category: film and television

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

[UPDATE] VI International Gothic Congress ‘Gothic Convergences’, UNAM, Mexico City, April 1, 2 & 3, 2014

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:42:55 -0400

During the last years, Gothic Literature has just begun to be accepted as a literary field worth of study among Mexican scholars. The doors remain open to deepen into the study of a style whose manifestations go beyond the barriers represented by time, culture, genre, and art modes.

Objetive: After the great response received in the previous Gothic Congresses (2008 - 2012), the aim is to keep encouraging the interest in the Gothic among both students and scholars at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and other Mexican institutions. To achieve this, we propose to start from the study of the plural presence of the Gothic in various modes of art, as well as time and space contexts.

Dates: April 1, 2 & 3, 2014 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday).

Place: Salón de Actos I, Faculty of Philosophy and Literature (FFyL), UNAM (Nacional Autonomous University of Mexico), Mexico City.

Call for Papers: We are calling for papers centered upon the idea of the Gothic as a timeless and intertextual plural phenomenon in literature and other arts.

Other Possible topics:
. History and evolution of Gothic Literature
. Gothic elements in Mexican and Latin-American Literature
. National Gothic Literatures (British Gothic, Scottish Gothic, American Gothic,
etc.)
. Gothic Literature and Postmodernism
. The future of Gothic Literature
. Gothic in Film and Art

Those interested in taking part in the congress are asked to send an abstract of their paper in 200 words, including its title; as well as a short summary of their academic background (50 words) with full name of the participant.
The proposals will be received until December 31, 2013.

The participants will be given around 20 minutes to read their papers. The works can be presented in either English or Spanish.
Keynote speakers will be given 50 minutes to read, with 10 minutes to answer questions from the public.

Those whose papers get accepted to participate in the congress can send a version of the paper to be included in the congress yearbook between April 4 and April 30, 2014. Such version must include both reference footnotes and the corresponding bibliography.

All proposals, papers and questions are to be sent to:

coloquio_gotico@hotmail.com / antonio.alcala@itesm.mx

Blog: http://gothiccongress.blogspot.com/

[UPDATE] Shaping Indian Diaspora edited volume (Abstracts 15th June 2013)

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:53:36 -0400

The Indian diaspora is the largest within the Asian diaspora as the Indian community scattered around the world is over 25 million. Besides, the special features that distinctively shape Indian diaspora make of it an outstanding phenomenon. Its large scale brings together a kaleidoscopic community mirroring from distant places the many regions, languages, cultural heritage, religions and traditions that India comprises. The Indian population residing outside India brightly stand out for their professional success and growing social and economic impact in combination with their idiosyncratic cultural bond with India. Therefore it is not surprising to find out that Indian diaspora is regularly discussed in academic platforms, literary writings, economic forums, government organizations, film and media productions.
The purpose of the present volume is to gather together essays from as diverse backgrounds as possible (linguistics, literature, cultural studies, history, sociology, history of art, film studies, theatre studies, etc.) in order to offer an in-depth study and analysis of the diasporic practices of the Indian communities. The following themes are of interest to the volume:
- the definitional, theoretical and practical frameworks of Indian diasporic strategies.
- historical connotations of Indian diaspora as well as contemporary policy implications.
- the reflections on Indian migration and diaspora in literature and other arts.
- interaction between diasporas and ‘home’ communities.
- rubrics as the diasporic imaginary, diaspora politics, diaspora-homeland relations.
- performance and pedagogy: the Indian body in the classroom.
- food/rituals/customs.
- youth culture/popular culture.
- theatre/performance/visual arts/sports.
- diasporic spaces/places.
- nation, nationalism, cultural policies.
- virtual communities, new media.
- translating/interpreting in the time of war and terrorism.
We seek contributions that approach Indian diaspora from different and varied perspectives. Scholars are invited to engage with this topic in a fruitful dialogue and insightful analysis. Different critical stances and approaches are welcome.
Prospective authors are invited to submit a formal abstract (300-500 words) and a short bio by 15th June 2013. After approval, full papers (3500-6000 words) must be submitted by 1st December 2013. The volume is likely to appear by mid 2014 from a refereed publishing house still to be confirmed. Abstracts and full papers should be sent as attachments as Word files (2003 or 2007 versions) following latest MLA style sheet instructions to: dwivediveena81@gmail.com and cristina.gamez@uco.es

[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 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
• 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

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.

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

Groundbreaking Approaches in Television (November 8-9, 2013; Proposals due July 19, 2013)

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:07:59 -0400

We invite proposals pertaining to groundbreaking approaches in television, for presentation in a special series of panels at the Alternative Visions in Media Conference, to be held at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, Texas) November 8-9, 2013.

The conference organizers are seeking historically and theoretically intriguing presentations that explore noteworthy bold, unique, boundary-pushing, and/or controversial television shows/series from any historical era, and from any area across the globe.

Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme quite broadly and innovatively, as we encourage submissions from scholars, educators, students, and filmmakers/videographers at all levels and from a wide range of disciplines. Individual paper presentations will be limited to 20 minutes in length.

Given adequate participant interest and high-quality submissions, we are hoping to publish selected papers (with author’s permission) in a special collection of essays pertaining to the conference theme.

Please e-mail presentation proposals containing (a) a one-page abstract with complete contact information (name, institutional affiliation, mail and e-mail addresses, contact telephone number) and (b) a one-paragraph author biography to Professor Kylo-Patrick Hart (k.hart@tcu.edu) on or before Friday, July 19, 2013.

Decisions regarding the status of submitted proposals will be made and communicated as quickly as possible following the submission deadline, and certainly no later than August 1, 2013. For specific inquiries prior to submitting a proposal, please contact Dr. Hart at your convenience by e-mail (k.hart@tcu.edu).

Intersections and Assemblages: Genders and Sexualities Across Cultures, April 4-5, 2014

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:59:26 -0400

Intersections and Assemblages: Genders and Sexualities Across Cultures
The 10th Biennial Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Women’s and Gender Studies Conference, April 4-5, 2014
Location: Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.A.

The Associated Colleges of the South and Furman University invite papers, panels, and/or proposals for roundtable sessions for the tenth biennial Gender Studies Conference to be held at Furman University, Greenville, SC on April 4th and 5th, 2014.

The theme of the conference recognizes the multiplicity and diversity of scholarly approaches and activism to the long-standing aspiration for the abolition of all forms of inequality based on gender and/or sexuality. It also recognizes and welcomes transnational and cross-cultural or comparative perspectives on gender and sexuality in addition to those in/on the West.

While the intersectionality of categories of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other markers of location or positionality has long been established in scholarship, we would like to think that the concept metaphor of ‘assemblages’ can also be useful in looking back and thinking ahead of new, emergent, or utopian forms of solidarity in the many ongoing or past intersectional movements in different locations that may or may not be operating in tandem with one another. What do we see when we map what we do collectively as intellectuals? Are we now at a juncture where we may begin to re-assess and revitalize the much-expanded field or related cluster of fields that constitute Gender Studies? What can we learn about the exercise of and resistance to new, or not-so-new forms of power based in dominant or emerging cultural practices that impact our understanding of gender and sexuality?

Faculty, staff, and students of ACS institutions and beyond are invited to submit 250-300 word abstracts of paper proposals or entire panels in MS Word format along with a short biographical statement to this address: wgsconf2014@furman.edu. The deadline for submissions is October 31st, 2013. Proposals may interpret the theme and the following list of suggested topics broadly:

Diversity in/of Genders and Sexualities
Gender-Queer-Global Intersections
Sexual Inequalities in Neoliberal Times/University
New Normativities of the Future
Affect and Embodiment
Rhetorics of Materiality
Feminist, Queer, Trans Theories: Convergences and Divergences
Gender and Science/Neuroscience
Is Feminism Over? Is there a Fourth Wave?
Gender Pedagogies for Today
Gender and Sport
Genders, Sexualities and Minority Ethnicities
Feminisms and the Financial Crisis
Feminisms and the Environmental Crisis
Ecofeminism
Queer Economics
Gender and Trans(-)media
Postcolonial Feminisms
LGBTQ and the Postcolonial
Margins within Margins
Space and Gender
Bodies Under Religion and/or Law

CFP: Arrested Development edited collection

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:25:03 -0400

Over the course of its original three-year run on Fox, the television series Arrested Development quickly became a cult favorite and earned twenty-two Emmy nominations and six wins, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 2004. Unafraid to push boundaries, the series routinely satirized issues of race, sexuality, family, love, politics, and class, to name only a few. Combined with its sophisticated writing and its perfectly cast group of series regulars, the show became a layered and intricate look into modern society and one of the funniest sitcoms to emerge in the last decade. With this in mind, Dr. Kristin M. Barton is seeking proposals for an edited volume under consideration at McFarland which will explore Arrested Development from a scholarly perspective. Ideally, the book will include one chapter on each of the following topics as they pertain to the show:
- The use of narration
- Crime and punishment
- Family dynamics (maternal/paternal roles)
- Styles/types of humor
- Politics
- Love and marriage
- Financial issues (having/not having money)
- Class status
- The role of charity in the series
- Race
- Sexuality
- Alcohol/addiction
- Casting the series/Bringing roles to life
- The show’s revival on Netflix
- (Chapters on “religion” and “struggles to find an audience” have already been completed)

Chapters may also include material/references from the 4th season debuting on Netflix in May 2013.

Articles should be 6,000-8,000 words (MLA format, no footnotes or endnotes please) that respond to the focus of the volume. Article abstracts (300+ words) and a brief CV should be submitted by July 31, 2013 to Dr. Kristin Barton at kmbarton@daltonstate.edu. Submissions with detailed outlines or in draft form will be given stronger consideration. Completed essays must be submitted by January 31, 2014. Brief queries are welcome should there be questions about appropriate submission topics. Selected authors will be notified by the end of August 2013, and please note that invitation to submit a full essay does not guarantee inclusion in the volume.

Film Sound & Money; 2013 Film & History Conference; Nov. 20-24, 2013 (Madison)

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:22:46 -0400

“Money Talks:” The Economics of Film Sound
An area of multiple panels for the 2013 Film & History Conference on
Making Movie$: The Figure of Money On and Off the Screen November 20-24, 2013
Madison Concourse Hotel (Madison, WI)
www.filmandhistory.org/The2013FilmHistoryConference.php

DEADLINE for abstracts: July 1, 2013

AREA: “Money Talks:” The Economics of the Film Sound

The promotional materials for The Jazz Singer, Forbidden Planet, and Jurassic Park all draw upon sound as a key marketing tool. Current conceptions of film sound aesthetics, however, have downplayed the role of economics in shaping the creative decisions of sound practitioners. When scholars take economic and business considerations into account while discussing film sound history, they typically use them to account for technological innovation and branding strategies, or to account specifically for the aesthetics of film music.

This area, composed of multiple panels, seeks to extend these current discussions on the relationship between film sound and money. We invite proposals that explore the manner in which sound has and continues to be affected by the economics of the film industry. Proposals that examine previously neglected aspects of the relationship are particularly welcome. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Star’s voices as a component of their box office draw
• The economic strategies of competing film sound companies
• The history and economics of failed sound technologies and standards
• The role of sound in the marketing of films
• Film sound and labor policies
• Music licensing in national and foreign markets
• The business strategies of foreign sound mixing studios
• The marketing of sound technologies, formats, and equipment (e.g., Dolby Atmos., THX, Nagras)
• The licensing of sound technology patents
• Economics and sound practices during the silent era
• The relationship between integrating new sound technologies with the economics of film production and/or exhibition

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.filmandhistory.org)

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the Area Chairs by July 1, 2013:

Eric Dienstfrey
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katherine Quanz
Wilfrid Laurier University

FilmHistorySoundArea@gmail.com

[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.

Divine Adaptations: New Perspectives on Dante’s Influence in Popular Culture

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:20:29 -0400

In Inferno V, 137 Francesca da Rimini explains to Dante how both book and author are responsible for her and Paolo’s ‘mal perverso’ that led to their ultimate death and eternal damnation. However, further investigation reveals that Francesca’s incrimination of the author, in addition to the text of the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere, is a misreading on the part of Francesca. According to Franco Masciandaro, the attempt to recreate the adulterous kiss, “brought about … sterility and death,” and in addition, “imitatio, with its potential creativity, was adulterated.” Masciandaro's critique of the lovers’ misinterpretation and Francesca’s distaste of the author both recall early criticism of adaptation theory. This dissatisfaction also includes late 19th century and early 20th century adaptations and performances of Dante’s works, specifically the Commedia and stories about the poets’ life. The objective of this panel is to analyze the relationship between Dante’s text and contemporary representations of the Commedia. This panel aims to reopen the conversation of Dante’s influence in popular culture by focusing on the medieval poet’s presence in cinema, theatre, and television. Papers addressing theoretical understanding of medievalism, adaptation, performance studies, and popular culture studies are particularly welcomed. Please send 300 word abstracts and brief bio to Carmelo Galati at carmgalati@gmail.com by September 30, 2013.

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

“Making Feminist Meanings Across Worlds: Print, Digital, and Networked Feminisms and Women’s Studies”

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:43:59 -0400

In keeping with the theme of this year’s conference, “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds,” the Women’s Studies regular session invites paper proposals on making feminist meanings across worlds. How have our enhanced online capabilities shaped women’s studies and feminist discourse? How might women’s studies consider its meaning making in online form? Is there a digital women’s studies, and what might that scholarship look like? How do writers and artists use online media as part of their work? How does technology shape feminism and vice versa? Papers for this panel might examine particular writers who embody these issues in their works, or they might focus on broader issues in women’s studies. Possible topics for consideration:

• Feminisms and the blogosphere
• Women, gender, and social media
• Choice feminism, counter-cultural feminism, etc.
• Digital Humanities and women’s studies
• Posthumanism and feminism
• Haraway’s cyborg and feminism reconsidered
• Women writers and the digital or networked text
• Women and technologies of the book
• Body enhancement technology and its meanings
• Women’s bodies making meaning
• The network as feminist collective space – or not?
• Lean In, No Excuses, and other recent texts

Please send a 300-400 word abstract (in word doc or rich text format) by June 21, 2013 via email to magillde@longwood.edu and to aesquivl@memphis.edu. All proposals should include the title of the paper, author’s name, email address, and author’s institutional affiliation.

Dr. David Magill
Dept. of English
Longwood University
201 High Street
Farmville, VA 23901
magillde@longwood.edu

Anna M. Esquivel, Ph.D.
310 Patterson Hall
English Department
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
aesquivl@memphis.edu

Arrested Development (7/15/13 for PCA/ACA, Chicago, April 2014)

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:59:51 -0400

I am seeking panelists for a proposed session on Arrested Development at the 2014 PCA/ACA Conference in Chicago (April 16-19). Final approval for the panel will come from the TV area chair. If I receive enough interest/proposals, I will also consider submitting a book proposal for the first edited collection on the show. Please indicate in your email if you're interested in the panel, the book, or both.

Topics for essays include, but are not limited to:
Class
Family Dynamics
Work Issues
The 1%/Occupy Wallstreet
The Cult Status of the Show
Sexuality
Gender
Narratology
Psychology
Economics
Criminal Justice
Illusions
Identity/Agency

Please submit an abstract of 300-500 words and a brief bio to Karma Waltonen (kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu) by July 15th, 2013.

[UPDATE] VI International Gothic Congress ‘Gothic Convergences’, UNAM, Mexico City, April 1, 2 & 3, 2014

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:33:25 -0400

OBJECTIVE: After the great response received in the previous Gothic Congresses (2008 - 2012), the aim is to keep encouraging the interest in the Gothic among both students and scholars at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and other Mexican institutions. To achieve this, we propose to start from the study of the plural presence of the Gothic in various modes of art, as well as time and space contexts.

DATES: March 1, 2 & 3, 2014 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday).

PLACE: Salón de Actos I, Faculty of Philosophy and Literature (FFyL), UNAM (Nacional Autonomous University of Mexico), Mexico City.

CALL FOR PAPERS: We are calling for papers centered upon the idea of the Gothic as a timeless and intertextual plural phenomenon in literature and other arts.

Those interested in taking part in the congress are asked to send an abstract of their paper in 200 words, including its title; as well as a short summary of their academic background (50 words) with full name of the participant.
The PROPOSALS will be received until NOVEMBER 30, 2013.

All proposals, papers and questions are to be sent to:

coloquio_gotico@hotmail.com / antonio.alcala@itesm.mx

Blog: http://gothiccongress.blogspot.com/
cfp categories:
american
eighteenth_century
film_and_television
international_conferences
modernist studies
popular_culture
science_and_culture
theory
twentieth_century_and_beyond
victorian

Special Issue: Feminisms, Academia, Austerity

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:24:11 -0400

JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES
Special Issue 2014: Call for Papers

‘Feminisms, Academia, Austerity’
Guest Editors: Helen Davies and Claire O’Callaghan
(JGS Editor: Blu Tirohl)
The current age of austerity is posing significant challenges to feminist scholarship within academia. Recent government funding cuts to higher education are jeopardising the future of research in the arts and humanities more broadly, but the decline of centres, institutes and courses devoted to gender and women’s studies has the potential to threaten the future of feminism in the academy. Retirements and redundancies may signal the end of feminist teaching and research in certain higher education institutions. The dearth of employment opportunities for postgraduates and early career researchers has the potential to elide the next generation of feminist scholars. The increasingly competitive environment of employment in higher education is generating divisions and inequalities which put pressure upon the networks of support, co-operation and community which have been integral to feminist research, teaching and practice
This special issue of the Journal of Gender Studies, ‘Feminisms, Academia, Austerity’, provides a multi-disciplinary space to critically investigate such concerns from a range of perspectives. In what ways are these changes affecting our work and lives? What potential is there to resist these narratives of decline? How might feminist teaching, research, theory and activism engage with and combat such challenges? The guest editors invite articles of 5000-7000 words in length which might address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• The impact of the age of austerity upon women’s and feminist writing, art, performance, scholarship, theory, teaching and activism;
• Resistance to narratives of decline in the age of austerity;
• The challenges posed to ‘sisterhood’ in the current academic environment;
• Bridging the gap between postgraduate/early career feminist researchers and established scholars;
• Postcolonial, queer, and/or differently abled responses to the age of austerity in feminist research;
• Historical, political and sociological responses to the age of austerity in feminist research;
• Exploring alternative futures for feminism in the academy;
• Strategies of resistance to the marginalisation of feminist research;
• Encouraging the next generation of feminist scholars.

The deadline for submissions is 30th June 2013. Please see the Journal of Gender Studies’ guidance for authors at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjgs20/current
If you have any queries, please contact Helen Davies (Helen.Davies@tees.ac.uk) and Claire O’Callaghan (cfo3@le.ac.uk)

[UPDATE: Deadline Approaching]

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:20:38 -0400

CFP: Media Spaces of Gender and Sexuality
Media Fields Journal
University of California, Santa Barbara

This issue of Media Fields investigates the connections between media, space, gender, and sexuality, seeking conversations that center on these interrelations and negotiations. We invite papers that raise questions of how media spaces construct gender, and how gender, in turn, constructs media spaces; how spaces condition and are conditioned by gender performances and sexual practices; and how gender legibility limits (or allows) access to various media spaces.

Film and media scholarship historically came of age through its study of the relationship between gender, sexuality, and media. Much has been written about the status of women as objects of the cinematic gaze, as well as about the status of female and queer-identified subjects as media producers. Yet in more recent times, issues of gender and sexuality have once again become marginalized in academic discourse, revealing the need for new explorations that coincide with the impact of the “spatial turn.” In this age of conflict, dissent, surveillance, and migration—when the study of media is often also the study of the precariousness and dynamism of the spatial—it is particularly important to trace the interconnections between space, media, and gender.

We are inspired by the work of those film and media scholars who have explored such interconnections. Lynn Spigel’s seminal book on the gendered discourse surrounding domestic television viewing provides us with one useful example, as does Lucas Hilderbrand’s forthcoming work on the culture of gay bars after Stonewall. While some scholars like Spigel and Hilderbrand have studied the connections between gender, space, and media in their own work, fewer media studies journals have made this topic a primary focus. As a result, we seek scholarship that deals with space in a range of ways: essays might discuss online spaces that allow for specific negotiations of gender or sexuality, or with gender embodiment in physical spaces of various scales, from the very local (the living room, for example) to the global.

Essays might also draw upon feminist interventions into Marxist/historical materialist theories of space, as well as engaging the intersections between gender, race, and class. These important intersections exceed the label, “identity politics”—a label that we feel is now often deployed in order to debunk the continued relevance of gender and sexuality to any scholarly conversation. While we do indeed call for political approaches to gender and space—essays informed by the agendas of feminist and queer activism—we stress that gender and sexuality are not merely areas of special interest, but are instead structuring principles of discrimination that permeate our lives on a number of registers.

Thus, our approach is multivalent. We invite submissions that consider this complexity, possibly addressing the following topics:

--Transnational Queer and Feminist Media: How are flows of bodies, labor, capital, and images gendered and sexualized?

--Queering Questions of Scale: How does heterosexism delimit notions of nation, state, and the transnational?

--Gendered Spaces of Conflict and Dissent: How do media contribute to the gendering of the different spaces of war and dissent as well as of the subjects who are involved?

--Gender, Sexuality, and Online Spaces: How are social media practices and spaces gendered and sexualized?

--Queer/Feminist Gaming: representations of gendered and sexualized spaces in mainstream video games, gendered geographies of video game production, gendered spaces of gaming culture

--Spaces of Surveillance: How is surveillance fundamentally gendered, sexualized, and spatialized? How does voyeurism continue to bolster certain experiences of space and place?

--Gendered Infrastructures: How are media infrastructures gendered, and why does this matter?

--Gender, Sexuality and Access: How do gender and its legibility (e.g., normativity) result in certain types of access to particular spaces?

We are looking for essays of 1500-2500 words, digital art projects, and audio or video interviews exploring the relationship between gender, sexuality, and space. We encourage approaches to this topic from scholars in cinema and media studies, anthropology, architecture, art and art history, communication, ecology, geography, literature, musicology, sociology, and other relevant fields.

Feel free to contact issue co-editors, Hannah Goodwin and Lindsay Palmer, with proposals and inquiries.
Email submissions to submissions@mediafieldsjournal.org by May 30th, 2013.

New Beginnings: Empowering Teen Girls, Deadline for Submissions is July 10th

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:54:32 -0400

MissHeard Magazine is a online magazine geared towards empowering teen girls. This is a start-up submission based publication, so there is a great need for writing from both adults and young women.

The theme of the first issue is “New Beginnings” for Fall 2013. We are looking for articles, personal stories, art, book/film reviews, poetry, and fiction, related to the theme. This could include anything from personal narratives about girlhood to how teen girls can start preparing for college. What’s your new hobby as a teenage girl? How did you handle new relationships/friendships when you were a teen? Do you have a new project you’re excited about? Did you write a new piece a fan fiction you are proud of? This is an opportunity to share your ideas, passions, and experiences in our first issue.

To be considered for the “New Beginnings” issue of MissHeard Magazine, please turn in all submissions no later than July 10th 2013. I will attempt to respond to all submissions.

Please note that submission does not guarantee that your piece will be chosen. Pieces by teens and for teens will be given preference. To submit, please send your article with a short bio to submissions@missheardmagazine.com.

Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium November 17-20 2013

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:28:06 -0400

Call for Papers
2013 American Literature Association's Jewish American & Holocaust Literature Symposium
Seeking papers on any aspect of Jewish American and Holocaust Literature for the 19th Annual JAHLIT Symposium at the landmark BETSY Hotel in South Beach,
Florida. The Conference will take place November 17-19, 2003. Send 250 word abstract, registration form, and $150 check for JAHLIT membership and conference fees to Holli Levitsky at hlevitsk@lmu.edu. Mailing address: Holli Levitsky, LMU Department of English, One LMU Drive, Suite 3800, Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659. The deadline for submitting an abstract is August 1, 2013. If you have any questions call Holli Levitsky at 310-338-7664 or Ezra Cappell at 915-747-5739. For more information, registration forms, and conference materials go to our website at: www.jahlit.com

The Films of Ida Lupino

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:56:52 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS for Film Volume

ReFocus: The Films of Ida Lupino

From Outrage (1950) to The Trouble with Angels (1966), among many other titles, few filmmakers created as unique a body of work in the United States as Ida Lupino (1918-1995), but few directors have been as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature. Lupino also directed a significant number of television episodes.

We are currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 100 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Ida Lupino to appear in 2015. Essays may focus on individual films or on themes and topics that pervade her films. These essays may also focus in work in other media, such as television.

Essays included in the refereed anthology will be of approximately 5,000 to 8,000 words, referenced in Chicago endnote style.

The Films of Ida Lupino will be one of the first scholarly editions to be published by the University of Edinburgh Press in a new series of anthologies examining overlooked American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Ph.D. and Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D.

Please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract, and email them to:

Phillip Sipiora
Professor of English and Film Studies
University of South Florida
psipiora@gmail.com

Anaphora Looking for New Journal and Press Board Members

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:29:11 -0400

If you have a strong publication record, and if you are tenured in your academic or publishing job, please send a note of interest in participating as a Board Member of the Anaphora Literary Press, and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. PLJ is now in its 5th volume, and with 11 issues in print, it's ready to undergo some changes. Your area of study should be modern or current literary or creative writing studies in all genres (novel, poetry, film, art, theater). You should be interested in actively contributing by finding established peer-reviewers and by soliciting work from established creative and critical writers that you are familiar with. This is not a silent position. You might also help by contributing business and creative operations and methodology ideas on how to improve the organization, publishing process and other components of the press and the journal. Email a query to director@anaphoraliterary.com, with a brief statement of what you can offer in this position, and a paragraph biography. You can learn more about Anaphora at www.anaphoraliterary.com.

Adoption: Crossing Boundaries, March 27-30 (due July 15); Florida State Univ.

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:28:39 -0400

Call for Proposals

ASAC's biennial conferences feature stories and histories of adoption as explored by writers, artists, and scholars across the disciplines, especially the humanities. Adoptions and the lives of adoptees always involve crossing boundaries, whether the boundaries of families, the boundaries of races, the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of aboriginal peoples and others, the boundaries of communities, the boundaries of law, or all of these borders. This conference takes up these themes and threads, and also encourages other kinds of boundary-crossing—boundaries between disciplines; between adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, and social workers; boundaries between creative writers, scholars, and activists. And we extend our topic across other boundaries by considering similar issues with regard to foster care and assisted reproduction.
The conference includes academic work from a wide range of scholarly disciplines and areas—literature, film and popular culture and performance studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, religion, political science, law, women’s and gender studies— as well as film, creative writing, graphic art, music, drama, or productions in other media. We encourage interdisciplinary panels, presentations, and productions.
Keynote speakers:

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing, Newcastle University (UK), Scottish-Nigerian adoptee, author of the groundbreaking volume of poetry The Adoption Papers, the adoption memoir Red Dust Road, and many other works of poetry, prose, and drama.

Laura Briggs, Professor and Chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Duke UP, 2012), the winner of the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians

Featured films will include: Somewhere Between (2012), a documentary which follows four teenage girls adopted from China; Resilience (2009), which shows a Korean birthmother who searches for and meets her son in the US; and Any Day Now, (2012) a fictionalized account of a gay couple’s attempt to adopt a special-needs child they have fostered (the script is based in part on events in Florida, and we hope to have some of the parties at the conference.)

We invite proposals for papers and panels that:
● Analyze literary, cinematic, dramatic, musical, visual, dance, popular culture, or performance art representations of boundary crossing in adoption, foster care, or other nonstandard means of family formation or child care, and boundary crossing in narratives of the lives of adoptees, adoptive parents, and/or birthparents
● Study boundary-crossing in adoption and other reproductive, family and caring structures in historical, anthropological, philosophical, sociological, legal, religious, political, gendered, LGBTQ, and/or psychological perspectives.
● Promote dialogue between people positioned differently with regard to adoption because of their life experience, profession, and/or discipline.
We expect that most papers will run about 20 minutes and that panel proposals should allow some time for discussion (assuming that panels will be about an hour and fifteen minutes ).
We also invite creative presentations (writing, film, drama, graphic arts, other media, etc.) on border crossing in relation to adoption. Writing samples should ordinarily be less than 10 pages.
Please send 200-word proposals for papers or samples of creative work, a cv or resume along with your proposal, and links if you are working in visual or multimedia, to asac2014@fsu.edu. Give your proposal, cv, and/or writing sample a title that includes your last name.

Proposal deadline July 15, 2013

Applications from graduate students interested in submitting papers are invited for a travel grant award of up to $500. Awards will be given based on quality of paper submitted by July 15 (not just 200-word proposal), cost of travel, contribution of papers to scope of conference, and amount we have available.

A conference website is under development and we will soon post information about registration, accommodation, and travel. For additional information, contact Eric Walker at ewalker@fsu.edu

Conference program planning committee includes:

Eric Walker, Department of English, Florida State University, co-chair
Marianne Novy, University of Pittsburgh, co-chair
Karen Balcom, McMaster University
Emily Hipchen, University of West Georgia
Margaret Homans, Yale University

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

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:10:47 -0400

Title of the Panel: Adaptations as (Re)Creations of Discourses in Latin American Theater and Cinema

Description: A recurrent trend in contemporary Latin American theater and cinema is the adaptation of myths, hybrid texts as chronicles, and fictional texts as novels and short stories. By focusing on the “new” reading that authors do of the adapted texts through the use of the theatrical and cinematographic features, their adaptations offer new meanings to the adapted texts and constitute original texts. Following Linda Hutcheon’s approach to adaptation proposed in her book A Theory of Adaptation (2006), this panel explores the intertextuality among hybrid and fictional texts, and their adaptations as plays and films. Hutcheon states adaptation, as a form of intertextuality, involves not just formal relations of texts such as different modes of engagement with the story, shifts of mediums or frames (from telling to showing), but also implies political, social, pedagogical or personal reasons that compel the adaptor to contest, deconstruct or give a new meaning to the adapted text. By discussing how, why and for what playwrights and filmmakers deal and position themselves in the process and in the creation of the adaptation, the panel will visualize the adapted works as original works into new social, cultural and aesthetic conventions. This panel welcomes critical works on individual or a set of theatrical and/or cinematographic creations that stand out in other texts.

Please send 250 word abstracts in English, Spanish or Portuguese to María Magdalena Olivares mmolivareshenriquez@smcm.edu by Sept. 30, 2013.

Update- M/MLA 2013 American Lit. Permanent Section- "The Education-Industrial Complex"

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:17:33 -0400

American Literature II: Literature After 1870

Topic: The Education-Industrial Complex

The American Literature II panel seeks papers examining novelistic/poetic/artistic depictions of the corporate influence on public education policy, the "Free Market" in the classroom, and/or the effect of new technologies/modes of efficiency on pedagogy.

Please send 250-word abstracts by May 31st to Mark Schiebe, mschiebe@qcc.cuny.edu

Chair: Mark Schiebe, Queensborough Community College

Tenth Native American Symposium

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:01:27 -0400

Tenth Native American Symposium
Native Ground: Protecting and Preserving History, Culture, and Customs

Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, Oklahoma
November 14-15, 2013

Keynote Speaker Dr. Brad Lieb

The Tenth Native American Symposium to be held November 14-15, 2013 at Southeastern Oklahoma State University will focus on the protection and preservation of Native American history, culture, and customs. Papers, presentations, panels, creative projects, and films addressing all aspects of Native American life and studies are welcome, including but not limited to archaeology, history, literature, law, medicine, education, religion, politics, social science, and the fine arts. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Brad Lieb from the Chickasaw Nation’s Division of History and Culture, and currently president of the Mississippi Association of Professional Archaeologists. All papers presented at the symposium will be eligible for inclusion in a peer-reviewed volume of published proceedings, which will also be posted on our new website at http://homepages.se.edu/nas/.

Send abstracts of no more than 250 words by July 15, 2013 in either electronic (preferred) or hard-copy form to Dr. Mark B. Spencer, Department of English, Humanities, and Languages, Box 4121, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, 1405 N 4th Ave, Durant, OK 74701-0609, mspencer@se.edu.

Re-Imagining Communities and Civil Society Conference [UPDATE: Deadline Extended]

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:23:52 -0400

The aim of this conference is to explore what role social movements, artists, intellectuals, writers, cultural institutions and others play in shaping our ideas of community, civil society and the connections between the two. We are especially interested in papers and panels that examine how the creation and strengthening of ties between communities and civil society promote democratization in Europe and/or Latin America. However, we welcome abstracts on any aspect of community and civil society.

Civil society is the nongovernmental space of associational life. As Philip Oxhorn, author of "Organizing Civil Society," explains, civil society is composed of groups that “simultaneously resist subordination to the state and demand inclusion in national political structures” (252). These groups can be grassroots political associations, church groups, bowling leagues, book clubs, etc. While academics in the humanities are familiar with the concept of “community,” the term “civil society” has largely remained in the realm of the social sciences. This conference seeks to expand the boundaries of the terms and to explore relationships of communities and civil society by considering the following topics:

• What role do civil-society organizations play in the formation of (artistic, ethnic, sexual, local, etc.) communities?
• Who sponsors civil societies? How are communities and civil-society organizations funded and maintained?
• How have philosophers, artists and producers of culture defined the concepts of community, civil society, and the interplay between the two? What is/has been the role of culture in shaping and bringing together communities and civil society?
• How do cultural institutions (academies, literary and artistic prizes, cultural festivals) contribute to civil society? As civil society organizations, what role do cultural institutions play in the creation of new communities or preserving communities? How is a community shaped by its inclusion or exclusion from canonical/ mainstream/ recognized cultural events sponsored by cultural institutions? What are the relationships between cultural institutions and the communities they are intended to serve? How do communities and civil society define cultural value?
• What has been, and what is likely to be, the role of both mainstream and alternative news media in shaping our understanding of civil society? Do social media strengthen civil societies and empower organized societal actors to assert claims vis-à-vis the state and corporations? How does this vary within and between societies in the Americas and Europe?
• What effect has the discourse of civil society had on language policy, linguistic rights, language revitalization, and identity? What are the roles of marginalized speech communities in the construction of a civil society?
• Are think-tanks part of civil society in Europe and the Americas? What role do they play, and what role should they play, in efforts to make the term “civil society” known to a broader cross-section of society, for example through University courses and programs? What role do think tanks play in organizing and shaping the claims-making by collective actors toward the state and corporations?
• How do artists, writers, and other cultural producers shape community or a civil society into arenas in which non-citizens can participate?
• Can civil society usher in new forms of art and/or enable artists to reclaim public spaces for social action? Can forging a connection between civil society and communities also bridge the space between politics and aesthetics?
• How can we create forms of collective action that are attentive to class and racial differences by forging connections between local communities and civil society?
• How do NGOs help enrich civil society? How can NGOs mediate the relationship between community and government?
• Has the discourse of culture been displaced by the discourse of civil society (David Chandler 2010), particularly in multiethnic communities in Latin America?

October 25-27, 2013

Languages of the conference: English, French and Spanish.

Papers will be considered for publication

Guelph is 80 km from Toronto and 50 km from the Toronto airport. Greyhound departs almost every other hour from Toronto to the University of Guelph campus.

Keynote Speakers: James F. English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and Director of the Penn Humanities Forum, Judith Adler Hellman, Professor, Coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, York University, Philip Oxhorn, Professor, Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University.

A 500 word abstract of individual papers or sessions should be sent by June 30, 2013 to the conference committee at gyovanov@uoguelph.ca

[UPDATE] Keynote Speaker Jasbir Puar - 'Containers' Graduate Student Conference, NYC, October 18th & 19th,

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:10:01 -0400

Call for Papers
4th Annual Graduate Student Conference
Stony Brook University, The State University of New York
Cultural Analysis and Theory Department

Stony Brook Manhattan
October 18th & 19th, 2013

Keynote Lecture to be delivered by:
Jasbir Puar (Rutgers University)

“Containers”

Containers have a dual function - to store and to deliver - and thus an inherent provisionality. Unlike a boundary, a container denotes some kind of material object or thing. Both may imply delimitation, but while boundaries suggest an abstract notion of crossing, breaking and transgressing, containers draw attention to what is being contained, the tensile strength needed to hold it, the function of the lid and the physical force needed to unfasten that lid. The question of containment is also inherently political: it suggests a potential volatility, ephemerality or threat of the matter contained. We propose four main conceptual frames for thinking what containers are and what they do: (1) the contained object (2) the uncontainable/immaterial ephemera (3) the container’s (im)materiality and design (4) the temporality of storage and delivery. We propose that these frames offer new and unforeseen critical paradigms to certain disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.

1) Our first frame prompts inquiry into the material conditions of the physical substance filling the container’s volumetric space. Object and thing theory, as well as new materialism, provide a range of differing analytical tools for thinking through the contained substance’s materiality, its agency and its structural integrity. Thinking of the contained in terms of content naturally draws attention to the historical conditions affecting that content, such that processes of technological development, modes of consumption and distribution affect the materiality of the contained object.

2) Containers are not only material structures containing solids or fluids, but also immaterial forms that contain ephemeral substances or concepts. Adorno, for instance, postulated thought as the attempt to contain its object via the identity of the concept. Likewise, affect theory conceives of language and representation more generally in terms of its attempt to contain experience; meanwhile, affect itself exceeds such containment. Additionally, the recent turn towards questions of bodies and embodiment underscores the inherently unstable opposition of material and immaterial phenomena: the body is, at least in part, socially produced as a container of both material and immaterial flows in a way that destabilizes the distinction between the two.

3) Containers are designed for the specific function of holding in something; they must be strong and durable. And yet, the container’s design also evokes the aesthetic mode. Among other fields, film and media studies have increasingly broached design studies in exploring the aesthetic dimensions of the consoles, housings, and packaging of technological components and audio/visual media. As Lynn Spigel reminds us, a television is equally important as a piece of furniture in the aesthetic production of the domestic space.

4) The temporal frame of containment calls our attention to the process in play as a container reverses from its storage to delivery function. Whereas ‘storage’ contains notions of material apparatus, structural design and archive or collection, ‘delivery’ carries a teleological function as well as the physical place or site in which a container opens, empties or interfaces. To give just two examples, both freight containers transporting commodities along the exchange circuits of global capitalism and fiber optic cables delivering information across national and transnational communication networks act in varying ways to produce the conditions for what David Harvey identifies as the experience of space-time compression that has marked modernity and postmodernity.

How, then, might these different frameworks for thinking about containers inform our involvement with material and immaterial phenomena? What affordances does the concept of the container provide for the humanities and social sciences in engaging with contemporary social, cultural, political and economic conditions? We invite graduate student submissions from a wide variety of disciplines to engage with these questions.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• New materialisms of containers or contained
• Affect theory and the uncontainable
• Containers in/as cultural (literary, filmic, televisual, etc.) texts
• Object oriented ontology
• The body and (dis)embodiment
• Virality and containment
• Media objects as containers
• Urban space and containment
• Resistance to containment
• Thing theory of containers or contained
• Exhibition spaces as containers
• Transgression and limit experiences
• Design and containers
• The politics of containment
• ‘Trans’ -national/-gender/-disciplinary problematization of containment
• ‘Trans’ troubling of globalization, race, and the nation-state containment

Please send a 250-300 word abstract by June 15th, 2013 to catgradconf@gmail.com. We are tentatively planning on sending out acceptance and declination notices around the beginning of July. For updates and more information, visit http://catgradconference.com.

C21 Literature Journal: Twenty First Century Genre

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:04:26 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS
C21 LITERATURE: ISSUE THREE AUTUMN 2014: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY GENRE

Genre has become an increasingly significant part of academic and popular criticism since the year 2000. From Steampunk to Crunch Lit, Young Adult to Nordic Noir, new genres have arisen to sustain fiction and popular culture markets in the new millennium. Issue three of C21 Literature asks if the politics of genre can offer insights into developments across the first thirteen years of the twenty-first century. If genre development is a process of evolution then how and where do these genres originate – and what are the intertextual and historical frames in which they operate? The journal calls for articles examining developments in genre across the twenty-first century. Topics may include:

• the history of literary genre
• multi-platformed genre developments
• new genres and authors
• cultural studies and genre
• politics and genre
• humour and genre
• academia and genre
• technology and genre
• popular culture and parody
• alternative histories
• old genres, new millennium
•
C21 Literature also seeks reviews, features and opinion pieces from academics, readers and writers and conference reports relating to twenty-first century genres.
Articles should be 6000–7000 words.
Reviews and conference reports should be 1000–2000 words. The journal uses the author/date Chicago style referencing system.
Full article submission, abstracts only will not be considered.
Please send all submissions, questions or enquiries to journal editor Dr Katy Shaw at K.Shaw@brighton.ac.uk

About The Journal
C21 Literature is an international peer reviewed journal that aims to create a critical, discursive space for the promotion and exploration of 21-st century writings in English. It addresses a range of narratives in contemporary culture, from the novel, poem and play to hypertext, digital gaming and contemporary creative writing. The journal features engaged theoretical pieces alongside new unpublished creative works and investigates the challenges that new media present to traditional categorizations of literary writing.
Website: http://www.gylphi.co.uk/journals/C21Literature/
Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/C21Literature
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/c21literature
Blog: http://c21literature.blogspot.co.uk/

Special essay cluster on ‘Space and Place in Italo/Glaswegian Life Narratives’ for a/b: Auto/Biography Studies - deadline 20 Dec

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:49:52 -0400

Call for Papers
Special essay cluster on ‘Space and Place in Italo/Glaswegian Life Narratives’ for a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
Guest editors: Sarah Edwards and Katharine Mitchell, School of Humanities, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Glasgow is a world city – the second city of Scotland, the ninth biggest financial centre of Europe, and a major international tourist destination following decades of regeneration, which culminated in its selection as host of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. It is also a multi-cultural city, whose economic and cultural development has been shaped by many immigrant communities, notably the Italo-Scots. Most Italian immigration to the UK took place at the end of the nineteenth century, and the city of Glasgow became the home of the third largest community in the country. While much has been written about Italian migration to America and other Anglophone countries, and there is an increasing body of scholarship on Italo-Scots culture and identity, there is very little work on the developing nature of Glaswegian-Italian identities or their wider impact both on other ethnic and urban cultures, and on forms of life writing.
This special essay cluster seeks submissions which focus specifically on issues of space and place in auto/biographical depictions of the city. There is an increasing amount of work on, for example, urban memory and nostalgia, memorials, the relationships between literary texts and the built environment, urban regeneration and city branding in the fields of life writing, literary and film studies, diaspora and migration studies, cultural and architectural history, cultural geography and urban studies. This includes a growing body of scholarship on Scottish identities and landscapes in an increasingly devolved and independent state. We invite essays, then, which draw on aspects of this work to consider how Italo-Glaswegian auto/biographical texts both shape, and are shaped by, the literary, cultural, economic and architectural places and spaces of Glasgow.
We are interested in a range of narratives, including autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, television productions, films and internet resources such as blogs, twitterfeeds and oral histories, which explore the concepts of space and place in diverse ways. These might include:
- the development of Glaswegian identities over successive generations (eg, themes of alienation; a sense of ‘not belonging’ to either country; shifting allegiances during the world wars; changing relationships to concepts of wider Scottish, British and European identities – for example, to the Italian town of Barga, which hosts an annual Scottish fish and chip festival; and relationships to Italian-American identities (as depicted, for example, in Sergio Casci’s 2003 film American Cousins)
- the shaping of religious identities in a Scottish city divided (both literally, culturally and discursively) by Catholic and Presbyterian sectarianism
- the role of Italian culture in the urban regeneration of Glasgow during the 1980s and 1990s (for example, accounts of the inception, development and subsequent uses of the Italian Centre in Merchant City)
- Glaswegian-Italian café culture (in the autobiographies of Joe Pesci; in relation to questions of class and popular stereotypes of Glaswegian-Italian identity as family business owners; as a separatist community; as creators of a new culinary culture)
- women’s roles in café culture (their familial and business roles; the ‘feminised’ space of the café as a courting zone and as a space for wider community cohesion)
a/b: Auto/Biography Studies (http://abstudies.web.unc.edu/) welcomes submissions of scholarly essays related to all aspects of autobiography and biography studies. We are especially interested in scholarship that crosses disciplinary and genre boundaries, explores new sites and methods of identity construction, and in receiving submissions from the international community of scholars of life narrative. All submitted essays should have a relevant theoretical framework and participate in contemporary conversations within the field of auto/biography studies.
Potential contributors may find it helpful to refer to back issues of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies prior to submitting their work for consideration. Individual articles and full issues are now available on Project MUSE.
Submission guidelines
Essays should be emailed to sarah.m.edwards@strath.ac.uk and katharine.mitchell@strath.ac.uk by 20 December 2013. We welcome any enquiries from potential authors.
Essays should be between 7,500 and 10,000 words in length, including notes and the Works Cited pages.
All essays must follow the format of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.). The a/b Style Sheet can be found at this address: http://abstudies.web.unc.edu/submissions/
Authors must also include a fifty-word abstract and two to four keywords with their submissions.
In order to ensure a blind peer review, remove any identifying information, including citations that refer to you as the author in the first person. Cite previous publications, etc. with your last name to preserve the blind reading process.
Include your name, address, email, the title of your essay, and your affiliation in a cover letter or cover sheet for your essay. Cover letters may be addressed to the editors, Sarah Edwards and Katharine Mitchell.
Please note that while a/b does make every effort to undertake the peer review process in a timely manner, the process can take between six and eight months.
It is the author’s responsibility to secure any necessary copyright permissions and essays may not progress into the publication stage without written proof of right to reprint.

[REMINDER] Allegory Studies? (abstracts deadline 31 May)

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:48:16 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

ALLEGORY STUDIES?
University of Warwick
7 November 2013

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Jon Whitman (English, The Hebrew University)

OTHER CONFIRMED SPEAKERS AND CHAIRS: Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (Psychology, UCSC), Lisa Rosenthal (Art and Design, UIUC), Christiania Whitehead (English and CLS, Warwick)

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/emforum/events/allegory

The one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds who share an interest in the history and theory of allegory in order to explore and promote the notion of allegory studies as an emergent nexus of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Since the mid-twentieth century, allegory has increasingly been approached as a subject in its own right, informed by, but transcending particular disciplinary, periodical, or author-focused contexts. This development seems to have reached a critical point over the past two decades, which have seen a steady stream of articles and monographs, as well as such comprehensive reference works as an Encyclopedia of Allegorical Literature (Leeming and Drowne 1996), a Dictionary of Allegorical Meanings (Brumble 1999), a pioneering collaborative overview of allegorical interpretation in the West (Whitman 2000), and, most recently, volumes in the New Critical Idiom (Tambling 2010) and Cambridge Companions (Copeland and Struck 2010) series. A number of recent conferences and seminar panels have approached the subject without disciplinary or periodical restrictions, and the phrase “allegory studies” – although traceable at least to Gordon Teskey’s Allegory and Violence (1996) – has begun to appear in contemporary scholarship on the subject.

By all accounts, then, the current state or research on allegory seems to be marked by the consolidation of a long and extraordinarily productive tradition of scholarship – including contributions from such fields as art history, classics, intellectual history, linguistics and cognitive science, literary studies and literary theory, philosophy, theology, religion studies – into a coherent interdisciplinary formation in its own right. At this propitious moment, papers are invited from scholars of any disciplinary background to discuss the various issues raised by these developments, such as (but not limited to):

- Why allegory studies? What is it about this subject that seems to demand a dedicated interdisciplinary platform in its own right?

- What are the main achievements of allegory studies thus far? What are the most promising avenues of exploration?

- Theory and history in allegory studies – what light does theoretical work throw on the history of allegory, and conversely, how do historically contextualized perspectives bear on the theoretical approaches to the subject?

- What is the relation between the marked rise in allegory scholarship since c. 1950 and the roughly coextensive “revival of allegory” originating in the work of such thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man and permeating various corners of the contemporary academic and cultural sphere?

Papers are solicited from scholars of any disciplinary background and career stage – proposals from graduates and junior academics are especially welcome. Applicants are encouraged to engage with the subject of allegory and allegory studies in ways which transcend traditional disciplinary and periodisational boundaries, and priority will be given to abstracts clearly demonstrating the ability to communicate effectively to the interdisciplinary audience the conference aims to attract. It is hoped that the conference will lead to a publication showcasing the wide array of current approaches to the subject and paving the way for further collaboration and research.

500-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, accompanied by a brief biographical note, to be sent to the convenor, Vladimir Brljak (English and CLS, Warwick), at v.brljak@warwick.ac.uk by 31 May 2013.

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (www.coldnoon.com) Call for Entries (Research Papers/ Poetry), deadline 6th June 2013

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:22:21 -0400

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is an International Print and Online Literary Journal published as a quarterly (online, ISSN 2278-9650) and bi-yearly (print, ISSN 2278-9642).

CALL FOR ENTRIES:

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics invites writers and researchers to submit their original works of poetry, creative non-fiction, art/book/film reviews or research papers on travel/travel poetics for publication in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Jun ‘13, Issue VII (online). The works published in the forthcoming issue will be republished in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Autumn 2013, along with the subsequent online issue of Sep ‘13, Issue VIII, in October, 2013.

The last date of sending submissions is 6th June, 2013.
To read about the concept of Coldnoon, travelogy and travel poetics please visit our website www.coldnoon.com.

The submission categories and criteria are:

POETRY – Submit at least 4 poems, and not more than 6, in MS Word Doc. format only. Please ensure your poems are properly formatted, and the lineation is as desired. Before you submit, we suggest you read our previous publications of poetry, once, so as to have a clear idea of the kinds of poetry we like, or tend to understand better.

NON FICTION, RESEARCH PAPERS & REVIEWS – Works may be based on travel in literature, cinema, culture, and more. Submit a full length essay not less than 2500 words, or review not less than 1500 words. Format your paper on standard A4 (8.3*11.7 sq. inch) paper, with 1 inch margin on each side. Citations, if any, should be in MLA format. Use endnotes instead of footnotes. Also check your paper for proper indentation before submitting. The works will be checked stringently for plagiarism; avoid any whatsoever. Attach your submission in MS Word doc. format only.

We accept only email submissions. In your email mark subject as “Submission”. Along with the submission attach your biographical details of not more than 100 words. Also state in the body of your email that you are the sole author/s of the work submitted and that no other person or institution may assert moral right over the work, but you.

Email your submissions to: submissions@coldnoon.com

Financing the Frontier: Money and the Cinematic West November 20-24, 2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:07:10 -0400

Film and television Westerns, especially those treating the American West, often disguise the role of money as a narrative element, a structuring and thematic principle, just as the external systems of production, distribution, consumption, and appropriation often disguise the role of money behind the glitter and glamour of celebrity. Financial matters play second fiddle, either to cowboy virtue or to movie-star verve. Whether it is disguised or advertised, however, money is a complex figure in the cinematic Western. How, for example, does money define heroes or villains or the national character itself? When does the ethical or moral identity of the frontier landowner or cattle rancher complement or conflict with his or her financial station? Money can create or destroy. How is the “wildness” of the West or the conception of progress or the conquest of nature a function of money—a function both of the instrumental power it has and of the assumptions it carries? How does money bring order or chaos to a frontier civilization? Why does money fail and when does it succeed on the frontier—as an image, a means, or a principle—and for whom? For that matter, how does it bring order or chaos to the Western myth-makers in Hollywood—or to their modern audiences?

This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes proposals on the subject of money in Western films and television programs. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

•Guns for Hire (Wyatt Earp, My Darling Clementine, Bat Masterson, For A Few Dollars More, High Plains Drifter Sukiyaki Western Django)

•Robbery on the Range (Cat Ballou, The Train Robbers, Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid)
•Economies of Saloon Culture: Drinking, Gambling and/or the Frontier Flesh Trade (Maverick, Paladin, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Unforgiven)
•Commerce and Frontier Towns (Stagecoach, El Dorado, Rango)
•Gold Fever and/or the Land Rush in The West (Way Out West, McKenna’s Gold, Ride The High Country, The Big Trail, Wagon Train, Wagon Master, The Land)
•Working Women (Calamity Jane, Annie Get Your Gun, Gunsmoke, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman)
•Cash and Cows (Rustlers, Red River, The Cowboys, The Johnson County War, Shane, Oklahoma)
• Native American issues: treaties, exploitation, and revolution (Geronimo, Cheyenne Autumn, Little Big Man, Dances With Wolves)

•Box office and production considerations of Western movies and television programs

Proposals for individual papers should include a 200-word abstract and the name, affiliation, and contact email of the presenter. Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter.

Deadline for Abstracts: July 1, 2013

For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see: www.filmandhistory.org/The2013FilmHistoryConference.php

Please send submissions or queries to the area chair:

Sue Matheson
University College of the North
smatheson@ucn.ca

Smart, Sincere, and Quirky Auteurs – SAMLA (Atlanta, 11/8 to 11/10)

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:26:11 -0400

I seek papers for a panel on auteurship in recent Hollywood cinema, especially films that have alternately been called the “New Sincerity” (Collins), “smart” (Sconce), “Mumblecore” (Masunaga), “post-pop” (Mayshark), and “quirky” (MacDowell).

Papers may discuss Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Judd Apatow, Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Miranda July, Charlie Kaufman, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, among others. Discussions of Mumblecore and its major figures— Andrew Bujalski, Lena Dunham, Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass, Lynn Shelton, Joe Swanberg—are also welcome. I especially encourage papers that consider the ongoing (in)validity of auteur theory in the digital age, how these directors either employ or avoid irony, how they appeal to commercial audiences, and how they demonstrate the influence or revision of earlier auteurs from classic Hollywood, European art cinema, or New Hollywood.

Please submit a proposal of 250 words and a working bibliography to Pete Kunze at pkunze@lsu.edu by June 10.

Accepted presenters must join SAMLA (membership information available here: http://samla.memberclicks.net/membership-information) and register for the conference (before October 1, $70 for students, adjuncts, and retired members; $125 for all others).

New Directions in Reception Study (Reception Study Society at SAMLA 85)

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:09:24 -0400

The Reception Study Society (RSS) seeks papers on the 2013 SAMLA conference’s special focus. We welcome submissions that explore receptions of texts across various media including novels, poetry, drama, nonfiction, film, electronic media, or material culture. Papers dealing with receptions across media or pedagogical approaches of reader-response or reception studies are especially welcome. By June 21, 2013, please submit 250-500 word abstracts with a brief (1 page) CV to Paul Dahlgren, Georgia Southwestern State University, at paul.dahlgren@gsw.edu.

Popular and Current Art Submissions and Criticism Wanted: Open Deadline

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:37:42 -0400

While great works of literature were written in the 19th century and prior, we live today in an age with major problems and solutions in the realm of art and communication that should be addressed by current artists and critics. The tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal is in its 5th volume and 5th year in operation. It is available on EBSCO, ProQuest and in print from various distribution channels. It has published interviews with best-selling young adult authors like Cinda Williams Chima and Carrie Ryan, as well as with winners of the Brooklyn Film Festival, and top academic editors across the country. PLJ’s special issues have focused on film, fiction, British literature, formalism, new historicism, and various other fields. In the future years, PLJ would like to see primarily criticism of current research, fiction, poetry, film, and works of art. For example, the most recent issue of PLJ “Reviews of Popular Fiction” includes reviews of Twilight, A Kurt Wallander Novel, and The Last Boyfriend. Most of these reviews are very negative, as the editor-in-chief, Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., is pretty pessimistic about the current state of literature. Thus, negative, sarcastic, and highly critical and detailed book reviews and essays are especially wanted. Reviews of films, TV series, as well as of photography and art are also of interest. Please remember to support your negative criticism with facts and details from the works, but don’t include quotes over 5 lines in length. In addition, if you can access a celebrity (living) author at a convention, a reading, or through their agent and they agree to do an interview with you – PLJ would be delighted to publish interviews with any recognizable or award-winning author. Interviews with filmmakers, poets, editors, and even businessmen are also of interest. Please review prior issues of PLJ for the interview style that PLJ prefers. Scholarly essays on popular, award-winning, or merited literature published since 1980 is also of special interest. Essays on methods for teaching literature, composition and other fields are also a good fit. Also send fiction, poetry, art, photography and other forms of art you’ve created. If you’ve published with a major academic publisher or with one of the best popular presses, and would like to be interviewed or reviewed, send a query. There is no payment for publication, but also no reading fees or publication fees for you. Only famous authors receive a free contributor copy. PLJ is a for-profit venture and subscriptions are what feeds its future success; so feel free to ask your school’s library to subscribe. If you have an idea for an essay, work of fiction, review, interview, work of art, or anything else that was not mentioned above (including criticism of 19th century and prior works), send a query to determine if it’s a good fit for PLJ. While PLJ is moving into popular art, it’s not yet fully there and a wide variety of other projects is still very welcomed. When submitting a project email a Word document with the full text of the work (with an abstract for scholarly articles), and a biography paragraph in the third-person for the author to director@anaphoraliterary.com, to the attention of Dr. Anna Faktorovich, Editor-in-Chief. PLJ is a part of the Anaphora Literary Press (www.anaphoraliterary.com), which has published over 50 book titles and is actively soliciting academic and creative book manuscripts. We are especially interested in books that will be taught as part of the writer’s class(es). To submit a book-length project email the full manuscript, bio, book summary paragraph, and a marketing paragraph (with specifics) to director@anaphoraliterary.com.

The Films of Robert Rodriguez

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:27:02 -0400

Call For Papers: The Films of Robert Rodriguez

POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities invites submissions for a special issue on the Films of Robert Rodriguez.

The issue will be guest edited by Professor Christopher González (Texas A&M University-Commerce).

Texas-based director Robert Rodriguez is arguably one of the most important Latino filmmaker of his time; his enterprising approach has now taken him into other forms of visual media, such as his El Ray television network and his latest “Project Green Screen” venture with the cell phone giant, BlackBerry. This special issue seeks to continue the exploration of this significant filmmaker first begun by Charles Ramírez Berg in his Latino Images in Film, and continued most recently by Frederick Luis Aldama’s Robert Rodriguez and the Cinema of Possibilities, to be published later this year. Submissions are open to a variety of theoretical approaches.

Post Script encourages original manuscripts of no more than 7,000 words in this area from scholars and academics as well as filmmakers. Essays will be subject to peer review. The guest editor invites submissions on the following topics or related topics:

• The impact of Rodriguez’s first feature film, El Mariachi, made for only $7,000
• Films such as The Faculty, where Rodriguez served as director only
• Directorial collaborations, such as Sin City, where he worked alongside Frank Miller
• Larger filmic canvases like the Spy Kids and Machete franchises, and the Mexico Trilogy
• Shorter films such as “Bedhead,” “The Black Mamba,” and “The Misbehavers”
• The “Ten Minute Film School” tutorials Rodriguez regularly features on his films’ DVDs
• Rodriguez’s filmmaking partnership with Quentin Tarantino, from cameos in Desperado, and Planet Terror, to more substantive collaborations in From Dusk Till Dawn and Grindhouse
• An exploration of Rodriguez’s filmmaking philosophy and technique, the speed at which he shoots; the economy of his productions; etc.
• The formal elements of Rodriguez’s films, including visual, sound, dialogue, and so on
• The politics of films like Machete, Planet Terror, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico
• Rodriguez’s penchant for using many of the same actors across his films; or example, Danny Trejo’s rise as voiceless villain in Desperado to brown superhero in Machete
• Rodriguez’s oft-criticized representation of women.
• An exploration of how Rodriguez’s films often engage in a Chuck Jones- or Tex Avery-style cartoon sensibility
• The adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City
• Rodriguez’s subversive use of stereotypes and cultural clichés
• Substantive interviews
• Book reviews (up to 1,000 words)

Please note that Post Script does not reprint previously published material.

Submit manuscripts via a virus-free attachment, with author identification on a separate page and not in the headers, by e-mail to guest editor Christopher González at the address below by November 1, 2013. Manuscripts must be in English and must conform to the MLA Style Manual, 3rd edition.

Professor Christopher González
Department of Literature and Languages
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Email: Chris.Gonzalez@tamuc.edu

For questions about Post Script not related to this special issue, contact the general editor:
Professor Gerald Duchovnay Gerald.Duchovnay@tamuc.edu

[UPDATE] SAMLA 2013: (Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean (due June 10)

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:39:01 -0400

2013 SAMLA CONFERENCE, NOV 8-10, ATLANTA

SPECIAL SESSION: "(Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean"

We often think of globalization as a contemporary phenomenon, characterized by the way high-speed technologies have changed everything from market dynamics to social relations. Many scholars, however, see the current phase of globalization as part of an historical process beginning as early as the sixteenth century. The Caribbean has, indeed, been a transnational site from the time of its original European colonization, soon followed by the importation of coerced labor from Africa, South Asia, and China. Today, the region remains populated by a wide variety of ethnic groups, highly trafficked by tourists from around the world, and economically tied to foreign currencies and markets. Additionally, high rates of migration from the Caribbean to North America and Europe have created an immense Caribbean diaspora that retains cultural and economic ties to the region, facilitated in part by new technologies and alliances.

Images of the Caribbean have thus been documented, constructed, and circulated globally from the rise of print culture to the dawn of the digital age. This panel seeks proposals engaging any aspect of the conference theme, “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds,” in relation to literature and/or other media from any part of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Some possible topics include:

The “digital humanities” and Caribbean studies
Visual images of the Caribbean
Cartographic representations of the Caribbean
Caribbean service economies—tourism, textiles and “free trade” zones, data mining, banking, etc.
Regionalism, Nationalism, Transnationalism
Marketing the Caribbean/the Caribbean market
Intra-Caribbean exchange and migration
Local and regional grassroots activist networks in the Caribbean
Caribbean diasporas—cultural, economic, and/or social networks

Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words and a brief bio (not CV) of <100 words, in Word or PDF, to Kristine A. Wilson (wilson67@purdue.edu). DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 10, 2013.