category: general announcements

MSA 15 registration open

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:36:00 -0400

The 15th annual conference of the Modernist Studies Association, entitled “Everydayness & the Event,” is fast approaching. We’ve received a phenomenal number of excellent applications, and are currently looking forward to hosting over 500 delegates from around the world at the University of Sussex between August 29th and September 1st 2013.

We’re very pleased to announce that registration is now open.

You can find information about registration and other aspects of the conference – satellite events, keynotes, accommodation, and travel – on our conference website: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/index.html.

If you missed our deadlines for seminar, panel, and round table proposals, it is not too late to become formally involved in this year’s conference. There remain two avenues for taking part:

Seminar Sessions: If you aren’t familiar with the seminar format, it is a lively and original forum unique to the Modernist Studies Association: 25 seminars on a wide variety of topics are now posted on-line (see http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/seminars.html). Those who sign up to join those seminars will be asked to circulate a short paper to all participants prior to the conference. These papers will then form the basis of a group discussion that is scheduled during the conference proper. No proposal is necessary.

“What Are You Reading?” Sessions: You can join a “What are you Reading?” session when you register on-line for the conference by simply naming a scholarly book you’d like to present; conference coordinators will then include you in a discussion slot alongside other scholars. For more information, see: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa15/wayr.html.

Please feel free to attend as a speaker or a listener – all are welcome. And please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at msabrighton@gmail.com with any concerns or queries.

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 -- 2013 MMLA Convention: Is the Artist Present? (Confirmed Special Session)

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:06:40 -0400

In 2010, performance artist Marina Abramović presented a retrospective show at MOMA entitled Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present that included one new performance. From March 14 to May 31, Abramović performed a solo piece in the museum’s atrium; she invited visitors to sit silently across from her for as long as they chose. In this way, she was “present” in more ways than one; being present was her piece, she was present in her piece, and she presented her piece all simultaneously. This unique and profound performance, and the title of the show itself, raises questions about the role of the artist in contemporary art.

These questions are equally relevant to the discussion of contemporary fiction. In some postmodernist texts, the author (or some version of the author) has reinserted him or herself, complicating Roland Barthes declaration of the death of the author in 1967. What is this aberration and what has caused it? Is the author suddenly present, sitting in the room as it were, across the table from us as we read? Has the author been resuscitated, resurrected, or at least propped up in apparent lifelikeness? And if so, what are the implications of this presence?

This is now a confirmed special session for the 2013 M/MLA in Milwaukee. Please send abstracts and brief vita to Dr. Brett Wiley at bwiley1@mvnu.edu by June 15, 2013. The conference takes place in Milwaukee from Nov. 7-10, 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

We invite 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

Assimilation & Vice in American Literature, NeMLA Convention, Harrisburg, PA (April 3-6, 2014)

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:45:55 -0400

We typically think and speak of assimilation not only as a process that results in cultural hybridity but as a process accomplished through hard work and sacrifice. But what role does vice play in this assimilation narrative? Moreover, what do forms of vice tell us about the time period from which the author writes? In speaking of 'vice,' we will not limit ourselves to criminal acts (although we will not exclude these, either); rather, we will also speak of the narrative functionality and potentiality of activities like dancing, gambling, alcohol consumption, and adultery in assimilation stories.
Please send 250-300 word abstracts to Francisco.Delgado@stonybrook.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2013

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

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

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

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

POST-9/11 NARRATIVES OF AMERICAN IM/EMIGRATION

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

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

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

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

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

GAMES OF LATE MODERNITY; Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: 75 Years Later (January 15-17, 2014)

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:18:09 -0400

GAMES OF LATE MODERNITY
Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: 75 Years Later (January 15-17, 2014)

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

Though, self-evident as Huizinga’s thesis still seems to be, with regard to multiple Huizinga-quotations in various fields of contemporary scholarship, the modern-day situation also raises a pivotal problem: it seems impossible to keep thinking of game and play as a humanistic principle of knowledge, ethics and aesthetics in the exact same sense as Huizinga did. Modern day experiences such as warfare and economical and scientific fraud, wherein every rule of the game is being postponed, force us to revise and amplify Huizinga’s thesis, in order to rediscover Huizinga’s far-reaching significance today. The purpose of this three-day conference is to bring together experts from a number of disciplines to shed light on Huizinga’s thesis. Participants are asked to address at least one of the following issues:

1. Playing after Auschwitz: how is it possible to formulate a theory of play that is able to deal with culture not only in its elegant and innocuous appearances, but in its most cruel and tragic forms as well?

2. To play or being played with: The power of the culture industry tells us that we are playing all of the time, from the first until the very last minute. But one has to come to terms with the fact that this can hardly be the free-play Huizinga has proclaimed.

3. From cultural history to sociology: intellectuals such as Levi-Strauss and Foucault and many more have deployed an idea of game as the structure society. How can they revise and strengthen Huizinga’s concept of game and play?

4. The ethos of play: to play means to play by the rules. But isn’t the disappearance of any rules whatsoever precisely late modernity’s main characteristic? How to deal with those who cheat?

We welcome individual abstracts as well as panel proposals, from every relevant field, such as sociology, anthropology and criminology, history and historiography, economy and management studies, ethics, philosophy, aesthetics and cultural studies, biology and psychology.

Speakers are: Loïc Wacquant, Elena Esposito, Giorgio Agamben (t.b.c.), Dubravka Ugrešić, Thomas Macho, Jos de Mul, Joyce Goggin, and Helmut Lethen.

If you are interested in participating, please submit a 300-words paper proposal and a short résumé of your current research by September 1, 2013 to Léon Hanssen, Professor of Life Writing and Cultural Memory, Tilburg University, email: info@gamesoflatemodernity.org

Participants will be informed of acceptance by September 30, 2013. The conference fee will be €250 and includes: two receptions, lunch and refreshments during all three days of the conference, free admittance to De Pont (museum of contemporary art), access to all artist performances and video screenings.

Together with the keynotes a number of papers will be selected for a book to be published by Amsterdam University Press and an affiliated international academic publishing house.

Defining Stages in Women's Lives--Edited Volume

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:06:31 -0400

Since the emergence of women’s studies in the late 1960s, many books, articles and edited volumes have addressed and analyzed literary depictions of women’s life experiences. Studies have focused on gender and identity, women’s voices, women’s agency, women and work, women coming to writing, feminist histories, gendered sexualities, women and the body, women in relationships, women and the family, women and violence. A considerable body of work has been published in both English and French on women’s autobiography and on the mother-daughter relationship. Beginning with the classic feminist texts of the 1970s (Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Nancy Friday), there has been a steady production on the themes of motherhood and mothering in many different literary contexts (eg. Davidson, Hirsch, Norman, Gyssels, Jurney, Rye, Jensen). Since the 1990s, a number of studies have also focused on other defining stages in women’s lives: childhood (eg. Norman, ed.), adolescence (eg. Di Cecco and Gale), aging and dying (eg. Woodward and Ladimer).

The proposed volume will take a more global and synthetic approach to these distinct and defining stages in women’s lives. By looking at key moments and passages in relation to one another and within the context of a continuing life story, we will be able to begin to trace the ways in which women’s identities evolve over a lifetime. We will seek to elucidate how these significant transitional moments set the stage for women’s evolving definitions (and interrogations) of their identities and roles.

While there exist a few important targeted studies on some of these topics, many focus on literatures of earlier periods (Woodward, Ladimer, Gale, Jensen) and/or on a largely anglophone corpus (Waxman, Cosslett, Bilston, Looser, Francus). Very little can be found specifically addressing the themes of mothering, adolescence or aging in the fictions of contemporary francophone women writers. Our book intends to fill this gap by limiting our focus to works published by French and Francophone women writers since 1980.
Three research areas will be considered:
1) the first one will center on narratives of coming-of-age and adolescence. Among the topics to be addressed in this passage from girlhood to womanhood are the experience of menstruation, the awakening of sexuality, the questioning and/or affirmation of gender identity, the complexities of women’s socialization.
2) the second one will include essays on the literary treatment of mothering, including such themes as childbirth, adoption, “bad” mothering, surrogacy, the refusal of motherhood.
3) the third one will look at literary depictions of women aging and approaching death. The focus will be on the declining years when lives seem to shrink but perspectives expand as one begins to confront one’s own mortality. Articles in this section may focus on the particular experiences of loss that come with age—physical decline, loss of friends, mobility, energy, health, language, autonomy—and on the changing roles women adopt as they leave jobs behind, move into retirement and perhaps become increasingly dependent on others (as when mothers find themselves being mothered by their own daughters).

In our choice of essays and in our critical introduction, we will be insisting on the complexities and tensions inherent in each of these defining stages. Women’s negotiations of a life’s transitional moments are inevitably filled with ambivalence. There is unquestionably both continuity and rupture at each juncture since the movement from one stage to the next (coming of age; becoming (or not becoming) a mother; coming to terms with old age and mortality) necessarily means both carrying the self forward and leaving the self behind. In addition, as the volume’s own life story will suggest, attention to these defining stages lets us realize the relationships not only within each generation but also across generations.

In choosing articles that treat the themes described above, we are particularly interested in soliciting essays that will analyze the work of some of the following writers: Hélène Cixous, Annie Ernaux, Gisèle Pineau, Marie-Claire Blais, Maryse Condé, Werewere Liking, Nicole Brossard, Marie-Célie Agnant, Abla Farhoud, Denise Boucher, Nina Bouraoui, Louise Dupré, Marie Darrieussecq, Leonora Miano.

Questions should be directed to Karen McPherson (ksmcpher@uoregon.edu) and/ or Florence Ramond Jurney (fjurney@gettysburg.edu).

Abstracts of 250 to 300 words should be send to both Karen McPherson (ksmcpher@uoregon.edu) and Florence Ramond Jurney (fjurney@gettysburg.edu) by August 15, 2013. The final articles will be expected by January 10, 2014.

Unwired! The Uses of Mobile Technology in Foreign Language Education April 3-6 2014

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:52:51 -0400

For better or for worse, technology has long been associated with foreign language education, from “old school” audio labs and overhead projectors, with their focus on language form, to more recent software innovations and conferencing programs that have accompanied the shift to communicative language teaching. Today’s foreign language educators are not only expected to be familiar with such technology but also to incorporate it fully into their classrooms, as increasing references to technology in recent editions of the MLA Job List attest. This session explores how the next generation of technology—that is, mobile technology (tablets, e-readers, smartphones, etc.)—may be put to use to enhance language education, from grammar instruction to creative writing to teaching about culture and society. What are the best practices at each level of instruction? What is the impact on students? Are classroom dynamics changed, and if so, how and in what ways? If there are undoubtedly advantages, are there also disadvantages? If so, how might these be mitigated? To be sure, such technology is already raising serious questions about long-debated topics, including where knowledge in language instruction originates (the teacher, the student), how it is processed and used, and whether or not it involves intentionality. Papers will present practical examples, contextualized in this broader theoretical framework, to engage discussion of these important questions with the ultimate goal of enriching the ongoing debate.

If interested, please submit an abstract of 300 words or less to:

Florence Ramond Jurney, Gettysburg College (fjurney@gettysburg.edu)
John P. Murphy, Gettysburg College (jpmurphy@gettysburg.edu)

Deadline: September 30, 2013

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

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.

[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.

“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

CFP--2014 EAAS Conference Workshop: Food on the Home Front, Food on the Warfront: Conflict and the American Diet

Tue, 21 May 2013 03:36:43 -0400

Food has been an inextricable part of American warfare since the inception of the nation. From the traveling cooks of the Revolutionary War, to the advent of canned provisions during the Civil War, to the renaming of German dishes such as sauerkraut (liberty cabbage) and hamburgers (liberty steaks) during World War I, to the rise of Asian cuisine during World War II and the Vietnam War, to the surge of Middle Eastern cuisine and the French fries/freedom fries controversy of the post 9/11 era, military conflict has impacted the American diet both on the warfront and on the home front. While international politics and domestic propaganda ostensibly initiated and sustained many of these dietary changes, some outlasted the wars with which they were originally associated, becoming a permanent part of American culinary culture. The consumption of canned food, for example, was originally designed for soldiers and travelers who could not always access a fresh cooked meal. Canned food was then sold to middle class consumers as luxury items which would facilitate their busy lifestyles. After World War II, however, canned food was democratized through mass production, becoming a generic and inexpensive part of American life. Today, it is a significant part of the national palate, spawning entire industries (tuna) and foodways (spam cuisine).

War has also prompted Americans to rethink their consumption of food, ranging from the improvement of domestic beer brewing (when patriotic Americans refused to consume German beer); to the conservation and home gardening movements of World Wars I and II; to more recent efforts centering on organic and green consumption after Americans witnessed what chemicals could do to the human body during the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. Food has also served as points of contention between war-torn nations, with Hershey Bars and Coca Cola functioning first as soft power or cultural “envoys of peace,” and later as insidious portents of the American capitalism and imperialism that many associate with “hard power” US global interventions.

This workshop, which is part of the 2014 EAAS Conference at the Hague (Netherlands, April 3-6), seeks to explore the meaning of food in relation to the conference theme of American conflict and war. The workshop chairs encourage the submission of paper proposals dealing with the ways in which war has impacted American foodways and culinary culture since the eighteenth century. We are especially interested in submissions that consider material objects such as menus, posters, food packaging, recipes and cookbooks as well as media representations, including pamphlets, short films, and public service announcements produced by the US government, related agencies, and NGOs. Topics may include, but are not limited to: representations of food and war in American literature; war and the scarcity of food; food conservation movements and grassroots activism; home production and canning; gender, class, race and food; the evolution of the American diet; culinary creativity, food substitutions, and changes in cooking style; the American consumer and shopping habits; food, war, and children; propaganda and patriotism; cooking classes, textbooks and indoctrination; food rationing and hoarding; nutrition during wartime; and comparative/transnational approaches.

Paper proposals (abstracts of no more than 500 words) and one-paragraph bios should be emailed to both workshop chairs by October 1, 2013.

In order to present at the conference, membership in EAAS, or one of its affiliates, is required. Unfortunately, late submissions cannot be considered. Limited travel funds will be available for individuals with accepted abstracts.

Dr. Tanfer Emin Tunc (tanfer@hacettepe.edu.tr)
Dr. Annessa Ann Babic (annessababic@gmail.com)
www.eaas.eu

[UPDATE] Energy in Literature

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:18:19 -0400

June 15th, 2013, EDITED ANTHOLOGY
Energy in Literature: Essays on Energy and Its Social and Environmental Implications in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literary Texts (edited by Paula A. Farca)

Call for papers on energy and energy sources in twentieth-century and twenty-first century literary texts (any genre, any country). Scholars of all disciplines are encouraged to submit. TrueHeart academic, an independent academic publisher on people and environment, based in Oxford UK, is publishing a series entitled "Bridging Disciplines," and has expressed interest in this project.

Energy in Literature proposes to show connections in literary texts among energy, society, and environment and explore how authors of recent literature present energy sources ranging from coal and oil to solar, wind, nuclear, biofuels, hydropower.

Energy in Literature strives to address the following questions:
What are the most common energy sources in literary texts? What are the environmental, social, political, cultural, and economic ramifications of these energy sources?
How do authors present energy issues such as production, consumption, and conservation? Do new energy sources help or hurt communities? What problems do certain energy sources create or solve and for whom? For instance, how do constructions of dams or the effects of carbon emissions impact communities and families?
How do the authors of literary texts show the balance between people’s need for energy and their duty to preserve the environment? How do authors address pollution problems?
What ethical choices do protagonists of literary texts make about energy?
How do issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class intersect with energy issues in literary texts?

Contact info:
Dr. Paula Farca (LAIS, Colorado School of Mines)
pfarca@mines.edu
Please submit your abstracts and short biographical notes to pfarca@mines.edu by June 15th 2013. Completed papers will be due in October 15th, 2013.

Atwood's Apocalyptic Visions (8/1/13)

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:39:07 -0400

Cambridge Scholars Publishing has expressed interest in a collection on Margaret Atwood and the theme of the apocalypse (though the collection is not yet under contract).

Please send abstracts of 500-600 words (or completed essays) to Karma Waltonen (kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu) by August 1, 2013.

(The last novel in the MaddAddam series will debut in September. This book focuses primarily on the story of Adam One and Zeb and resolves the problems of painballer and pigoon threats to the surviving humans and Crakers. Abstracts about what you assume will be the lens through which you read this novel/the trilogy will be considered.)

Navigating the Online Classroom: A Roundtable Discussion (NeMLA Conference - Harrisburg, PA - April 2014)

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:28:55 -0400

Amidst a city steeped in history, this session will focus attention on the future: online education. This roundtable aims to open the discussion to all of the productive possibilities that an online move can permit. This panel seeks scholars to discuss their experiences, good and bad, in online course work. Some institutions already offer many of their courses either as hybrid options or in completely online formats. Others utilize one of the many online supplements to a traditional course, such as Moodle, Blackboard, or Google Apps, as they attempt to capture the best of what the online world can offer without losing the best elements of a traditional classroom environment.

This roundtable seeks participants whose experiences can help to focus a discussion about how online tools / assignments have been or can be incorporated into the traditional face-to-face classroom model, used to augment that model in a hybrid format, or launched independently in a wholly online course. Both success stories (what has worked) as well as failures (what didn’t work and why) are encouraged. We can all learn from both types of experiences.

Topics might include:
- For faculty used to being in the same physical space with students, what is lost? What might be gained?

- Can discussion board postings in literature courses replace in-class discussion?

- How do assignments change when being undertaken in the online environment?

- Pros and cons of going wholly online versus a hybrid

- The challenge to establishing a student’s identity (how do we know she is who she says she is?)

Send 250 word abstracts to Kathleen McDonald at kmcdonal@norwich.edu by Friday, September 20, 2013.

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.

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.

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.

Rhetoric Society of America Conference - Popular Genres Panel - June 7, 2013 Deadline

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:24:50 -0400

I plan on submitting a panel proposal to the Rhetoric Society conference coming up in May 2014. I would like to find 2-3 other presenters for my panel. You should be an assistant+ professor at a college or university in the US. I am currently finishing a book for McFarland called "Formulaic Writing within Genres" on currently popular literary genres. I would like to create a panel on the generic structure of currently popular fiction genres (primarily in the novel). Please familiarize yourself with the Rhetoric Society prior to sending a query - they are interested in close rhetorical textual studies (genre, tone, characters, etc.). If you are interested, please email a couple of sentences on the topic that you would like to present on, and a short paragraph bio with your credentials. The proposals are due on July 1, 2013, so I need to receive all queries by June 7, 2013 - so I'll have enough time to pull the panel together. Participants will also have a chance to publish their papers in the tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal, now in its 5th volume. Email queries to director@anaphoraliterary.com, to the attention of Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., Director, Anaphora Literary Press, www.anaphoraliterary.com.

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.

Ecology and the Environmental Humanities

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:48:45 -0400

Rice University English Symposium

September 13-14, 2013
Ecology and the Environmental Humanities
Keynotes: Prof. Claire Colebrook, Penn State University
Prof. Timothy Morton, Rice University

The 2013 English Symposium at Rice University invites responses to the ecological and nonhuman turns in the humanities. These turns are undoubtedly responses to environmental crises, food shortages, global warming, factory farming, and species extinction, but this symposium is also interested in discussing the emergence of nonhumans, such as matter, objects, animals, systems, technology, and media, in our critical conversations surrounding these problems.

While the humanities have an opportunity to challenge the problems and solutions put forth by scientific discourses, the Anthropocene, the post-Natural, and the Posthuman come to challenge humanism. What are humanities scholars able to contribute to the conversations concerning ecology and nonhumans?

Papers can address these topics across a variety of periods, genres, disciplines, and theoretical frames, such as:

Affect Theory
Biopolitics
Capitalism and Political Economy
Critical Animal Studies
Critical Race Studies
Cybernetics and Technology
Disability Studies
Environmental Activism
Eugenics
Food studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Geopolitics
Green Capitalism
History of Science
Imperialisms
Medicine and Disease
New Materialism
New Media
Object Oriented Ontology
Population Studies
Postcolonialism
Posthumanism
Psychoanalysis
Reproduction
Settlement Studies
Social Movements
Sustainability
Systems Theory

Proposals (max 250 words) are due on July 1. Papers should be readable in 20 minutes, but shorter pieces are encouraged to allow more time for discussion. Please email proposals to rice.symposium@gmail.com as a word document or pdf file.

[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.

LiNQ Special Journal Issue "Capture" calls for papers and writing, closing July 31, 2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:46:18 -0400

www.linq.org.au

LiNQ is a 40-year old print and online peer-reviewed literary journal associated with James Cook University in Australia. Each year we print a special issue and call for scholarly essays and fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that addresses our special theme.

This year's theme is Capture.

We call for academic articles and creative submissions (fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poems) that document and question the acts of capturing, selection, preservation and representation:

• What are the ethical implications of attempting to capture a life or event?
• Is there a point where capture becomes entrapment? Are there materials that are not meant to be caught and pinned down?
• How can events, lives, identities, topics or themes be captured in exhibitions, histories, short fiction, novels, digital media or nonfiction representations?
• Are some forms more suited to capturing certain experiences than others? Are there limitations of the form and how can they be negotiated?
• How can you capture an audience?
• Why do we engage in acts of capturing? What is the lure?
• What is the psychological impact of captivity?
• How does captivity relate to questions of race, the body and the natural world?

Submissions should be no longer than 6000 words. Include a brief abstract of the article or creative submission (no more than 75 words) and a 50-word biographical note. Book reviews of no longer than 1000 words are also welcome.

Follow MLA citation style and format. All contributions should be submitted as a Mircosoft
Word file, double-spaced 12pt font. All images used must be with permission only. Suitable papers will be double-blind peer reviewed.
Hard-copy submissions are not accepted and will not be returned. Send e-mail submissions to
Ariella Van Luyn: ariella.vanluyn@jcu.edu.au

Submissions close July 31, 2013 for our December 2013 issue.

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).

[UPDATE - deadline extended] 5th Annual Louisiana Studies Conference, September 20-21, 2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:27:39 -0400

The 5th Annual Louisiana Studies Conference will be held September 20-21, 2013 at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Conference Committee is now accepting presentation proposals for the upcoming conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “Preserving Louisiana.”

This interdisciplinary conference will be accepting proposals from the following disciplines: American studies, anthropology, architecture, archival studies, communications, craft, creative writing, criminal justice, cultural studies, cultural tourism, dance, design, English and literary studies, environmental studies, ethnic studies, fashion design, film studies, fine arts, folklore, gender studies, geography, heritage resources, history, interior design, journalism, linguistics, museum studies, musicology, music performance, philosophy, photography, political science, preservation studies, psychology, queer studies, religious studies, Romance languages, social work, sociology, theatre, and vernacular architecture.

Although we are especially interested in proposals that deal with Preserving Louisiana, all papers, creative writing, and short performances (dance, music, or theatric) that address ANY aspect of Louisiana studies are welcome. Proposals are being solicited for fifteen minute presentations from scholars at all career stages as well as graduate students. Creative work (creative non-fiction, short fiction, and poetry) is welcome. Undergraduates are invited to submit, provided they are working with the guidance of a trained scholar. Proposals for panels and roundtable discussions are welcome. Registration for Conference attendees will be $40.

Abstracts (300 words max.) for scholarly proposals, creative writing, films, and short performances (dance, music, or theatric) should be sent as e-mail attachments to Dr. Shane Rasmussen, rasmussens@nsula.edu. Presentations should run no longer than 15 minutes. Briefly detail the audio / visual tools (laptop, projection screen, data projector, DVD or VCR player, etc.) or space (the stage in the Magale Recital Hall will be provided for short performances) your presentation will require, if any. Please include a separate cover page with your name, affiliation, mailing and e-mail address, and the title of your presentation. E-mails should be entitled: Louisiana Studies Conference Submission. We will send an e-mail acknowledgement of having received each abstract within one week of having received it. If you do not receive an acknowledgment please resend your submission as we may not have received it. The deadline for submissions is July 15. Accepted presenters will be notified via e-mail by July 31, 2013.

Read broadly, consider the following possibilities for presentation topics relating to Preserving Louisiana. (Note: The following list of suggestions is not meant to be comprehensive.)

Archaeology
Architecture (including Vernacular Architecture)
Archives
Art
Bridges and Structures
Built Environments
Cemeteries and Gravestones
Churches
Conservation
Crafts
Cultural Heritage
Cultural Landscapes
Curation
Dancehalls
Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Farming and Agricultural Practices
Film
Folk Industries
Folk Traditions
Folklife Apprenticeships
Gardens and Arboretums
Historical Landmarks and Sites
Historical Significance
History
Industrial Sites (cotton gins, fisheries, sugar houses)
Language Preservation
Libraries
Main Streets
Material Culture
Monuments
Murals
Museums
Native American Sacred Spaces
Oral History
Photography
Plantations
Preservation and Heritage Advocacy
Preservation and Heritage Education
Public Art
Public Spaces
Roadside Attractions
Rural Life
Sculptures
Sense of Place
Signs
State and National Parks
Theaters
Threats to Preservation

A selection of scholarly and creative work presented at the conference will be solicited for publication in Louisiana Folklife, a peer reviewed academic journal produced by the Louisiana Folklife Center, Northwestern State University, General Editor, Dr. Shane Rasmussen.

Additional information is available on the website for the Louisiana Folklife Center at Northwestern State University: http://louisianafolklife.nsula.edu/.

Dr. Lisa Abney, Provost, Vice President for Student and Academic Affairs, and Professor of English, Northwestern State University (Conference Co-chair)

Dr. Shane Rasmussen, Director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and Assistant Professor of English, Northwestern State University (Conference Co-chair)

The Conference is co-sponsored by the Folklife Society of Louisiana, the Louisiana Folklife Center, and the NSU College of Arts, Letters, Graduate Studies and Research.

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.

World Congress on Education (WCE-2013)

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:39:51 -0400

The WCE is an international refereed conference dedicated to the
advancement of the theory and practices in education. The WCE
promotes collaborative excellence between academicians and
professionals from Education. The aim of WCE is to provide
an opportunity for academicians and professionals from various
educational fields with cross-disciplinary interests to bridge the
knowledge gap, promote research esteem and the evolution of
pedagogy. The WCE-2013 invites research papers that encompass
conceptual analysis, design implementation and performance
evaluation.

The topics in WCE-2013 include but are not confined to the
following areas:

*Accessible World
- Aging and Disability
- Augmentative and Alternative Communications (AAC)
- Assessment and Early intervention
- Baby Boomers
- Building and Sustaining an Inclusive Community
- Cognitive Disabilities
- Curriculum Adaptation and Modification
- Deaf and Hard of Hearing Developmental
- Disabilities Disability and Diversity
- E-Accessibility
- Human Rights/Disability Rights
- Legal Issues (Legislative and Policy)
- Learning Disabilities
- Living In(ter)dependently
- Support Services
- Postsecondary Education
- Public Health, Diversity and Disability
- Resiliency Across the Lifespan
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
- Study Skills Development
- Sustainable Environment
- Climate Change

*Adult Education
- Competitive Skills
- Continuing Education
- Higher Education
- Adult education
- Vocational Education
- Transferring Disciplines

*Art Education
- Music Education
- Writing Education
- Imaginative Education
- Language Education
- History

*Business Education
- Educational Administration
- Human Resource Development
- Academic Advising and Counselling
- Education Policy and Leadership
- Industrial Cooperation
- Life-long Learning Experiences
- Workplace Learning and Collaborative Learning
- Work Employability
- Educational Institution Government Partnership
- Patent Registration and Technology Transfer
- University Spin-Off Companies

*Course Management
- Accreditation and Quality Assurance
- Academic Experiences and Best Practice Contributions
- Copyright
- Digital Libraries and Repositories
- Digital Rights Management
- Evaluation and Assessment
- E-content Management and Development
- E-content Management and Development. Open Content
- e-Portfolios
- Grading Methods
- Knowledge Management
- Quality processes at National and International level
- Security and Data Protection
- Student Selection Criteria in Interdisciplinary Studies
- User-Generated Content

*Curriculum, Research and Development
- Acoustics in Education Environment
- APD/Listening
- Counsellor Education
- Courses, Tutorials and Labs
- Curriculum Design
- ESL/TESL
- Bullying
- Social Networking
- Study Abroad Programmes
- Faculty Development
- Distance Learning: Assessment, Methods and Technologies
Teaching and Learning Experiences in Engineering Education

*Educational Foundations
- Early Childhood Education
- Elementary Education
- Geographical Education
- Health Education
- Home Education
- Rural Education
- Science Education
- Secondary Education
- Second life Educators
- Social Studies Education
- Special Education

*Interaction and Cultural Models of Disability
- Adaptive Transportation
- Augmented and Alternative Communication
- Gerontechnology
- Healthcare Specialists
- Hospitality and Tourism
- Labor Market Integration
- Medical Experts
- Sport, Fitness and Leisure
- Special Educational Centres
- Social Innovation and E-Service Delivery
- Social Workers
- Student and Adults with Disabilities
- Usability and Ergonomics

*Learning / Teaching Methodologies and Assessment
- Simulated Communities and Online Mentoring
- e-Testing and new Test Theories
- Supervising and Managing Student Projects
- Pedagogy Enhancement with e-Learning
- Educating the Educators
- Immersive Learning
- Blended Learning
- Computer-Aided Assessment
- Metrics and Performance Measurement
- Assessment Software Tools
- Assessment Methods in Blended Learning Environments

*Global Issues In Education and Research
- Education, Research and Globalization
- Barriers to Learning (ethnicity, age, psychosocial factors, ...)
- Women and Minorities in Science and Technology
- Indigenous and Diversity Issues
- Government Policy issues
- Organizational, Legal and Financial Aspects
- Digital Divide
- Increasing Affordability and Access to the Internet
- Ethical issues in Education
- Intellectual Property Rights and Plagiarism

Important dates:

Research Paper, Extended Abstract, Case Study, Work in Progress and Report Submission Deadline: June 20, 2013
Notification of Paper, Extended Abstract, Case Study, Work in Progress and Report Acceptance Date: July 01, 2013
Final Paper Submission Deadline for Conference Proceedings Publication: July 20, 2013
Workshop Proposal Submission Deadline: June 01, 2013
Notification of Workshop Proposal Acceptance/Rejection: June 20, 2013
Poster/Demo Proposal Submission: June 01, 2013
Notification of Poster/Demo Acceptance: June 20, 2013
Participant(s) Registration (Open): April 01, 2013
Early Bird Registration: May 20 to July 01, 2013
Late Bird Registration (Authors only): July 02 to August 09, 2013
Late Bird Registration (Participants only): July 02 to September 08, 2013
Conference Dates: September 2-4, 2013

For further information please visit WCE-2013 at www.worldconedu.org

QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (SAMLA: 11/8-10/13)

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:41:25 -0400

We live in a world of people who seemingly cannot stop talking! Oft times it presents a competition of who is able to attract the most attention. This session will explore the premise of Susan Cain’s book,Quiet. People who prefer reading to partying or listening to speaking are considered introverts. They are innovative and make significant contributions, but dislike self
-promotion. They are often labeled “quiet” and sometimes this description alludes to negative connotations. Perhaps their being
quiet is a personality characteristic or a product of their environment; perhaps their reserved nature is due to the hesitation of self-expression. However, from Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer, the “quiet ones” have made immeasurable and invaluable contributions to
our society and life as we know it. This panel will discuss the effect of introverts and quiet people on and in our world,
and the philosophies associated with this type of labeling. Analyzed literary works, as well as personal experience papers (i.e., creative non-fiction pieces or personal narratives) are
welcome. By June 25, 2013, please submit a 250-word abstract to
Smyrna@nova.edu or ESLCARE@aol.com. Conference website: https://samla.memberclicks.net/conference

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

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.

[UPDATE] Irish Gothic Conference 5-6 December, 2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:35:56 -0400

Confirmed Speakers:

• Professor W. J. McCormack (Former Professor of Literary History at Goldsmiths College, University of London)
• Dr Laura Pelaschiar (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Università di Trieste)
• Dr Derek Hand (Senior Lecturer in English, Saint' Patrick's College, Dublin City University)

Gothic studies have recently been expanding previous limits of what was once thought to be an historically well defined genre. The extent of continual change in Gothic denotation is such that it is now approaching the status of an inter-genre inter-semiotic category. This is even more the case with Irish literature. Not only because a remarkable number of Gothic writers are Irish, but also, and more significantly, because Ireland has provided an extremely fruitful cultural background for the particular narrative forms and devices that are usually associated with the Gothic. Moreover, Irish literature presents a “gothicness” of its own, whereby it seems to simultaneously adhere to and reject the ideological and aesthetic models implied by the very notion of Gothic.

At this conference we will explore the ways in which Irish Gothic can/cannot be considered part of the mainstream Gothic tradition, as well as investigating the origins and evolution of the genre in an Irish context.

We welcome submissions addressing any topic relevant to Irish studies, and encourage papers, which explore any aspect of the Irish Gothic in literature, film, and other media.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Irish Gothic vs English Gothic
• The Birth of Irish Gothic
• Theorising Irish Gothic
• Irish Gothic Modernisms
• The Uncanny in Irish Fiction
• Victorian Irish Gothic
• Irish Gothic Geography
• Irish Gothic in the Media
• Irish Gothic Art
• Irish Gothic and Psychology
• Irish Gothic and Imperialism
• Irish Gothic and Science
• Irish Gothic and Technology
• Irish Gothic and Popular “Goth” Culture
• Irish Gothic and History

Abstracts (250 words max) for 20 minute papers and a short bio-sketch may be submitted to Enrico Terrinoni (Università per Stranieri di Perugia) and Annalisa Volpone (Università degli Studi di Perugia): perugiairishgothic@gmail.com.
Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2013.
Accepted speakers will be notified by September 20.
Conference fee: Euro 25; Euro 15 for students and the unwaged

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.

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