category: gender studies and sexuality

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.

Women Writing War Trauma (NeMLA 2014)

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:24:08 -0400

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” Theodor Adorno famously pronounced in 1949, indicating, among other things, that the Holocaust presents a radical problem of representation. Indeed, the paradox at the heart of Trauma Theory is that traumatic experience both demands a story and defies communicability; it is the unspeakable that nevertheless has to be told. And in the past decade or so, scholars have begun to investigate how gender factors into this problem, a problem that extends to trauma literature in general. Thus the testimonials by female survivors of the Holocaust are gaining considerable attention, while memoirs by female soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan bear witness to the trauma of a combat experience made all the more catastrophic by institutionalized sexual persecution.

This panel seeks to investigate how gender affects not only the traumatic experience itself, but also the narration of traumatic experience, by women writing about war. The “writing” may take the form of memoir, fiction, poetry, film, or other, more experimental modes of narration, such as blogging. The goal of this panel is to bring together a diverse range of material and perspectives that will move the discussion of gender and trauma beyond a simple comparison of men’s and women’s trauma, and into the gendered politics of writing itself.

Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Jenny Kijowski, profkijowski@gmail.com

Deadline: September 30, 2013

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

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

“Embodiments of Horror: William Blake’s Gothic Sensibility.”

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:47:42 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Gothic Studies: “Embodiments of Horror: William Blake’s Gothic Sensibility.”

Guest Editors: Dr. Christopher Bundock (Huron College) and Elizabeth Effinger (Western).

Within the frame of the late eighteenth-century Gothic revival, this special issue of Gothic Studies explores the relationship between English poet and engraver William Blake and particularly disruptive affective intensities expressed at the level of image, text, and critical reception as well as their extension into contemporary adaptations. While a critical body of work exists on the relationship between Blake and the Gothic broadly—and in spite of an obvious fascination with a nexus of aesthetic categories such as the grotesque, perverse, and macabre—Blake's focus on affects like physical disgust and horror, specifically, have garnered little sustained critical attention. This special issue seeks to redress this gap by opening up a dialogue between Blake and his gothic sensibility that centers on the affective, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of a physical body and sensorium that turns against itself.

Registering the contestation between introjection and expulsion, the abject – Kristeva’s term for a “massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which […] now harries me as radically separate, loathsome” (2) – is frequently figured in Blake as a monstrous Polypus, organic life in its merely vegetative, abhorrent state. Other examples of Blake’s “body horror” appear in the body turned inside out, revealing organs “Dim & glutinous as the white Polypus,” an uncanny “Fibrous Vegetation” that seems less like animating flesh than the binding vines that tie spirit with “living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing / A self-devouring monstrous Human Death” (Los 4.66; Milton 24.37, 34.25-6). Rending apart the coherence of representation to expose “what I permanently thrust aside in order to live” (Kristeva 3), Blake's revulsion stems –perversely enough—from a willingness to peer into the abyss of origination and expose art's always fragile constitution as an invitation for revision, transformation, and rebirth. But how precisely does this affirmative attitude toward subjective and artistic regeneration square with Blake's tortured affect, especially when this follows from a desire to transcend the physical body, the very matrix of sensibility? If Blake embodies horror, he is also horrified by the body's limitations. How, then, does art—particularly Blake's own art—respond to this problem? How does he make new kinds of bodies to embody desires differently?
We are particularly interested in papers that consider the impact this “thrust[ing] aside” by and of the body has for Blake’s thought and art. What is the work of horror in Blake? What, if any, generative potential is there in the restlessness of Blake’s tortured, gothic bodies? What is the cost of Blake’s investment in horror as a privileged affect? Does Blake’s appeal to horror and the Gothic challenge or render counterfeit his humanism? How does Blake’s revisioning of the body as an intensive site of horror invite new modes of thinking about the human? How do the horrors of Blake’s material bodies (dis)figure or embody the horrors of larger discursive bodies?

While this collection follows in the spirit of recent critical projects such as Blake 2.0 (Palgrave 2012) and Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture (Palgrave 2007) – important studies that foreground the continuing relevance of Blake in contemporary culture – it also distinguishes itself by interrogating the particular affinities between Blake and the embodied experiences of revulsion, abjection, and horror. Given this topic especially, Blake's illustrations may well play a central role in some contributions. And we do hope to be able to reproduce a certain number of his visual artworks. Nevertheless, we ask that contributors use their best judgement and include images only if they come in for substantial, sustained analysis and are necessary for advancing the paper's argument.

This collection is interested in papers that explore any aspects Blake's embodied affects and affects of embodiment, and especially those dimensions wherein the body and affect clash.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Deleuze and the Affect of Terror or Horror
Execrable Topi: Vacuum, Or-Ulro, Satan's Mills
Horrors of abstraction
Embodiment, disembodiment, reembodiment
Birth, re-birth, and the labour of creation
Printing in the Infernal Method
The Pleasures of Pain: masochism, perversion
Transgression and anti-economy
Horror and Function
The Instruments of Terror
Revulsion's limits, borders, or ends
Blake's images as “dark visions of torment”
The image and Evil
Specters, ghosts, and darkness visible
Empiricism and the Body
Subject, Object, Abject

We invite contributions from academics, professionals, artists, and those with a scholarly interest in Blake. All relevant material will be considered. We welcome papers from multidisciplinary perspectives.

Including notes, articles should be between 4000 and 9000 words in length. Potential contributors should send *abstracts (500-750 words)* to both Dr. Christopher Bundock (cbundock@gmail.com) and Elizabeth Effinger (eeffinge@uwo.ca) by *1 October, 2013*. All submissions should be in English and adhere to the “Guidelines on Preparing and Submitting an Article for Gothic Studies”

Apollon eJournal - Undergraduate Submissions deadline 6/15/2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:43:39 -0400

Check the website, apollonejournal.org, for submission details on publication, or for an application to work with us

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Apollon invites undergraduate students to get published in, review submissions for, or help edit a the third issue of our peer-reviewed eJournal, Apollon. By publishing superior examples of undergraduate academic work, Apollon highlights the importance of undergraduate research in the humanities. Apollon welcomes submissions that feature image, text, sound, and a variety of presentation platforms in the process of showcasing the many species of undergraduate research.

ABOUT THE PROJECT
Apollon, an undergraduate humanities eJournal, is a peer-reviewed publication for undergraduate humanities majors. Apollon features undergraduate research developed in humanities courses, and thus emphasizes faculty-student collaborations beyond the classroom. We invite interested students to join us by contributing leadership or original work to Apollon. Our student team participates at all levels of this ongoing project (design, review, and publication) to offer their peers a real outlet for intellectual work in the humanities. For more information you can go to the program website, www.apollonejournal.org, talk to your professors, or contact the Faculty Director, Jason Cohen, at (859) 985-3765 or cohenj@berea.edu.

CFP: Aloha at Risk: Education in Hawaii (Edited Collection)

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:51:27 -0400

Since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983, public education has been subjected to increased scrutiny from political officials, parents, and concerned citizens. In recent years, such scrutiny has given way to calls for comprehensive education reform. Both the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top program, respectively inaugurated under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focus on increasing standards for public schools throughout the United States, while more local initiatives like private school voucher systems and parent “trigger” laws attempt to increase learning opportunities for children by maximizing parental choice and administrative participation.

Yet, these reforms—or 'deforms' as they're called by opponents—have been condemned for being undemocratic, corporatist, and overly punitive. NCLB, for example, has been said to subsume diverse groups of children under reductionist statistical metrics, failing to account for demographic and developmental variances. RTTT continued this trend, according to critics, and added pressure for local school districts to implement costly teacher evaluation protocols based largely on standardized achievement tests, rather than holistic measures of learning growth and professional practice. In an ironic display of political harmony, small-government 'conservatives' and labor-minded 'liberals' alike have attacked national education reforms, the former for impugning states' rights and the latter for undermining collective bargaining.

Hawaii, considered by some political pundits to be the most labor-friendly state in the nation, has been on the frontlines of the battle over public education. One year after receiving an RTTT grant award in 2010, the state was placed on “high risk” status by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to implement reforms quickly enough and prolonging a regressive contract dispute with the Hawaii State Teachers Association. Education reforms are further complicated by events from Hawaii's historical trajectory, including settler colonialism, imperial overthrow of native governance, suppression of indigenous culture, and plantation economics, each of which inform the state's current sociopolitical structure and discursive condition.

This interdisciplinary essay collection seeks to engage the theme of “education in Hawaii” from a critical vantage point. Submissions will be accepted for each of the book's four sections: “Pedagogy of Aloha” (critical pedagogical studies); “Decolonizing Aloha” (colonialism in/and the classroom); “Re/Deforming Aloha” (general education theory, including social, political, and philosophical analysis); and “Teaching Aloha” (classroom stories). Potential topics might include:

- How do socioeconomic and ethnic inequality affect Hawaii's classrooms and education politics?

- To what extent does money drive education reform in Hawaii? Do reforms (re)produce corporate infrastructure and economic division, rather than quality learning experiences?

- How does Hawaii's history, including settler colonialism and plantation development, impact the present state and future direction of the state's education system?

- In what ways are native or marginalized knowledge(s) suppressed by standards-based education reforms? What pedagogical techniques might be used to advance such knowledge(s)?

- What progressive teaching modalities (i.e. feminist composition, queer- and eco-pedagogy, or ethnomathematics) might be employed to address Hawaii's diverse student populations?

Educator and author Doug Robertson will serve as editor for this collection. Essays should be approximately 4,000 to 8,000 words in length and employ Chicago Manual of Style formatting (using endnotes). Submissions should be sent to editors@interstitialjournal.com. Initial inquiries are welcome. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2013.

(Re)thinking Global Connectedness: Critical Perspectives on Globalization

Wed, 15 May 2013 02:24:26 -0400

Proposals Due: 15 September 2013
Conference Dates: 26-28 January 2014
Location: Doha, Qatar

The Liberal Arts Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals for its Second Annual Liberal Arts International Conference. Following the success of last year’s Ethical Engagement with Globalization, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, this second annual conference will explore the impacts of globalization from a variety of disciplinary lenses.

How has globalization transformed us individually and collectively? How is globalization shaping notions of ethics? Is globalization merely a shrinking of the world or is it transforming human experience? What challenges does globalization pose to understandings of the self and the other? How do we sustain a globalized world in terms of food, energy, and education? Are we already living in a post-globalized world?

We welcome submissions from across the spectrum of academic fields, including composition and rhetoric, linguistic, politics, history, technology, language studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, economics, philosophy, ethics, law, religion, and cultural studies. We especially encourage contributions from PhD students and scholars working in non-western and/or underrepresented regions.

Possible Conference Panels and Discussions:
Conceptualizing Globalization
Connections: Globalization and Technology
(Re)Thinking Ethics in a Globalized World
Linguistic Perspectives on Globalization
Education in a Globalized World
Historical Perspectives on Globalization
Globalization: Comparative East-West Perspectives
Global Movements: Environment, Peace, Violence
Legal Concerns of a Bordered/Borderless World
Gendering Globalization

The conference can provide substantial travel bursaries for international participants who need funding.Submission of individual papers and complete panel proposals on these or other related themes are welcome. Select papers will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed volume or a special issue of an international journal.

In order to be considered, please submit a panel proposal or individual paper proposal to include author(s) names, institution affiliation, email address, and an abstract of 250 words with 5 keywords by September 15, 2013 to LAIC2014@qatar.tamu.edu

Organizing Committee:
Dr. Leslie Seawright
Dr. Hassan Bashir
Dr. Phillip W. Gray
Dr. Troy Bickham
Liberal Arts Program ,Texas A&M University at Qatar
LAIC2014@qatar.tamu.edu
liberalarts.qatar.tamu.edu

Special Issue on Contemporary Drama [July 15, 2013]

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:41:09 -0400

Special Issue on Contemporary Drama

In the past twenty years Irish society has experienced a range of cultural, political and, centrally, financial upheaval. To what extent has Irish theatre responded to these tumultuous events? How far have traditional forms and subjects maintained their position? Or have experiment and innovation become the new distinguishing features? The guest editors of this special issue of Breac, Lindsay Haney and Shaun Richards, invite submissions addressing any aspect of recent Irish drama. In keeping with Breac’s interdisciplinary goals and digital form, we encourage submissions informed by any approach to drama and theatre and rendered as conventional essays or works in any audio or visual medium.

The issue will include essays from Brian Singleton on ANU productions, Emilie Pine on theatre’s response to abuse revelations, Niamh Malone on theatre and urban regeneration, and Susan Cannon Harris on Conor McPherson’s supernaturalism; an interview with Colm Tóibín, conducted by Paige Reynolds; and a video feature from Róise Goan, director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, on incubators and space in New Theatrical Dublin.

Breac is a peer-reviewed, open-access, paperless journal that publishes critical and creative work relating to Ireland and Irish Studies. Among its many features is a forum section that seeks to cultivate a global conversation around the published articles among its readers, students, and scholars. It also periodically streams live events through the website’s BreaCam. Subscribing to the journal is entirely free, and we encourage you to visit the website at breac.nd.edu.

We suggest a length of 4000-5000 words, but will happily consider longer articles. Deadline is July 15, 2013.

Full submission instructions are available at http://breac.nd.edu/submissions/. Questions to breac.djis@gmail.com.

Memsahibs as Imagined and Imaged by Male Writers (Deadline: September 30, 2013)

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:09:22 -0400

Session Title: MEMSAHIBS AS IMAGINED AND IMAGED BY MALE WRITERS

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

Session Description:
The memsahib is perhaps the most maligned figure among the Raj women. This panel invites scholarly articles on how male writers represent the memsahib in their writings, and how they depict her impact on and/or relationship with British India.

Topics for papers may include, but are not limited to:
• Critical analysis of literature on memsahibs
• Letters, memoirs, fiction and non-fiction about memsahibs (not by memsahibs)
• Memsahib’s relationship with and contribution to British India
• The Raj machinery and the role of the memsahib
• Home-building and Empire-building
• Memsahib’s role in the success and/or failure of colonization
• Memsahib and the trauma of the Indian Mutiny
• Memsahib and racism
• Memsahib and the ‘myth of the destructive female’
• Colonized and colonizer women
• Memsahibs as ‘maternal imperialists’
• Unconventional memsahibs; what makes them unconventional?
• Study of gender and imperialism
• Intra-racial tensions, if any, in the gaze of memsahibs
• Life at Home and out in the Colony
• Sense of exile and pain of alienation
• Femininity and/or feminism in memsahib’s female gaze

Please feel free to share your ideas for papers even if they are about literary depiction of white women in other British colonies.

Email: Dr Susmita Roye (sroye@desu.edu) with a 300-word abstract.

Deadline: September 30, 2013

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

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

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, The Tenth of December, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the best book you’ll read this year.” The Keynote speaker will be David Staller of Project Shaw.

SAMLA Special Session on Creating or Expanding a BA Program in English During Uncertain Times (June 20th- Abstract Deadline)

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:05:03 -0400

This panel invites participants from any college or university where there is an interest in building a B.A. in English or establishing a new programmatic track within the discipline. Participants need not be at any particular point in the process, and we hope to incorporate a diverse array of experiences and viewpoints. In other words, participants may only be thinking about the possibility of creating a program or they might be on the other side of the process. This panel will also consider what types of programs should/need to be created to meet the changing needs of students in the 21st century. We hope that this session will produce a vibrant dialogue that will serve as a bridge to future cooperation.

Because of the collaborative nature of this panel, we would like to create a roundtable atmosphere in which the audience plays an active role. Participants will each provide an informal 5-10 minute talk about their experiences and the advice they have about the process and then the rest of the session will be dedicated to having an open dialogue.

Instead of traditional proposals, those interested should send a brief 250 word description of their experiences and what they would like to gain from participating in the panel. Accepted descriptions will be shared with all participants to help generate a productive discussion. In order to be considered, these descriptions should be sent to SOrtolano@Edison.edu by June 20th.

Featured Speaker: Dr. Kristie Fleckenstein, Professor of English at Florida State University; co-collaborator in the creation and administration of FSU's undergraduate program in Editing, Writing, and Media

New Panel Added: GLBTQ Creative Writing at MAPACA - Atlantic City (Nov. 7th to 9th)

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:09:42 -0400

John Preston’s print collection "Hot Living: Erotic Stories about Safer Sex," which was published in 1985, marks a significant use of narrative to explore the intersection of creative writing and the GLBTQ perspective in contemporary culture. This productive intersection makes an even more popular appearance with the 1997 publication of Annie Proulx’s short story "Brokeback Mountain" in "The New Yorker." The GLBTQ Studies Area is seeking proposals for a newly created panel that features GLBTQ creative writing, especially as such is written to function within popular culture.

The goal of the panel will be to share recently published work or works-in-progress to explore the production of GLBTQ creative writing and to create community by sharing information to support GLBTQ inclusion in publishing endeavors. An additional goal might be the consideration of creative writing within contemporary popular culture venues to support well-rounded GLBTQ representation.

Please log into the MAPACA website to submit a proposal, which for creative writing proposals might include the title of the work, a synopsis, and perhaps a sample of the work.

You can find submission directions at http://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference. You may also contact Mark John Isola via markjohn—at—alumni.tufts.edu with any questions.

Please note: Conference participants may only present 1 paper at MAPACA; please do not submit multiple papers to multiple areas. Also, please note a sliding scale fee applies for conference registration.

Conference: Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA)
Dates: Thursday, 11/7 thru Saturday, 11/9
Location: Atlantic City, New Jersey
Venue: Tropicana Casino and Resort
Deadline: Proposals must be received by June 14, 2013
Web Site: www.mapaca.net

NeMLA 2014 Monstrous Maternity: Mothering Monsters, and Monsters as Mothers, Deadline 9/30/13

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:33:17 -0400

Monstrous Maternity: Mothering Monsters, and Monsters as Mothers

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

Historically, the flaws of offspring have been placed as a burden on the mother, marking the maternal figure as responsible for all aspects of her progeny's development; if a child is born with a deformity then a shock experienced during gestation is to be blamed, and if a child suffers from a caustic disposition it is the mother's care that comes under scrutiny. These questions continue to be reflected in literature and film, as texts seek to place blame for monstrous acts, and texts seek to find a space for maternity in the monstrous or supernatural. So what can be said of the mothers of monsters? Or of the offspring of monstrous women? This panel proposes an examination of the subject of monstrosity and maternity as presented in literature and film, from *Beowulf* to *Wuthering Heights*, ‘Psycho’ to 'Mommy Dearest' to ‘Twilight’, examining the development of monsters as both mothers and progeny, and how the maternal role contributes to the defining of what is monstrous.

Areas of interest include:
• Mothers in Gothic novels
• The absent mother in monster literature
• Monstrous mothers
• Mothering monsters
• Depictions of monstrous mothers in film
• The question of blame and the true crime genre
• Supernatural motherhood
• Alternative maternity in literature and film

This panel will examine the correlation between motherhood and monstrosity, as represented and defined in both literature and film. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: mothers in gothic literature, the absent mother in monster texts, monstrous mothers, mothering monsters, depictions of monstrous mothers in film, the question of blame and true crime, supernatural motherhood, and alternative maternity in literature and film. Please send proposals and brief biographical notes to A.L. Mishou, USNA, almishou@gmail.com.

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

GLBTQ Studies at MAPACA - Atlantic City (Nov. 7th to 9th)

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:11:10 -0400

The GLBTQ Studies Area of MAPACA welcomes proposals of relevance to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities. Proposals are encouraged on any medium of popular or American culture. Proposals of interest for the Atlantic City 2013 conference might include:

*Queering the Internet: The GLBTQ Web
*GLBT Publishing Today
*Sports and Gay/Lesbian Visibility
*The Female Eye: Agency or Appropriation?
*The Gay Bar: Patron or Patronizing?
*GLBTQ Representation in Contemporary Popular Culture
*Where are we Now: Gay vs. Queer Sensibilities
*GLBTQ Media Coverage: From Suicides to It Gets Better
*The GLBTQ Superhero/ine?
*HIV/AIDS and Erotic Writing
*The Violet Quill writers
*Popular GLBTQ romance novels/novelists
*GLBTQ comics/graphic novels/Yaoi

However, proposals addressing any topic of GLBTQ significance in popular or American culture are welcome. Please log into the MAPACA website to submit a proposal. You can find directions at this URL: http://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference.

You may also contact Dr. Mark John Isola via markjohn—at—alumni.tufts.edu with any questions.

Please note: Presenters may only present 1 paper at MAP/ACA; please do not submit multiple papers to multiple areas. Also, please note a sliding scale fee applies for conference registration.

Conference: Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association
Dates: Thursday, 11/7 thru Saturday, 11/9
Location: Atlantic City, New Jersey
Venue: Tropicana Casino and Resort
Deadline: Proposals must be received by June 14, 2013
Web Site: www.mapaca.net

Translatio--Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Student Conference at The Ohio State University

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:18:45 -0400

October 4-5, 2013

The Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Student Association at The Ohio State University is currently accepting abstracts for the second year of its graduate student conference, Translatio. Prospective papers will be considered on any topic that would be of interest to an audience working in the fields of Medieval or Renaissance studies. We are planning to organize a panel of professors that will discuss issues of periodization in our fields, as has been explored recently by James Simpson in Cultural Reform and Revolution, who explains that the means by which we develop “periods” are as important as the periods themselves—and thus ultimately questions the periods. Abstracts that intersect with this theme are greatly encouraged, but our aim is to make this conference open to any graduate student in Medieval and Renaissance studies, so do not hesitate to submit an abstract on any topic or from any discipline. We also encourage papers that expand the discussion beyond western scholarship.To submit an abstract or request further information, contact MRGSA via email at mrgsaosu@gmail.com by August 15, 2013.

Representations of Gender and Sexuality in John Dos Passos’s Writing

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:43:39 -0400

Like his modernist contemporaries, John Dos Passos engages themes of gender and sexuality. But unlike many of his contemporaries, his works may allow for relatively progressive readings of gender relations, understandings and representations of homosexuality, media-centered representations of the sexualized body, etc. Such progressivism may be due to his inherently activist stance during his writing career. However, merely writing during the first half of the 20th century may dictate a certain amount of problematic representation. Whether his works are read as progressive or problematic, studies that center on gender and sexuality in Dos Passos’s writing may help to complicate the general consensus that important male modernists’ relations to these subjects were inherently troubled.

We invite applications for fifteen- to twenty-minute papers that explore representations of gender and/or sexuality in any of Dos Passos’s works. Presentations may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- social policy, government legislation, and matters of the law in the modernist and late-modernist period
- media, representation, and social images of gender/sexuality as demonstrated in Dos Passos’s fiction or nonfiction writing
- sex, eroticism, otherness
- the body as subject or object
- sexual or gender identity
- feminism and post-feminism: representation and invisibility
- changing images of femininity and masculinity
- queer readings of specific characters, moments, narratives, novels, etc.

Please submit your 250-word abstract, with your name and affiliation, as a Word document to JDPSociety@gmail.com or Victoria.M.Bryan@gmail.com no later than June 15, 2013.

Call for Creative Writing Articles

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:34:04 -0400

Award-winning Writing Commons (http://writingcommons.org/), a global, peer-reviewed, open-education resource for college students invites the submission of creative writing articles intending to help college students to understand the concepts of creative writing and to improve their writing practice.

Audience
The readership for your article/submission includes undergraduate students in creative writing courses. To address such an audience, avoid difficult theories or complex discussions of research and issues or detailed discussions of pedagogy; rather, consider the interests and perspectives of students, with various levels of expertise, working through college-level creative writing projects.

Length
The typical Writing Commons submission will be approximately 750 to 1,000 words long, although longer webtexts may be submitted. For longer pieces, the use of headings within the piece is highly encouraged.

Submissions
Please email submissions to Dianne Donnelly at dianne@writingcommons.org as a doc or docx by September 15, 2013. Authors should include a brief byline and email. Any included citations should follow the current edition of The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The incorporation of multimedia components is also encouraged (e.g., images, hyperlinks). For more details, see our guide for authors at http://writingcommons.org/writers-wanted/guide-for-authors.

Review
Because webtexts are more concise than traditional academic essays, we intend to have a quick turn-around time; from initial submission to notification of the submission’s status, please allow approximately four weeks.

Submission Topics

Fiction
• Writing Fiction – an overview
• Point of view
• Concrete vivid details/images
• A story’s arc
• Voice
• Conflict
• Setting
• Tone and style
• Characterization
• What your character wants
• Dialogue
• Tension
• Scenes and summary
• Flashbacks (and flashforwards)
• Metaphor and analogy
• Beginning and endings
• Flash fiction
• The long story

Nonfiction
• Writing creative nonfiction – an overview – by Ira
Sukrungruang
• Creative nonfiction forms
o Memoir
o Personal essay
o Travel narrative
o Nature essay
o Scientific writing
o Literary journalism

• The tenets of narrative
o Voice
o Setting
o What your character wants
o What your narrator wants
o Dialogue
o Writing exposition and the retrospective voice
o Considering the double “I”

Poetry
• Writing poetry – an overview
• Where do poems originate?
• The major forms of poetry
o Acrostic
o Ballad
o Cinquain
o Clerihue
o Diamante
o Didactic
o Free verse
o Ghazal
o Haiku
o Limerick
o Sestina
o Sonnet
o Villanelle
• Creating images
• Lines and stanzas
• Meter and rhythm
• Sounds of language
• Metaphor

Playwriting
• Writing Plays – an overview – by Mark E. Leib
• Action and plot
• Characterization
• Dialogue
• Concept
• Stage directions

Screenwriting
• Writing films – an overview – by Mark E. Leib
• Action and plot
• Characterizations
• Dialogue
• Format
• Description

Digital Creative Writing
• Considering Digital Writing – an overview
• Other topics are open for consideration

"The Senses of Humour," submissions due 1 July 2013

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:08:52 -0400

This special issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction journal will explore the relationships among various meanings of the term "humour" in the long eighteenth century, from humoral theories of the body to the cultivation and regulation of "senses of humour" in literature, culture, and social interaction. We invite submissions on eighteenth-century legacies of classical humoral theory; the philosophy of laughter; the emergence of modern forms of wit, satire, and other humorous genres in literature and illustration; cultural negotiations of body and mind as sites of "humour"; and the role of humour(s) in discourses of feeling, sentiment, sensibility, and sociality. *We welcome articles that treat the topic in areas inside or outside of imaginative prose fiction.* Please note that this issue is NOT limited to work on traditionally defined prose humour -- we are very interested in interdisciplinary and cultural studies work on laughter, feeling, and affect in a variety of 18th-century contexts. Manuscripts (5,000-8,000 words) should reach ECF by 1 July 2013. Further details about submitting articles can be found at http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~ecf/guidelines.html
To submit an article for a special issue, or a call for articles, or a regular issue of the journal, which publishes 4 issues per year, choose "Submit Article" at http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/
We encourage electronic submissions at Digital Commons (see above), but if you have any concerns about this online submissions system, you may contact the ECF editors at ecf@mcmaster.ca

UPDATE: Reinterpreting Carson McCullers (The 85th Annual SAMLA Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, November 8-10, 2013)

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:32:36 -0400

DEADLINE EXTENDED: JUNE 1, 2013

To inspire more work on Georgia writer Carson McCullers and her legacy, this panel invites papers discussing innovative ways of analyzing texts related to McCullers, whether biographies, literary works, or adaptations of either. These reinterpretations might include discussions of McCullers’ works in the context of her contemporaries (Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, et al), film or dramatic adaptations of her work, or her contributions to today’s southern gothic, Grit Lit, and/or Queer Studies. We welcome essays that address the conference’s theme “Cultures, Contexts, Images, and Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds” as related to studies of McCullers (however, the scope of the panel is not limited by this theme).
Please e-mail abstracts (250 to 500 words) to Courtney George, george_courtney2@columbusstate.edu, by 1 June 2013.

Gender, Identity and Sexuality for NEPCA conference; deadline June 10, 2013; conference 10/25-26

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:59:35 -0400

Currently soliciting paper proposals for the upcoming NEPCA conference at St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont, October 25/26, 2013.

Papers may deal with any aspect of gender and identity, sex and sexuality in popular culture. Papers focusing on recent public and media discourse regarding marriage equality are especially welcome, though papers on all topics within the areas listed above are encouraged.

Please submit a 250-word abstract,as an attachment in MSWord, to Dr. Donald P. Gagnon at the email address listed. Please include your university or college affiliation and preferred email and telephone contact information. Deadline for submissions is June 10.

GagnonD@wcsu.edu

The Monstrous

Mon, 13 May 2013 03:06:24 -0400

ARENA ROMANISTICA. JOURNAL OF ROMANCE STUDIES - a print academic journal published by the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen - announces a call for paper on the topic of the “monstrous”, a term that could be applied in a range of contexts and fields.

As we know, the word monster --and its versions in French (monstre), Italian (mostro), Spanish (monstruo), and Portuguese (monstro)-- comes from the Latin word monstrare, which means to show. On the other hand the word monstrum, from monere (to warn), makes of the monster a sign of caution, a reminder of the dangers and threats that lurk around us.

In times of crisis our imagination turns to the monstrous in order to make the conflicts of the world around us tangible, more concrete, and, therefore, maybe even beatable. Traditionally, the aesthetic representations of the monstrous have been a way to safely explore and question the horrors experienced in society. The 21st century seems to be no exception, and today’s culture can be said to mark a new era of the monstrous. Neo-gothic novels and films flourish in our pop culture, and these can often be interpreted as allegories for contemporary dystopian scenarios.
On the other hand, our conception of the monster and the monstrous is closely related to our understanding of what is human and what is not. Therefore, vampires, cyborgs, zombies, superheroes, hermaphrodites, and all kinds of imaginable monsters contest the limits of the human and its representation through time.

With this in mind, we welcome contributions to our journal in both Romance languages and English; theoretical reflections as well as empirical studies and readings of individual works.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Monsters in film and literature
• The history of monstrosity
• Dreams and nightmares
• Transgression, exclusion and marginality
• Bodily excesses or lacks
• Gender norms and deviance
• Monster as a sociocultural component
• The monstrous in linguistics
• Linguistic politics and/or the restriction of linguistic liberty
• The monstrous as allegory for social crisis
• The cartography of monsters
• The rhetoric of the monstrous

We welcome manuscripts from the field of linguistics, literature, film, and cultural studies. All contributions should have a connection to Romance studies.

Deadline for submission of papers: September 1, 2013.

Stylesheet and submission procedures are available at our website:
http://arenaromanistica.uib.no/

For further information: arenaromanistica@uib.no

Littérature et anachronisme, NeMLA, Harrisburg, PE, April 3-6, 2014 (deadline September 30)

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:07:23 -0400

Littérature et anachronisme

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

Ce panel cherche à mettre à profit dans le champ de l’histoire littéraire francophone la critique récente de la version téléologique de l’histoire. Usant du rapprochement et de l’anachronisme, la pensée glissantienne offre un modèle pour une telle tentative. Quels autres paysages littéraires et culturels émergent d’un tel déplacement épistémologique ? Merci d’envoyer les propositions de communication accompagnées d’une courte description biographique à maxime.philippe@mail.mcgill.ca.

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

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

SAMLA 85 Call for Papers. Deadline June 1, 2013

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:43:52 -0400

Transnationalizing the Digital
Digital media has created a counterspace in transnational feminism by creating virtual communities where solidarity can be forged and resisted. Benedict Anderson argues that a subject’s sense of belonging in an “imagined community” is constitutive of nationalism, defined as national identity. These virtual cyber-spaces bring together divergent marginalized voices across the globe by recreating Anderson’s imagined community. For cyberfeminists, the “imagination” that binds them is the notion of “home” or the same putative place of origin. As Ananda Mitra has pointed out, “since the original home is now inaccessible, the
Internet space is co-opted to find the same companionship that was available in the original place of residence” (25). This panel seeks to explore, challenge, and affirm ways in which digital media has opened up possibilities in transnational feminist discourse. Transnational feminism is no longer considered as an alternative space in feminist solidarity, but a much needed intervention in globalized economy. This panel particularly welcomes papers that look at globalization and labor circulation, migration and immigrant workers, blogging and activism, feminist websites, social media and women’s issues. By June 1, 2013, please send a 300-word abstract, brief bio, institutional affiliation, and A/V needs to Suchismita Banerjee, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, at banerjeesuchi@gmail.com

[Update] Smallville: Essay Collection

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:10:52 -0400

Articles are invited for an essay collection on Smallville. This collection will specifically focus on issues of gender, sex, and power in this retelling and expansion of the Superman universe(s).

Superman has held audiences’ attention since his first appearance in 1938. Since then the Man of Steel and his fellow characters have never left the audiences’ sight. Multiple reinventions and installments found a highpoint between the years 2001-2011 with the CW´s hit series which not only told the story of Superman´s teenage years for the first time, but also added new characters such as Chloe Sullivan. Moreover, including members of the Justice League and the Justice Society of America opened up the series’ universe even more and created an alternate universe in the DC realm like few Superman installments before. After its successful ten-year run, Smallville´s story is far from over and although the actors are ready to move on, their audience is not. The series’ continuation as a graphic novel leaves more room to experiment with different formatting and even more interesting storylines. Moreover, Smallville’s active fan base continues to produce fan fiction and videos online, illustrating the continuing interest in the series.

The following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:
• Sex and Gender in Fandom and/or Reception
• The Power of Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Romance and Desire
• Monstrosity, Sex, and Gender
• Heroism and Gender
• Villainy and Gender
• Identity, Sex, and Gender
• Representations of masculinity, femininity, and within Smallville

What to Send:

300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by June 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by December 1, 2013.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to: supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com and Nadine.Farghaly@gmx.net

[NeMLA 2014] Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:14:15 -0400

Conference: Northeast Modern Language Association Convention (2014)
Date: April 3-6, 2014
Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Panel Title: "Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory"

Panel Description:

While affect theory has expanded the analysis of affect and emotion within the humanities, a surprisingly small set of feelings has taken prominence within the field. Indeed, critics such as Heather Love, Sianne Ngai, and Sara Ahmed evince a strong bias toward negative affects. Within a consumer culture that praises positive feeling at every turn, these scholars argue, "ugly feelings" appear to afford critical agency for cultural resistance. One consequence of this thesis, however, is that positive affects such as pleasure, happiness, and peace appear suspiciously complicit with dominant ideologies. Recently, critics within queer studies have begun to challenge this logic. For example, Elizabeth Freeman, Jose Munoz, and Michael Snediker each identify the critical agency of pleasure, hope, and optimism for marginalized communities. Yet much work remains to be done within affect theory to challenge the binary between positive and negative feelings and to complicate their respective relationships to cultural power. To that end, this panel seeks papers that expand the palette of affects traditionally analyzed within affect studies. How might these understudied affects operate as "critical" in contemporary literature and culture? Why do certain affects signify as "critical" whereas others fall to the margins? How can affect theory redefine our conceptions of cultural critique and critical agency more broadly?

Papers are welcome to focus on a single affect, a genera of feelings, or the theoretical problem of affect as a whole. However, panelists are encouraged to ground their arguments within a specific a cultural and historical context.

Submit 250-500 word abstracts to tyler.bradway@gmail.com by September 30th, 2013.

NeMLA 2014: Irish and Indian-Anglophone Writing in a Transnational Feminism Context

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:03:01 -0400

NeMLA 2014 cfp

Title: Irish and Indian-Anglophone Writing in a Transnational Feminism Context

This panel will explore Irish literature in conversation with various postcolonial and world/global literatures. More specifically, this panel is interested in developing connections between Irish texts and Indian-Anglophone texts, but welcome papers that consider Irish writing in a more global context or beyond the borders of the nation. With increased debates around globalization and claims that we are “beyond the nation,” this panel welcomes papers that examine representations of the family, the community, and the nation-state. Please send your abstract with a brief C.V. to tara.harney@uconn.edu by 09/30/13.

Session ID: 14118

[UPDATE]"Past Tense, Future Tensions" SCLA Conference Oct. 18-19, 2013 (abstract deadline extended)

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:30:21 -0400

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Abstracts due 6/1/13.

The tenuous relationship between the past, present, and future complicates the practice of creating as well as translating time in imaginary works. Grammatically, tense marks more than temporality; it also highlights degrees of being that remain unreachable or forever distant. At the 2013 SCLA conference we will examine what it means to stage the past and direct the future in our literary and artistic texts. Whether anachronistic, politicized, or asynchronous, tense marks the uneasy space where recollection and projection meet.

Keynote Speaker: Wai Chee Dimock (William Lampson Professor at Yale University, and author of Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time).

We welcome 250 word paper proposals or 500 word panel proposals sent to Prof. Heather Hayton (sclaconference@guilford.edu) by June 1, 2013. Graduate students who wish to be considered for an SCLA Travel Scholarship should indicate this in their cover letter and include a short vita (2 pages maximum). We will also hold 2 undergraduate sessions and welcome undergraduate proposals (please specify).

See website for full conference cfp: http://complit-scla.org/id14.html

ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:38:32 -0400

From Escape in the Fog (1945) to Ride Lonesome (1959), among many other titles, few filmmakers created as unique a body of work in the United States as Budd Boetticher (1916-2001), but few directors have been as critically overlooked in existing scholarly literature.

We are currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 100 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Boetticher to appear in 2015. Essays may focus on individual films or on themes and topics that pervade his 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 Budd Boetticher 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 both:

Gary D. Rhodes
Film Studies
The Queen’s University of Belfast
gdrhodes@gmail.com

Robert Singer
CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies
collegenowsinger@aol.com

ReFocus: Announcing a New Series of Film/American Studies Anthologies

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:32:25 -0400

In 2015, the University of Edinburgh Press will launch a multivolume series of scholarly, refereed anthologies entitled ReFocus. Edited by Robert Singer (CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies) and Gary D. Rhodes (Queens University, Belfast), each book in the series will focus on an overlooked American film director who worked in the studio system, independent cinema, experimental filmmaking, or documentary tradition.

ReFocus will feature a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of the work of these American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture --its myths, values, and historical precepts. This series will consider any director who created a historical space, either in or out of the studio system, beginning with the origins of American cinema and continuing up to the present. This research may include work in other media, such as television.

The first four books in the series will cover the careers and films of George Cukor, Budd Boetticher, Fred Zinnemann, and Ida Lupino.

We will shortly begin soliciting proposals on-line for the Boetticher, Zinnemann, and Lupino editions, as well as for future volumes.

We are hopeful that proposals will appear on such filmmakers as Dorothy Arzner, William Castle, Fred Wiseman, Lionel Rogosin, Spencer Williams, Mervyn LeRoy, Rouben Mamoulian, Tobe Hooper, Robert Florey, Doris Wishman, Lizzie Borden, Amy Heckerling, Franklin Schaffner, and Woody van Dyke, among others.

If you are interested in editing such a volume, please attach a curriculum vitae to your abstract/proposal and email to both:

Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D.
Film Studies
The Queen’s University of Belfast
gdrhodes@gmail.com

Robert Singer, Ph.D.
CUNY Graduate Center, Liberal Studies
collegenowsinger@aol.com

Transmedia Horror

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:45:21 -0400

Special Issue: Transmedia Horror (Abstracts due 20th of June 2013)

Horror revolves around the distortion and transgression of apparently secure boundaries: those which separate life from death, subject from object, and past from present. The monsters of the horror film are interstitial beings who defy the ontological security of hermetic categories. Yet as the lines between media forms become increasingly blurred in contemporary culture, we are continually confronted with the question: if the monstrous is that which refuses to be categorized, where do monsters belong? By rearing their ugly heads in teen romance films, comedies and even in the ‘real’ world through theme park rides and alternate reality games, the monstrous beings of horror film extend their threats beyond the diegetic world, erupting through the boundaries which delineate genres and mediums as well. This special issue of Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media seeks original essays that explore the ways in which horror functions when the monstrous creeps through no longer distinct generic and media forms. Possible areas of inquiry will include, but are not limited to:

Horror in games, theme parks and the internet
High concept horror television
Advertising spaces, censorship and horror
The melting of the boundary which fences horror off from other genres
Horror in viral marketing and alternate reality games
Liminal media spaces
Disturbances to the ‘safe’ role of the spectator when the monster threatens to extend beyond the diegetic narrative and into the ‘real’ world
The function and construction of the monster in paranormal romance texts
The role of monsters and the monstrous in contemporary news media

Interested contributors are invited to submit abstracts between 400 and 500 words long (attached as a Word document) by the 20th of June, 2013.

Notification of acceptance: 30th of July, 2013.

Full papers between 5,000 and 7,000 words due 20th of October, 2013 - to be edited and redrafted thereafter.

Final essays due back: 20th of December, 2013

Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media is an online, fully refereed journal.
Its on-line form encourages the use of links and thus the incorporation of other media objects, information and environments. Authors are encouraged, especially in this issue, to take advantage of this format.

Abstracts and questions should be directed to Naja.McFadden@unimelb.edu.au and Jessica.Balanzategui@unimelb.edu.au

Literature and/in illness Bordeaux (France) December 19-20, 2013

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:02:03 -0400

Appel à communications

19-20 décembre 2013

Colloque international à l’université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3/International Conference University Michel de Montaigne-BOrdeaux 3 (France)

Illness and/in Literature and the Arts

EA CLIMAS-CLARE (ERCIF)

“Like anyone who has had an extraordinary experience I wanted to describe it . . . My initial experience of illness was a series of disconnected shocks and my first instinct was to try to bring it under control by turning it into a narrative.”

Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness and Other Writings on Life and Death

In his book The Normal and the Pathological, Georges Canghilem, a French physician and philosopher, writes that “disease is not a variation on the dimension of health, it is a new dimension of life.”

For centuries illness has been talked about mostly in medical literature. But since the beginning of the 20th century, it has increasingly become a subject for literature and the arts (painting and cinema in particular)—whether it be physical, mental or moral. Even if it is still perceived, experienced, as a “disaster”, it is no longer a secret belonging to the private sphere. Ill people (or their family) tell their stories, writers write personal or invented stories of illness, moviemakers show it on screen. A. W. Frank mentions “the need of ill people to tell their stories, in order to construct new maps and new perceptions of their relationship to the world” (The Wounded Storyteller, 1995). Anne Hunsaker Hawkins uses the term “pathography” to refer to this subgenre of autobiography, even if the narrator is not always the ill person.

However, quoting Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”, Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain points out that pain is difficult to express, let alone describe: “Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it.” In The Gay Science, Nietzsche gives it a name and calls it “dog,” explaining: “I can scold it and vent my bad mood on it, as others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.” It is a means for him to regain control, at least to try to do so, thanks to a metaphor; others use “as if” structures to describe their pain—but all need images “to externalize, objectify, and make shareable what is originally an interior and unshareable experience” (Scarry). While the body speaks in symptoms that require deciphering, the “Wounded Storyteller” “talks around”, “obliquely”, and his narrative needs decoding.

Following Canghilem’s theories, Gilles Deleuze developed a so-called “vitalist” philosophy. He examined a certain number of literary texts presenting the same “crack-up” (Fitzgerald, 1936), and he managed to explore the worst and find the best in it. Does it mean that health is “asphyxiating” as Philippe Godin puts it? And that literature is “restorative”, as suggested by Deleuze?

The conference will address the above-mentioned questions. Papers can focus on all artistic forms in the English-speaking world. Cultural studies and gender studies are welcome.

Abstracts of about 300 words, in English or in French, are to be sent with a short biography (200 words maximum) to Pascale Antolin (pascale.antolin@u-bordeaux3.fr) and Marie-Lise Paoli (marie-lise.paoli@u-bordeaux3.fr) before July 10, 2013.

Notification of acceptance will be sent within the following week.

[UPDATE] CFP Four Nations Fiction: Women and the Novel 1780-1830 - Deadline Extended

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:44:05 -0400

In Blackwood’s Magazine in September 1819, John Wilson reflected on the towering fame of three contemporary women poets in the following terms: ‘Scotland has her Baillie – Ireland her Tighe – England her Hemans.’ The work of these women in fact represents all four parts of Britain in 1819, but who would replace them if fiction was the focus, rather than poetry?

Recent book-length studies of women writers who have, until now, occupied more peripheral positions within accounts of the period – Anna Seward, Elizabeth Hamilton, Joanna Baillie, Margaret Holford Hodson – and republications of lesser-known novels by major writers, such as Lady Morgan, have moved these writers into new zones of reception and criticism. But as literary canons continue to be contested and reconfigured by new readings and scholarly editions, where should we be looking next? Who will move into the spaces formerly occupied by familiar-but-peripheral writers? How, in the case of Welsh, Scottish and Irish novelists, might they be viewed within a comparative but often problematic four nations framework? What about regional or provincial English writers, and the ways in which identity may be shaped or played out in these contexts? What do form and narrative contribute to the creation of national fictions, or representations of Wales, Ireland or Scotland in the period?

Proposals are sought for 20-minute papers on fiction by women in the period 1780-1830, including but not limited to the following: the national tale; representations of local, regional or national identities; depictions of place, especially in Welsh, Irish, Scottish and regional English contexts; history and historical fiction; national Gothic and the novel; emerging or little-known women writers; the role of modern editions; digitising novels by women.

Please send abstracts (c. 250 words) to Elizabeth Edwards: e.edwards@wales.ac.uk

Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2013

http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/Four-Nations-Fiction-p...

[Update] Call for Contributors: Encyclopedia of Asian American Culture

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:57:53 -0400

Call for Contributors: Encyclopedia of Asian American Culture

This two-volume encyclopedia, to be published by ABC-CLIO, covers the broad roots of Asian American culture including living traditions, rites of passage, folk culture, popular culture, subcultures, and other forms of shared expression. The essays explore the commonalities and variation of cultural expressions and provide readers with rich detail about the historical, regional, and ethnic/racial diversity within specific traditions.

The essays range from 1,000 to 2,000 words, depending on the amount of material. Generally speaking, the essays cover: history and origins; regional practices, traditions, and artifacts; expressive forms in contemporary culture; and further reading. In addition, essays also include sidebars (100-300 words) that highlight interesting facts, including but not limited to: biographies of key participants, scholars, or other important individuals; artifacts (lyrics, sayings, advertisements, invitations, material culture, etc.); and events (descriptions of particular aspects of the tradition, costumes, rituals, participant roles, etc.). The deadline is December 31, 2013.

Please send inquiries to the editor:

Lan Dong, PhD
Associate Professor
English Department, UHB 3050
University of Illinois Springfield
One University Plaza
Springfield, IL 62703
Email: ldong4@uis.edu

Below is a list of available headwords.

Headword Target Word Count

Chinese American Visual Arts and Artists 1000
Chinese Calligraphy 1000

Asian Americans and Education 1000
Asian American Science and Scientists 1000
Chinese Americans and Education 1000

Cambodian American Children and Family 1000
Chinese American Community Organizations 1000
Chinese Language Schools 1000
Filipino American Children and Family 1000
Filipino American Community Organizations 1000
Japanese American Community Organizations 1000
Korean American Children and Family 1000
Korean American Community Organizations 1000
Vietnamese American Children and Family 1000

Cambodian American Immigration 2000
Korean American Immigration 2000

Asian American Folklore 2000
Asian American Food 2000
Cambodian American Folklore 1000
Chinese American Folklore 1500
Filipino American Folklore 1000
Fortune Cookie 1000
Fusion Cuisine 1000
Japanese American Folklore 1500
Japanese Tea Ceremony 1000
Kim-chee 1000
Lunar New Year 1000

Asian American (Auto)Biographies 2000
Bangladeshi American Culture 1000
Burmese (Myanmar) American Culture 1000
Laotian American Culture 1000
Malaysian American Culture 1000
Nepalese American Culture 1000
Pakistani American Culture 1000
Sri Lankan American Culture 1000
Thai American Culture 1000
Tibetan American Culture 1000

Cambodian American Religion and Beliefs 1000
Chinese American Religion and Beliefs 1000
Filipino American Religion and Beliefs 1000
Japanese American Religion and Beliefs 1000
Korean American Religion and Beliefs 1000
Pakistani American Religion and Beliefs 1000

Intersecting Gender - 22nd - 23rd November 2013, Queen's University Belfast

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:26:57 -0400

The idea of intersectionality in the field of feminist and gender studies has increasingly been used to facilitate deeper understandings of contemporary gendered identity and experience. Intersectionality in this usage seeks to speak to the coinciding of gender with other biological, social and cultural categories of personal identity and/or oppression, but also to the intersections which can be observed between gender and other apparently “gender-neutral” areas and experiences.

The Sibéal Irish Postgraduate Feminist & Gender Studies Network will hold their annual conference in Queen’s University Belfast on 22nd and 23rd November. The conference invites engagement with the intersections of gender as they can be detected in a range of locations, spaces and manners. The conference seeks to stimulate a wide and inter-disciplinary approach to the theorisation and everyday practice of gender identity. To that end, paper, panel and performance proposals are sought on, but not limited to:

Practice-based and theoretical perspectives on gender, sexuality and LGBTQI concerns as they relate to:
• The Arts, Literature and Performance
• Law, Politics and Development
• Health and Bodies
• Community and Activism
• Conflict and Nationality
• Economy, Poverty and Welfare

We highly encourage postgraduate students at the MA and PhD level from any area or discipline with an interest in feminist or gender studies to submit proposals.

Abstracts or proposals of no more than 250 words should be submitted to sibealbelfast@gmail.com

All selected papers should be twenty minutes long.

Deadline for submission is 16th August 2013.

A number of travel bursaries and a best paper prize will be available to conference presenters, further information on these will be made available after the close of the call for papers. Further information on the conference can be found at www.intersectinggender.wordpress.com

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:11:49 -0400

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Edited by Robert McKay & John Miller (University of Sheffield, UK)

The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

Wolves lope across the gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to the human, they become, in the figure of the werewolf, liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal: humans in animal form and animals in human form. They are metonyms of forbidding landscapes, an unsettling howl in the distance; more intimately, their imposing fangs and gaping mouths threaten a monstrous consumption. The gothic wolf is singular, anomalous but gothic wolves form a demonic multiplicity, a pack. Wolves and werewolves function as a site for working out or contesting complex anxieties of difference: of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality; but the
imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long demonized and persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Wolves, then, raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

We welcome proposals for chapters on any aspect of wolves, werewolves and the Gothic on page or screen in any historical period for a collection of essays to be submitted to The University of Wales Press series of Gothic Literary Studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that seek to read gothic wolves in the context of material histories of (for example) human/animal relations; environmental development; empire and globalization; and gender and sexuality.

Please send chapter abstracts of 500 words along with a short biography to Robert McKay (r.mckay@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by July 31st, 2013. Completed essays will be 6500 words in length and will be commissioned in September 2013 for delivery in the autumn of 2014.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not restricted to:

Lycanthropy/metamorphosis
Real and imaginary wolves
Animal ethics and the anthropomorphic imagination
Monstrosity
Fangs, mouths, the oral and the abject
Lupine presences and gothic spaces
Wolves and the Postcolonial Gothic
Captivity/escape
Wolf to Man – gothic politics from Plautus to Hobbes to Agamben
Gothic wolves, capital and globalization
Sublimity
Natural and unnatural histories
Wolf packs/lone wolves: multitudes and singularities
Ecocritical readings
Zoonosis
She-wolves, he-wolves and gender criticism
Wolfish appetite
Howling and gothic soundscapes
Queer readings
Dogs/wolves; ferity/ferocity
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Wolves and psychoanalysis from Freud to Deleuze and Guattari
Reforming the Gothic: comic (or teen) werewolves

Call for Abstracts/Book:"A Practical Guide to Prepare Graduate Students of Color for their First Job in Academia"

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:35:03 -0400

As many of us who are members of academia know, most graduate students are not prepared for the political and social rigors of their first tenure track position. Most colleges and university environments are filled with roadblocks, pitfalls and other often unexpected challenges for newly minted Ph.D., Ed.D., MFA., J.D.s, and those with other terminal degrees. This is particularly true for junior faculty of color, women, Gay and Lesbian, and other underrepresented faculty.

Professors Dwayne Mack and Elwood Watson, the editors of a forthcoming collection of essays tentatively titled "Telling it Like it Is: A Practical Guide to Prepare Graduate Students of Color for their First Job in Academia," invite faculty and administrators to submit abstracts related to their early and/or current experiences in academia. While stories of challenges, adversity and barriers are welcome, this is primarily an anthology for educators to mentor, rather than simply outline grievances. This edited volume will give faculty and administrators the opportunity to reflect and share strategies with graduate students of color on how to transition from graduate school to a tenure-track/tenure-stream position.

Contributors are asked to share their personal experiences on topics such as interviewing strategies, c.v. preparation, finding the right institutional fit, negotiating a contract, outlining a tenure and promotion plan, responding to microaggressions, macroaggressions, sexism, racism, homophobic attitudes, religious and cultural prejudice, avoiding cultural taxation, effective teaching and publishing strategies, managing service and teaching expectations, and developing meaningful relationships with junior and senior faculty. Other similarly related topics are welcomed as well.

We feel that this forthcoming collection of essays will provide a valuable service as well as prepare graduate students of color for professional success. We welcome collaborative pieces and submissions from scholars at majority White institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), small liberal arts colleges, Research I institutions, and Community Colleges.

Please send an abstract – no more than 350 words by July 29, 2013 to
Dwayne Mack, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History and Carter G. Woodson Chair of African American History
Berea College
Department of History
CPO 2027
Berea, Kentucky 40404
dwayne_mack@berea.edu
We will accept abstracts via U.S. mail, but electronic abstracts are preferred.