrison Society
Membership information can be found at www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/

Send proposals (250/500 words as well as academic affiliation) to Alma Jean Billigslea at jbillingslea3@comcast.net and Yvonne Atkinson at yvonnea777@msn.com. Deadline for proposals: January 20, 2010.
Panel #1: Hospitality in Morrison’s Fiction
Migration, internationalization, globalization and transnationalism are all phenomena which have given the reception and welcoming of strangers a particular cast in the 21st century. Linked to Morrison's 2007 curatorial project on the Foreigner's Home, this panel invites papers to consider the concept of hospitality in Morrison’s fiction. Papers might explore the laws of common, conditional hospitality, the ethics of unconditional hospitality, the relationship between host, guest or stranger or hospitality as an interruption of self.
Panel # 2: Aurality: Music and Sound in Morrison’s
While oral traditions from folk vernacular to Black English have been focal points of studies of Toni Morrison’s texts, this panel invites papers that consider aurality in Morrison’s works. While written texts are not usually consider to be in any way aural, Morrison’s works thrum with sound. In an interview for the National Visionary Leadership Project, Morrison talks about the aurality of her community and her text when she says, the “quality of richness” is in the “history of songs and tales told.” Papers might explore strategies, forms or styles that re-create sound, song and music in Morrison's narratives (or fiction) or the relationship between written and oral texts.

The editors of Plenum: The South Carolina State University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (ISSN 2151-0377), a peer reviewed journal, invite contributions for the Spring 2010 number of the journal. The journal accepts interdisciplinary research, action research that focuses on interdisciplinarity in the classroom, black and white photography, poetry, nonfiction prose, and reviews of recent interdisciplinary work in any field. The deadline for submission is December 10, 2009.

Manuscripts may be up to 6000 words in length (including notes and bibliographic material), and should be formatted in accordance with the most recent style guide of your primary discipline. Permission for the use of copyrighted material included in your manuscript should accompany your submission. Photographs should be at least 300 dpi and should be submitted on CD.

Please include the following information in the text of your e-mail message or on a separate page if you are submitting a paper manuscript: name, affiliation, e-mail, telephone number, and a physical campus address. Do not include this information or any other identifying information or tags in the text of your article or document.

Manuscripts should be submitted via e-mail in Microsoft Word 1997-2003(.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) to JIS@scsu.edu, Subject heading: Plenum Article Submission. Electronic submission is preferred. The deadline for submission for Spring 2010 is December 10, 2009. Submissions received after this date will be considered for future numbers.

Paper manuscripts should be submitted in duplicate to:

Plenum
Angela Shaw-Thornburg & Shafiqur Rahman
Department of English and Modern Languages
South Carolina State University
Post Office Box 7486
300 College Street, NE
Orangeburg, South Carolina 29117

Imagining Other Histories: Illusion, Elusion, and Reality in Historical Fiction. Attend the vibrant SW/TX PCA/ ACA conference in sunny, historical Albuquerque, the heart of Indian country and Spanish invasion of North America. The area of Historical Fiction invites papers on the role of history and alternate history in fiction. To what extent have fiction writers, poets, filmmakers, myth makers, and other producers of pop culture bent the paths of history into different directions, into ur worlds, friendlier worlds, bleak worlds, parallel worlds, idealist worlds? Take, for example, the way that the reality of African American history was initially omitted from standard American historical accounts and the paths of history were bent toward the hegemony of a White world. Other examples might be how Plato imagined the course of human history in parallel worlds; or the America imagined by Nathaniel Hawthorne in House of the Seven Gables. Submission deadline is December 1, 2009. The conference is held from February 10-13 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Please consult the website at http://swtxpca.org/ for other information, registration deadlines, and conference organizer contacts.All queries are welcome. Email queries and abstracts to me at solizc@fvsu.edu or at csoliz@csoliz.com. Please submit a vita with your abstract and a short biographical statement (1 paragraph) with your abstract. Cristine Soliz, Area Chair of Historical Fiction, Fort Valley State University, Bond 014, 478-827-3125, Fort Valley, Georgia 31030

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature issues a call for
papers for a session entitled "Southern Writing Beyond Black and White." We are interested in proposals that explore ethnic and racial identities and conflicts in southern literature beyond a binary version of black and white. Studies of particular writers, ethnic or racial identities in isolation, cooperation, or conflict, practical pedagogical strategies, and appropriate creative work are all welcome--any project that complicates the landscape of southern identity in this way.

The American Literature Association will meet at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco in Embarcadero Center on May 27-30, 2010
(Thursday through Sunday of Memorial Day weekend). Please email
abstracts and either a cover letter or 2-page CV by January 15, 2010, to Tara Powell at tfpowell@gmail.com. For information about the conference, consult the ALA website at www.americanliterature.org.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The editors of Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary (glossator.org) invite submissions of COMMENTARIES for the next open issue, Fall 2010. Essays and articles relating to commentary will also be considered.

What is commentary? Although the distinction between commentary and other forms of writing is not an absolute one, the following may serve as guidelines:
1. A commentary focuses on a single object (text, image, event, etc.) or portion thereof.
2. A commentary does not displace but rather shapes itself to and preserves the integrity, structure, and presence of its object.
3. The relationship of a commentary to its object may be described as both parallel and perpendicular. Commentary is parallel to its object in that it moves with or runs alongside it, following the flow of reading it. Commentary is perpendicular to its object in that it pauses or breaks from reading it in order to comment on it. The combination of these dimensions gives commentary a structure of continuing discontinuity and a durable utility.
4. Commentary tends to maintain a certain quantitative proportion of itself vis-à-vis its object. This tendency corresponds to the practice of "filling up the margins" of a text.
5. Commentary, as a form of discourse, tends to favor and allow for the multiplication of meanings, ideas, and references. Commentary need not, and often does not, have an explicit central thesis or argument. This tendency gives commentary a ludic or auto-teleological potential.

Submissions may be sent through the journal website or as Word attachment to glossatori@gmail.com. Deadline: March 1, 2010.

ABOUT GLOSSATOR

Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia (catena, commentum, gemara, glossa, hypomnema, midrash, peser, pingdian, scholia, tafsir, talkhis, tika, vritti, zend, zhangju, et al). The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing. By aligning itself, not with any particular discipline, but with a particular mode of production, Glossator gives expression to the fact that praxis founds theory.

Glossator is a peer-reviewed open-access journal, sponsored by The Graduate Center, CUNY. It is available online at http://glossator.org.
Editors: Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Karl Steel (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Ryan Dobran (Cambridge University).

Section Editors: Nadia Altschul (Johns Hopkins), Stephen A. Barney (UC Irvine), Erik Butler (Emory University), Mary Ann Caws (Graduate Center, CUNY), Alan Clinton (Georgia Institute of Technology), David Greetham (Graduate Center, CUNY), Bruno Gullí (Long Island University), Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University), Jason Houston (University of Oklahoma), Heather Jackson (University of Toronto), Eileen A. Joy (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville), Anna Klososowka (Miami University), Erin Labbie (Bowling Green), Carsten Madsen (University of Arhaus), Sean McCarthy (Lehman College, CUNY), Reza Negarestani, Daniel C. Remein (NYU), Sherry Roush (Penn State University), Michael Sargent (Graduate Center, CUNY), Michael Stone-Richards (College for Creative Studies), Eugene Thacker (Georgia Institute of Technology), Frans van Liere (Calvin College), Jesús R. Velasco (Columbia), Robert Viscusi (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Valerie Michelle Wilhite (Miami University), Scott Wilson (Lancaster University), Yoshihisa Yamamoto (Chiba University).

FORTHCOMING THEMED VOLUMES

The Poetry of J. H. Prynne. Special Co-Editor: Ryan Dobran. Spring 2010.
Contributors: Justin Katko, Sam Ladkin, Ian Patterson, Neil Pattison, Reitha Pattison, Robin Purves, Thomas Roebuck, Matthew Sperling, Josh Stanley, Michael Stone-Richards, Keston Sutherland, Mike Wallace-Hadrill, John Wilkinson.

Occitan Poetry. Special Co-Editors: Anna Kłosowska & Valerie Wilhite. Spring 2011.
Contributions: Vincent Barletta, Bill Burgwinkle, Charles Fantazzi, Marisa Gálvez, Virginie Greene, Cary Howie, Erin Labbie, Deborah Lyons, Simone Marchesi, Jean-Jacques Poucel, Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, Luke Sunderland, Valerie Wilhite.

Black Metal. Special Co-Editors: Nicola Masciandaro & Reza Negarestani. Spring 2012.
Contributors: Lee Barron, Ray Brassier, Erik Butler, Dominic Fox, Nicola Masciandaro, Reza Negarestani, Benjamin Noys, Steven Shakespeare, Aspasia Stephanou, Eugene Thacker, James Trafford, Stewart Voegtlin, Scott Wilson, Alex Williams, Evan Calder Williams, Ben Woodard.

Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser -- Montaigne
All our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text -- Nietzsche
Not system but commentary is the legitmate form through which truth is approached -- Gershom Scholem

In this century, corporate cinema production has experienced an economic and technological crisis. Yet “glocal” productions featuring global topics, such as human rights, climate, conflict, migration, as well as sports and cultural patterns, have met with worldwide success and challenged the hegemony of Hollywood. Examples are “An Inconvenient Truth” (Davis Guggenheim, 2006), and “Lost Children” (Ali Samadi Ahadi/Oliver Stoltz, 2005).

This seminar explores the narrative strategies employed in such films to foster global awareness as well as global action. This genre typically merges fiction/feature and factual/documentary traits. Docufictions/-drama, mockumentaries and feature films dealing with real issues in portraying “life as it is” are included as well, such as “Traffic” (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), and “Blood Diamond” (Edward Zwick, 2006).

Papers on any aspect of such “glocal” cinema — production, distribution, analysis, aesthetics — are welcome.

Deadline: November 13, 2009
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting
Creoles, Diasporas, Cosmopolitanisms
April 1-4, 2010, New Orleans

SPECTRUM is an annual journal of art and literature published by UC Santa Barbara's College of Creative Studies. Founded in 1957, it is the longest-standing literary magazine in the UC system. We accept art, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction works from everyone, regardless of age or school affiliation. Art can be either black and white or in color. Any form of poetry and any genre of fiction is allowed; non-fiction works can range from interviews, personal essays, and creative or scholarly essays. We do not follow themes and no subject will be censored.
http://www.ccs.ucsb.edu/spectrum/submissions.html

The West has enjoyed a commanding supremacy in culture and world affairs for several centuries, but the 21st Century finds the East exerting a powerful influence on the West. The economic powerhouses of Saudi Arabia, India, China and Japan, and the expansion of nuclear weaponry to Muslim countries have made dealing with the East critical to the prosperity and security of the West. So as culture has flowed east in the past, it now begins to flow west.
For our 16th annual Multicultural Conference we request papers and presentations that deal with the influence of the East on the West – as played out in culture, the arts, politics, demographics, business, the military and the economy.
Those wishing to present should submit via email a paper title and a 100-150 word abstract outlining the proposed topic and mode of presentation. Individuals interested in reading creative works should submit samples of their work. Completed manuscripts should not exceed 10 double-spaced pages of typescript so that papers can be presented in a twenty-minute presentation. (Individual submissions only.)
Final selection of conference participants will be made by February 1, 2010
Deadline for Submissions: Monday, January 8, 2010
SEND TO:
Laurie Lopez Coleman
LCOLEMAN@ALAMO.EDU
Conference Coordinator Juanita Luna Lawhn
http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/multicultconf/program10.htm

In response to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Committee’s recent finding of probable cause of racial discrimination at a suburban Philadelphia swim club, the Widener Journal of Law, Economics and Race (WJLER) requests the submissions of comments by scholars of any discipline reflecting the racial, economic and legal aspects of this case. A PDF copy of the findings can be found on our website at www.wjler.org. Comments should be approximately 5-8 pages in length, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, include the author’s name on the first page of the comment, and contain footnotes that conform to proper Bluebook format. Please submit a current resume or curriculum vitae with all contact information.

All work must be submitted to wjler@mail.widener.edu by January 2, 2010.

Helena Maria Viramontes (ALA, 5/27-5/30/2010, San Francisco)

I'm putting together a panel proposal on the writings of Helena Maria Viramontes (The Moths and Other Stories, Under the Feet of Jesus, Their Dogs Came With Them). Send proposals for 15-20 minute presentations to Hsuan L. Hsu (hsuanlhsu@gmail.com) by DECEMBER 30, 2009.

The final deadline for paper and panel submissions has been extended to Dec. 15, 2009. Early bird registration ends Dec. 31, 2009 so the sooner papers/panels are submitted and accepted, the better the registration rates. Also, there is a special outing on the Road Runner train to Santa Fe, seats are filling up. Below is the original CFP:
CALL FOR PANEL AND PAPER PROPOSALS

Chicana/o Literature, Film, Culture

The Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations will hold their 31st annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 10 through 13, 2010. The organizations have met there for several years, and members wanted to return because of the great location, the fine hotels, food, sights, museums, and more. Albuquerque is the home of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, which promises research and entertainment possibilities.

Panels and individual papers on all aspects of Chicana and Chicano culture are encouraged for our 2010 meeting. The “Chicana/Chicano Literature, Film, Culture” area tends to be both multicultural and interdisciplinary, and panels and individual papers may explore any issues relevant to Chicana/Chicano cultural studies.

Presentations might examine themes relevant to Chicana/Chicano culture and politics including but not limited to “resistance and affirmation”; nationalism and ethnic separatism; borders, frontiers, and territorialization; labor unions and social collectivity; sports and Chicana/o contributions to them; machismo, feminidad, feminisms, and gender construction; immigration, internal colonialism, and indigenismo; religion and spirituality; mainstream depictions and ethnic stereotyping; La Raza Cósmica and cultural syncretism. Topics might traverse distinctions within culture expressions and specific genres—corridos, mitos, folklore, poetry, fictions, drama, television. Presentations might cover theoretical and/or creative and/or historical works by individual authors such as José Vasconcelos, Rudy Acuña, Luis Valdez, George I. Sánchez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ana Castillo, Cherríe Moraga, and others.

Proposals that address any aspect of Chicana/Chicano culture are welcome.

PLEASE SEND SUBMISSIONS BY December 15, 2009.

Please send inquiries or approximately 100-word proposals to:
Jeanette Sanchez
(preferred) email attachment: jeannie8@u.washington.edu
(or) Drama School, Box 353950
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Fax: 206-543-8512

Also, you may visit the associations’ website for more information: http://swtxpca.org/

The ACLA’s annual meeting in New Orleans seems an ideal time to address the francophone literatures and cultures of the “New World,” too often considered only as an afterthought in comparative American Studies. This seminar aims to examine francophone cultures both in the U.S. and throughout North America, and the linkages that connect these varied traditions. Papers addressing Louisiana’s French and Creole traditions will be especially welcome, but so will be papers addressing other aspects of "New France": Québecois, Martiniquais, Haitian culture, and their composites (Haitian writers in Montréal, or the rural and urban francophone cultures of the Lower Mississippi, for example). Topics are not limited to the literary: discussions of musical traditions, historical self-fashionings, French-language newspapers, radio programs, and other subjects are also solicited. How might “Accenting the French in Comparative American Studies,” as Mary Jean Green’s recent article proposes doing, alter our understanding of the discipline?

Please submit 250-word abstracts by November 13 to the following web address:
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

More information about the conference is available here:

http://www.acla.org/acla2010/

The ACLA’s annual conferences have a distinctive structure in which most papers are grouped into twelve-person seminars that meet two hours per day for the three days of the conference to foster extended discussion. Some eight-person (or smaller) seminars meet just the first two days of the conference. This structure allows each participant to be a full member of one seminar, and to sample other seminars during the remaining time blocks. Previous conference programs that show this pattern are available at the ACLA website. The conference also includes plenary sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Transverse 2009-2010: Censorship

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (Voltaire)
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. (Walt Whitman)

Transverse, the graduate journal of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature, welcomes academic papers, literary reviews, creative writing, and art on the topic of Censorship. The journal will be published online in the spring of 2010 at chass.utoronto.ca/complitstudents/transverse

For as long as people have been speaking and writing, there have been authorities vested with the power to determine what could be spoken and by whom. The censor was an officer of Rome who, from the 4th century BC, was responsible for the honourable task of upholding good governance. Although censorship was for the Romans a positive thing in that it guaranteed the success of the state, the connotations of censorship today are, at least in the West, undeniably negative. What has censorship meant at different historical moments? What is the status of censorship today? How has it evolved? In order to mark Transverse’s shift to a web-based journal, we are devoting this issue to exploring all issues related to censorship, a topic whose dimensions are complicated by the rapid transformation of communication technology.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Ancient Censorship
Early Roman conceptions of censorship
The death of Socrates
Censorship in ancient Greek drama
Early Modern Censorship
Milton’s Areopagitica
Dramatic versus print censorship in Elizabethan and Jacobean England
Ancien Regime permission and privilege
Women and self/familial/societal censorship
Government versus inquisition censorship in Golden Age Spain and the evolution
of censorship in Spain from 1558-1631
Censorship and Conquest of the New World
Parody, satire, irony: rhetoric and censorship
Letters and the Art of the Unsaid
Nineteenth-Century Censorship
Sexology and Censorship
Imagined Communities and Censorship
Revolution and Censorship
New World Independence, Birth of Nations, Censors
Twentieth-Century Censorship
McCarthyism
Censorship in the USSR, Cuba
Censorship under fascism/totalitarian regimes
Feminism and censorship
Banned books
Contemporary Censorship
Censorship and Queer studies
Censorship and money or social status
Literary representations of censorship
Censorship and surveillance
Is the Google hegemony a form of censorship?
Censorship in the age of Wikipedia, open source software and media,
blogs, Facebook…
Is the prohibitive pricing of books and other media a form of censorship?
Artistic responses to censorship
Etc.

Guidelines:

Critical essays should be between 3000 and 4000 words, in Microsoft Word, MLA format with appropriate citations.
Literary reviews can be on any work relating to the topic. We are looking for submissions 500-800 words in length, with publication information attached.
Creative writings – we accept poems and short stories (1500 word max.)
Art – please submit in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format.

Contributors must be graduate students at the time of submission. Please direct all documents and inquiries to transversejournal@gmail.com

Deadline: March 1, 2010