international conferences

Session Title: Beowulf the Monster 

Session#5331

Importance:

Although Beowulf has long held place as a praise poem, a rising tide of critique has noted various elements that frame the central protagonist and other heroic figures in the poem as monstrous in key respects (Greenfield, 1982; Griffith 1995; Orchard 1995; Köberl 2002; Sharma 2005; Gwara 2009). Despite these critiques, however, the hero’s virtuous standing remains intact—particularly, in his reputation for exceptional loyalty in a poem replete with inter-tribal feuds and intra-tribal treachery.

Description for Call for Papers:

This roundtable is being organized as part of NeMLA 2024, centered around the theme of SURPLUS.

Description:

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• John McLeod (University of Leeds)
• Anna-Leena Toivanen (University of Eastern Finland)
• Tobias Skowronek (Technical University of Georg Agricola)

Those of us who are “world”-travelers have the distinct experience of being different in different “worlds” and of having the capacity to remember other “worlds” and ourselves in them.

—   Maria Lugones, “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception” (1987)

CONCEPT NOTE

“Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion -- a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child.”

- Lloyd Alexander.

CFP Caring Futures: Contradictions, Transformation, and Revolutionary Possibilities

May 27th-30th, 2024

The American University of Paris, France

We invite proposals for a conference on the futures of care to be held at the American University in Paris, May 27 - May 30th, 2024.

The Journal of Consent-Based Performance invites artists, educators, and scholars to interrogate our existing practices and propose new ideas in pursuit of increasingly more equitable, ethical, anti-oppressive, and effective consent-based practices within the fields of theatre and performance. We encourage authors to submit essays that do the work of:

• Analyzing or interrogating current or past understandings of and approaches to intimacy and consent—in theory or in performance practice, modeling continuous adjustment of artistic praxis

• Introducing or investigating theories related to consent and power imbalances in other fields, contextualizing these theories’ potential impact upon the performance industry

Yale Africa-China Symposium: Cultural Dimensions           Date: 14-15 March 2024 

Venue: School of Arts and Communication, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo Mozambique 

The Societas Ovidiana welcomes proposals for a virtual roundtable to be held at the International Congress of Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo, May 9-11 2024.

This roundtable invites short presentations based on concrete studies of particular manuscripts (or sets of manuscripts) containing works by, or in any way involving, Ovid.

The Shelley Conference 2024

Posthumous Poems, Posthumous Collaborations

Keats House Museum, London, 28-29 June 2024

Two years after the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley in the summer of 1822, Mary Shelley, after a painstaking editorial process, published Posthumous Poems (1824). The volume contained much of Shelley’s major poetry, including the hitherto unpublished ‘Julian and Maddalo’, together with translations of Goethe and Calderón, and unfinished compositions such as ‘The Triumph of Life’ and ‘Charles the First’. 

In the realm of literature, grief and loss have always occupied a profound space, weaving their intricate threads through the narratives of countless tales. From the ancient Greek tragedies to contemporary works, the exploration of human suffering and its aftermath has captivated the imaginations of readers and critics alike. However, delving deeper into the recesses of these literary landscapes, we encounter a concept that extends beyond the boundaries of ordinary grief—a surplus of grief that emerges, often unyielding and overwhelming, in the face of profound loss and trauma.

The Societas Ovidiana welcomes proposals for a virtual panel to be held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) on May 9-11, 2024.

This panel invites a variety of approaches to the study of race and ethnicities in the textual and/or visual traditions of the medieval Ovid. Proposals might consider, but are not limited to:

 An international conference organized by the Laboratorio per lo Studio letterario del fumetto at Ca’ Foscari University and the International Comparative Literature Association Standing Research Committee on Comics Studies & Graphic NarrativeCa' Foscari University, Venice, ITALY - 13-15 November 2024 Andrew Milner, in Locating Science Fiction, argued that “the category SF applies [...] across a whole range of forms, from the novel and short story to pulp fiction and the comic book, from radio serial and television series to drama and film, from examinable set text to rock album”.

Following our first two Youngsters conferences in Vancouver (2016) and Toronto (2019), the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People invites paper, panel, and roundtable proposals for Youngsters 3: Undisciplined to be held at the University of Calgary from June 6-8, 2024.

Youngsters 3 is a celebration of the unruly, the irreverent, and the defiant as these qualities pertain to young people, the social and imaginative worlds they inhabit and create, and the many scholarly discourses that aim to study them.

Discussion of the presence of the medieval in a postmedieval world is often subtly suggestive of peril, with the medieval figuratively positioned in relation to potential crisis. The term adaptation alone may conjure up associations with evolution, (re)production, and – by association – death and extinction. More generally, the term suggests the need to respond to changing contexts, concerns, and audiences, carrying with it the implication that a lack of action will lead to decline. Talk of medieval afterlives goes even further: here, texts are imagined as already dead, sustaining a (perhaps ghostly or uncanny) presence past a natural lifetime.