category: poetry

Robert Browning and Victorian Poetry at 200, Nov 1-3, 2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:26:34 -0500

To celebrate Robert Browning’s bicentenary in 2012, the Armstrong Browning Library is hosting an international conference that will focus on Browning’s importance within the broader field of Victorian poetry and poetics, and within Victorian studies more generally. Proposals are invited for short position papers, to be circulated in advance and discussed in seminars, on the themes detailed below. In addition to these theme-based seminars, conference attendees will also have the chance to participate in seminar discussions centered around particular Browning texts, led by notable Victorian poetry scholars.

Confirmed speakers and seminar leaders include Herbert Tucker, Yopie Prins, Isobel Armstrong, Daniel Karlin, Joe Phelan, Linda K. Hughes, Marjorie Stone, Donald Hair, Tricia Lootens, Warwick Slinn, Mary Ellis Gibson, Matthew Campbell, Charles LaPorte and Erik Gray.

The Armstrong Browning Library is an internationally renowned research center for the study of the Brownings and nineteenth-century literature and culture, located on the campus of Baylor University in Waco, Texas:
http://www.browninglibrary.org/

To assist postgraduate students and early career academics to attend the conference, the ABL is offering 5 bursaries of $200, open to participants who are either currently postgraduate students or are within five years of receiving their PhD. Staff holding tenure-track positions are unlikely to be considered for these bursaries unless there are special circumstances. If you wish to apply, please state this clearly when you submit your proposal and attach a 1-page CV.

2-300 word proposals should be emailed to browning2012@baylor.edu. Please specify in your email which seminar you wish to participate in.

Deadline for proposals: 30 June 2012
Deadline to submit 5-page position paper: 1 October 2012

Further details will be available on the ABL’s website in due course. Any queries should be sent to the lead organizer, Kirstie Blair, at the conference email address: browning2012@baylor.edu.

SEMINARS

‘Browning’s Beginnings and Endings’ with Mary Ellis Gibson.

This seminar invites participants to reflect on beginnings and endings. How does Browning begin and end a career? or a volume of poetry? or an individual poem? From large to small, from the shape of a career, to the shape of a volume, to the shape of a particular poem, what can we learn when we reflect on beginnings and endings in Browning’s work? What kinds of disjunctions, what kinds of coherence, what kinds of surprises do we come upon by focusing on beginnings and / or endings? Participants will pre-circulate 5-page papers in which they reflect on some feature of beginning or ending in Browning's poetry.

‘Browning’s Contexts’ with Charles LaPorte.

How does Browning look from the vantage of the twenty-first century?
This seminar will address the importance of historical, cultural, and social contexts for understanding this most canny and modern of Victorian poets. It invites participants to consider Browning's poetry in relation to Victorian politics, economics, religion, science, secularization, transatlanticism, globalization, etc. Participants will circulate a 5-page paper that addresses a specific historical context and some theoretical reflections for our discussion of its importance to Browning studies today.

‘The Sound of Browning’ with Matthew Campbell.

Alfred Tennyson said to William Allingham, ‘it doesn't matter so much in poetry written for the intellect - as much of Browning’s is, perhaps; but in mine it's necessary to know how to sound it properly’. This panel will suggest that this seemingly-hoary topic is never incidental to the reading of Browning. Participants are invited to circulate 5-page papers which might address how it relates to old and new thinking about voice and performance as well as Victorian and contemporary phenomenologies of rhythm and rhyme. The panel will think not just about the sound of Browning's verse but also broader matters of intellectual matter and poetic form. It may suggest new ways to sound Browning properly, testing his innovations against the still-pertinent matter of Browning’s technique and its vexed aesthetic relationships with experiment, proportion and sense.

‘The Brownings and Love’ with Erik Gray.

A hundred years ago, both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were thought of largely (and in EBB’s case, primarily) as love poets. But the situation now is entirely different. Partly in reaction to a surfeit of sentimental or biographical readings, Browning criticism has for many years consciously downplayed the significance of love in their poetry. And yet it is not only biographical curiosity that might lead a reader to take an interest in this topic. Love – divine, familial, but above all erotic – forms the central concern of many of the Brownings’ most important poems, and both poets made original and transformative contributions to the rich tradition of English love poetry. In the seminar, we will reconsider the Brownings’ treatment of love, with the aim, if possible, of tracing their mutual influence, as well as their response to the wider tradition. Participants will pre-circulate 5-page position papers relating to this topic.

2012 RMMLA (10/11-10/13); submissions due 3/1/12

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:46:32 -0500

Papers on any topic concerning British or Irish literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are invited for the forthcoming 2012 RMMLA Convention in Boulder Colorado, to be held Oct. 11-15. Proposals for 15 minute papers are invited which shed light on any aspect of British Literature Since 1900, including any author, genre, literary work, theoretical, historical, or interdisciplinary approach. Please submit a titled, 250 word abstract that includes your name, university affiliation, contact information, and request for audio-visual technology if desired by 1 March 2012, to Jana Giles: giles@ulm.edu. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by March 15, 2012. For further information about the convention, please see the RMMLA website at http://rmmla.wsu.edu/conferences/, which includes information about travel grants for students and faculty as well as membership. We look forward to the opportunity to consider your work.

Book Prize Call for Submissions (17 March 2012)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:58:25 -0500

Robert K. Martin Book Prize
Canadian Association for American Studies

The Canadian Association for American Studies (CAAS) would like to announce the call for submissions for the annual Robert K. Martin Prize for the best monograph in American Studies written by a current member of CAAS. This year's prize will be for books published with a copyright date of 2011. The postmark deadline for submission is 17 March 2012.

All current members and those who join in advance of the deadline are eligible. Membership information can be found at our website: http://american-studies.ca/

The award will be announced at the 2012 conference, “Geographies of Promise and Betrayal–Land and Place in US Studies” (Toronto, Ontario, 25-28 October 2012), sponsored by CAAS, York University, and the Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. See the conference CFP: http://american-studies.ca/CAASblog/?p=621 . The recipient will also be congratulated in a future issue of the Canadian Review of American Studies, and their book cited on the CAAS webpage (for a list of recent winners of our prizes, see http://american-studies.ca/prizes.html ).

Members who wish to be considered for the award should forward three copies of their book by 17 March 2012 to:

Dr. Jason Haslam
President, Canadian Association for American Studies
Dept. of English
Dalhousie University
6135 University Ave.
Halifax NS
Canada
B3H 4P9

Please also email Jason.Haslam@dal.ca with your intent to apply. We regret that books cannot be returned, but they will be made available to the review editor of the Canadian Review of American Studies for consideration for review.

John Cage Issue: The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:09:00 -0500

Submission Deadline: March 30, 2012
Publication Date: Fall 2012

We are particularly interested in essays that focus on John Cage and his circle and sphere of influence. We are also seeking creative works composed and performed in the spirit of John Cage with accompanying statements that explain the Cage connection. Mixed-media works are encouraged. Send text, audio, video and still images.

The Journal of Black Mountain College Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the The Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center, which sponsors an annual conference along with the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/wp/

NeMLA 2013 Call for Panel & Session Proposals

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:40:12 -0500

Northeast Modern Language Association
44th Annual Convention
March 21-24, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts
Host: Tufts University

The 2013 NeMLA convention continues the Association's tradition of sharing innovative scholarship in an engaging and generative location. The 44th annual event will be held in historic Boston, Massachusetts, a city known for its national and maritime history, academic facilities and collections, vibrant art, theatre, and food scenes, and blend of architecture. The Convention, located centrally near Boston Commons and the Theatre District at the Hyatt Regency, will include keynote and guest speakers, literary readings, film screenings, tours and workshops.

Propose a session: NeMLA's program of sessions is generated each year by its members. Propose a seminar, roundtable, creative session or panel. Submit your proposal online by April 15, 2012.
Submit an abstract: The full Call for Papers will be available online June 2012; the abstract deadline is Sept. 30, 2012.

Areas:
American
Anglophone
British Anglophone
Canadian
Comparative Languages
Composition
Film & Cultural Studies
French & Francophone
German
Italian
Pedagogy
Russian
Spanish/Portuguese
Theory
Transnational Studies
Women's & Gender Studies
World Literatures

NeMLA 2012 membership is required to chair a 2013 NeMLA session.
Please see www.nemla.org for guidelines and more information
Questions? Email nemlachair@gmail.com

UPDATE: Rukeyser Special Issue, July 15, 2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:15:54 -0500

JNT will mark the 2013 Centenary of Muriel Rukeyser’s birth with a special issue devoted to her stunningly varied and provocative work. We invite submissions that deepen and complicate our understanding of Rukeyser’s writings; her philosophical, poetic, and political commitments; her interest in the multiple connections between science and poetry; her articulation of an extended poetics in The Life of Poetry, which has yet to receive its due as a major modernist manifesto; her passionate response to technology; her life-long commitment to experimentalism in the context of an activist poetics; her investment in “extending the document,” especially in the context of current documentary poetic practices; her role as a post-holocaust Jewish-American poet. Essays might explore lesser known of her works (among them the prose works on Willard Gibbs and Thomas Hariot, the long poem Ajanta, the musical Houdini, the fictionalized memoir Orgy) and/or engage Rukeyser’s work, reception, and legacy in the context of recent cultural and literary theories (from post-humanism, ecological, and postcolonial theory to gender and queer theory) or contemporary poetic theories and practices (documentary poetics, orality, performativity, etc.). We will also consider experimental and "poetic" essays as well as poems under the influence of Rukeyser or in dialogue with her work.
Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2012.

Inquiries:
Elisabeth Däumer (edaumer@emich.edu) and Christine Hume (chume@emich.edu)

Submissions and Deadline:
Send complete manuscripts of 20-35 pages (double-spaced, with one-inch margins), following the latest edition of the MLA style manual. Omit all references to the author to ensure blind review. JNT prefers that footnotes be kept to a minimum and that authors incorporate material into the main text wherever possible.
Please send two hardcopies (and a digital copy emailed to both co-editors) to Journal of Narrative Theory, Attn: Rukeyser Issue, Department of English, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.

Tragedy/The Tragic in Asian American Literature

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:05:07 -0500

This panel will explore Asian American literary participation in the tragic mode. Reasons for this exploration include:
- the desire to explore some of the aesthetic dimensions of Asian American fiction that have long been neglected by critics.
- the desire to recuperate tragedy/the tragic for the 20th Century, where it has often been dismissed as no longer applicable
- the desire to break down longstanding binaries between existential and political approaches to the tragic.
- the desire to better understand possible political ramifications of tragedy/the tragic in the 20th Century
- the desire to examine the role of genre in knowledge production and ethics

Possible paper topics include, but not are limited to:
- any approaches/treatments of/responses to suffering in Asian American literature, by authors, readers, critics, narrators, or fictional characters
- a questioning of traditional Western claims to tragedy, through investigations of tragedy in Asian and/or Asian American literature
- Examinations of heroism in Asian American literature
- Explorations of the ways in which the tragic appears in Asian American literature
-The tragic as it manifests in Asian cultural values/belief systems.
- Ethics and suffering/grief/tragedy in Asian American literature
- Genre shaping in Asian American literature
- Attention to lyricism and imagism in Asian American fiction
- Negotiating hope in Asian American fiction
- The role of genre in knowledge production and ethics
- The tragic as it manifests in the 20th Century
- The tragic as it manifests in American literature
- The relationship of any of the above to transnationalism

Please send a 400 word abstract by email to sgardam@gmail.com by February 18, 2012.

Race and Metaphor in 19th/20th Century American Literature and Thought (MLA Boston; abstracts due March 10, 2012)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:18:32 -0500

Race and Metaphor in 19th/20th Century American Literature and Thought
MLA Special Session
January 3-6, 2013, Boston, MA
Abstract Deadline: March 10, 2012

This session takes up connections between metaphor and race, examining the ways that language and cognition influence the interactions between different racial and cultural groups. In doing so, it looks to extend awareness of the interactions between daily language and other discursive systems or practices—literary, social, political, scientific, and/or economic linguistic paradigms, for example—that inform and influence the discussion of race in daily language. In highlighting the relations between different discursive practices, the goal is to understand the ways in which language in general, and metaphor in specific, both conditions and perpetuates the relationships between different groups of people in an unequal manner. Further, unpacking the connections between language and identity will allow us to extend the ways in which Critical Race Theory can be utilized to examine the linguistic configurations that disguise the social forces perpetuating inequality. In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993), for instance, Toni Morrison engages the tensions created by race and metaphor:

Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic division far more threatening to the body politic than biological “race” ever was. [...] It seems that it has a utility far beyond economy, beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, and has assumed a metaphorical life so completely embedded in daily discourse that it is perhaps more necessary and more on display than ever before. (63)

Morrison is not alone in noting the relationship between race and metaphor; Ralph Ellison’s examination of white insecurity in “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” (1970) highlights the historic validation whites found in subordinating blacks:

Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the “outsider.” (110-1)

In both Morrison and Ellison, the connection between race and metaphor becomes the means to demarcate the boundaries of inclusion and citizenship; the “utility” that Morrison connects to the metaphorical use of race refers to the implied assumptions within language that participate in maintaining the dominant ideology. In Ellison’s case, the observation that African Americans exist as a “metaphor for the ‘outsider’” points to the linguistic accrual of social and political power in language that occurs over time, specifically as this usage moves from a conscious to unconscious application.

This panel is interested in investigating the manifestation of these ideas in 19th and 20th century American literature and thought. It is open to papers focusing on the function of metaphor and race in individual works (poetry, prose, drama, film, etc.), papers addressing theoretical connections between race and metaphor, as well as papers that engage both simultaneously. How, for example, do individual authors dismantle racial metaphors in their work, or unconsciously (or consciously) make use of racial metaphors to structure ideas across individual or collective works? Are there different strategies employed by different groups of authors in addressing the negative ways in which racial metaphors silently supplement texts as well as the larger national discourse surrounding race? Similarly, how can George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s ideas concerning the mapping of the source and the target of conceptual metaphors be applied to the metaphorical performance and production of race?

Elizabeth Young, author of Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor and the Carl M. and Elsie A. Small Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College, will be the respondent for the panel.

Please send 250-500 word abstracts by March 10, 2012 to Thomas Morgan (tmorgan2@udayton.edu).

2012 PAMLA Special Session - Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:01:43 -0500

Creative texts are sought for an approved 2012 PAMLA Special Session - Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries.

The 2012 PAMLA conference will take place at Seattle University, Washington from October 19-21, 2012.

Creative Writing: Fictional Boundaries.
This special session will feature readings from works that challenge traditional divisions between fiction and other media or between fiction and other forms (such as poetry or non-fiction.) Writers may present recently published works or works that are still in progress.

Submission Deadline: Saturday March 31, 2012.
Please submit your proposal online at http://www.pamla.org.

Sex, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian Literature and Culture

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:14:28 -0500

Victorian Network is an MLA-indexed (from 2012) online journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best postgraduate work in Victorian Studies.

The sixth issue of Victorian Network, guest edited by Dr Greta Depledge (Royal Holloway), is dedicated to a reassessment of nineteenth-century constructions and understandings of sex, courtship and marriage. Although the heteronormative and companionate marriage was vital for economic and reproductive reasons - as well as romantic impulses - recent scholarship has illuminated its status as but one of several diverse paradigms of marriage/sexual relationship accessible to the Victorians
Across the nineteenth century, profound crises of faith, extensive legal reforms and the new insights afforded by the emergent discipline of anthropology all contributed to a culture of introspection about the practice of marriage, at the same time as advances in science and medicine opened up new interpretations and definitions of sexual practices and preferences.

We are inviting submissions of no more than 7000 words, on any aspect of the theme. Possible topics include but are by no means limited to the following:

• Victorian narratives of queer desire: text and subtext
• Representations of women’s sexuality (angels, whores and spinsters)
• Prudishness and censorship: “deviant” novels and scandalous dramas
• Adultery, bigamy, divorce and other affronts to the ideal of companionate marriage
• Transgressive relationships
• Nineteenth-century marriage law, including prohibited degrees of affinity, property reform and breach of promise
• Representations of sexual innocence and experience (virginity, puberty and prostitution
• Subversion of traditional courtship narratives
• Sex and class: adventuresses, mistresses, sex workers and blackmail
• Customs of the country: courtship conventions, betrothals and bridal nights
• Performance, stylization and parody: gender scripts, consumer culture, theatrical subversion

All submissions should conform to MHRA style conventions and the in-house submission guidelines. The deadline for submissions is 30 May 2012.

Contact: victoriannetwork@gmail.com
Website: http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn

Portals Literary Journal is accepting submissions for our Spring 2012 issue.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:29:21 -0500

2012 Call for Submissions
Portals is currently accepting submissions for our Spring 2012 issue.

Submission deadline: March 1, 2012.

Portals invites original critical essays and short creative fiction that explore comparative literary topics across cultural, regional, linguistic, and temporal boundaries for the Spring 2012 issue. This edition will be available in scholarly journal listings worldwide.

Formal requirements for original critical essays:

Papers should be in English.
In order to be considered for submission, essays must compare at least two texts from different linguistic traditions.
Citations should include both the original language and the English translation.
Papers should be no longer than 25 pages in 12 point font, and should be properly formatted and documented in MLA style.
Formal requirements for creative fiction:

An author may submit up to 3 pieces of any form of creative fiction with a limit of 10 pages per submission. Fiction must be of a comparative/critical nature.
General requirements:

All submissions are to be sent via e-mail as an MS-Word attachment.
Submissions must include a 250-word abstract and a cover sheet including name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, school affiliation, and current academic standing. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the proposal, since this will be a blind selection process.
Authors should be currently enrolled undergraduate students, graduate students or doctoral candidates.
Submissions must be original and previously unpublished.
To submit, send your submission as a .doc or .rtf attachment to: clsa[at]mail.sfsu.edu

Review Process:

Portals is published once a year in the Spring semester at San Francisco State University, in conjunction with the Comparative Literature Student Association (CLSA). All articles are reviewed in a double-blind process, and authors will be notified by email within 2 to 3 months of the submission deadline.

We encourage authors to read our journal thoroughly before submitting. Portals most recent issue and archives can be found here: http://portalsjournal.com

All inquiries and questions can be directed to our editors at: clsa[at]mail.sfsu.edu

Modern Family (MSA 14. Las Vegas. 18-21 Oct. 2012)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:25:18 -0500

The family—as a social institution, as field of study, as a body of representation and readership—has been underserved by theories of modernism. This oversight may stem from a perception that many of the moderns, such as the Greenwich Village avant-garde, were often averse to an institution they found inherently bourgeois and conservative. This panel invites papers that will consider the family as a center of modernist thought, aesthetics, and praxis.

How might family relate to the conference theme “spectacle,” a suggestion of that which prompts “curiosity or contempt” and even “marvel or admiration”? Can the family figure anything more than the negation of modernist conventions? How might the moderns radicalize family in keeping with their other impulses toward innovation and scandal? The panel welcomes projects dealing with any national literature or theoretical orientation, and encourages submissions to consider family as a broad term encompassing multivalent modes of organization.

Send a 250-word abstract and 1-page CV (as one email attachment) to wesley.beal@lyon.edu by Monday, March 19. More details about the 2012 meeting of the MSA are available here: http://msa.press.jhu.edu/conferences/msa14/index.html.

Medical Economics in American Literature - [UPDATE]

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:18:23 -0500

Signaled in colonial portrayals of a New World rife with lush resources and intense mortal dangers to contemporary discourses surrounding public healthcare and its monetary costs/benefits---the country’s physical and economic “well being” have long been connected in the public psyche. Recognizing the symbolic possibilities behind this connection, American authors frequently used it to explore public and social issues affecting their nation and its citizenry. This panel seeks projects which explore such connections. Essays may pertain to any American literary period or genre. In addition, all cross-disciplinary and/or hemispheric approaches will be considered. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-The value or cost of wellness/disease
-Healthcare accessibility
-Economic influences on medical treatment
-Impact of diseases on economies
-Disability
-Medical Breakthroughs/Experimentation
-Doctor/Patient relations & medicine as a profession
-Lay-healers and non-traditional medical practices

Abstracts of 300-400 words should be submitted on or before Feb. 29th 2012 to heather.chacon@uky.edu. Please note that this is a provisional panel whose acceptance to MLA is contingent on approval of the MLA Special Sessions committee. Participants must be MLA members by April 7, 2012 to participate.

Call For Submissions: Chapbook Publishers Looking for Manuscripts

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:15:52 -0500

Hello,

Wormwood Chapbooks is now seeking chapbook manuscripts for publication. We publish both poetry and short story collections; for full details, please consult our submishmash, which can be found by following the link under the "submit" tab on our website:

www.wormwoodchapbooks.org

Please read the instructions carefully before submitting to Wormwood; also, please send all manuscripts via submishmash - not through e-mail.

Our reading time varies, but we try to read manuscripts within three months of the original submission date. Please do not inquire about the status of your submitted manuscripts unless 90 days have passed.

NOTE: This IS a paying market. Half of the proceeds of chapbook sales go to the author.

Thank you for taking the time to read this - we hope to see your work soon.

Regards,

Call for Submissions: Electronic & Print Journal Looking for Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:10:13 -0500

A Few Lines Magazine is currently accepting submissions for its fourth issue, which is slated to come out in March or April. Our publication is growing rapidly, and our readership is larger than ever.

We accept submissions of poetry, flash fiction, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We read on a daily basis, so please feel free to submit at any time.

We're in the process of printing our second issue, and the electronic edition of our fourth issue is scheduled to release sometime within the next few months. Please feel free to flip through the pages of our past publications to get a sense of what we publish. We are not partial to any sort of aesthetic per se; we simply aim to publish literature.

So give us your best work. Our publication is a fantastic venue for emerging artists to showcase their work to a large audience. To submit, follow the link under the "Submit" tab on our website:

www.afewlinesmagazine.com

We look forward to reading through your submissions.

Jack Foster
Production Editor
JFoster.Editor@gmail.com
www.afewlinesmagazine.com

[REMINDER] Post-Graduate Student Conference on English Literature and Translation Studies 17-18 May 2012

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:26:36 -0500

English Literature and Translation Studies:
An interdisciplinary/international postgraduate conference
17th-18th May 2012 Cankaya University Ankara
Translation and Interpreting Studies and English Language and Literature Departments at Cankaya University in Ankara warmly invite our colleagues/students to send proposals for a 20-minute paper on English Literature and Translation Studies. This conference welcomes papers centering upon English Language, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Literary Translation, English Literature and Culture, American Literature and Culture, Comparative Literature and Literary and Cultural Theories.
This two-day English Literature and Translation Studies conference seeks to bring colleagues, post-graduate students and academicians together in the friendly atmosphere of Cankaya University.
Submission Guidelines:
• Papers/Posters
A 250 word abstract should be submitted as an email attachment to eltsconferences@gmail.com or elts@cankaya.edu.tr by March 5th, 2012. In your email, please include your name, affiliation, email address, phone number, title of paper, and a brief biographical statement.
For further details please visit: www.elts.cankaya.edu.tr
For all enquiries please do not hesitate to write us an email: eltsconferences@gmail.com

[UPDATE - NEW DATE] Works in Progress: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, June 1, 2012

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:30:06 -0500

The English Department at the University of Cincinnati invites you to submit proposals for an interdisciplinary academic conference held on June 1, 2012 focusing on the value of sharing works in progress as a means to increase experimentation, build community, and test new ideas. Rather than soliciting finished products from participants, we seek work that shows its seams, represents thinking in action, invites revision, and resists closure. In other words, don’t hide your process; advertise it.

Changing concepts of materiality, influencing everything from mediums to social communication, have highlighted the importance of process to all forms of production. In this spirit, we encourage projects that take process seriously, that understand process—how things are made, how ideas cohere, how writing happens—as a legitimate and compelling object of study. Projects could include but aren’t limited to explorations of the academic and the technical; pedagogical, artistic and scholarly experiments and practices; and reflective, theoretical, rhetorical, creative, or critical works.

We encourage presenters to experiment with the genre of their presentations. Presenters should feel welcome to take advantage of multimodal delivery. Presentations might take the form of a PowerPoint project, a short film, an interactive discussion or workshop, some combination of these, or other possibilities.

Proposals for individual and panel presentations might address any of the following:

• Non-linear narratives
• Multi-author works
• Reconsidering ownership
• Law in the digital age
• Piracy and plagiarism
• Digital technology
• Transcending conventional mediums
• (Re)use/mediation/mix/vision
• Mash-ups and multi-modalities
• Text-in-progress
• Work that is self-conscious about process
• Restructuring spaces
• Collaborative art
• Questioning “the finished project”
• Re-envisioning embodiment and materiality
• Persona and social networking

Panel proposals should include a coversheet containing panel title, each presenter’s name, the name of a moderator, presentation titles, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, requests for technology, and anticipated format of presentation (papers, multimodal, interactive, workshop, etc.); the second page should include abstracts of 250-words for each presentation (3 to 4) and a 250-word abstract for the panel as a whole.

Individual proposals should consist of two pages. On the first page, include name, presentation title, university affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, and details of any technology you may require, and the anticipated format of presentation (paper, multimodal, interactive, etc.).; the second page should contain a 250-word abstract.
Please do not include identifying information on second page (abstracts).

Individual presentations should not exceed twenty minutes; panel presentations should plan for 80 minutes total (including Q&A time).

Mindful of the financial pressures we all face, there will be no fee to attend or present at this graduate conference.

Send proposals and queries to uccompconf@gmail.com.

Conference website: http://uccompconference.blogspot.com/

MLA Special Session: "British Literature and the State, 1870-1930" (deadline 3/10/12; Boston 2013)

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:26:55 -0500

How do literary works in Britain explore the economic, philosophical, social, and political dimensions of “statist” theory and practice? Possible topics include the utopian/dystopian potential of statism, emerging ideas about risk and insurance, new theories of consumption and production, the role of bureaucracy, forms of collectivism, regional 'place' vs. the abstract 'space' of the state, etc. Proposals on any relevant authors, themes, forms of cultural expression are welcome. -- Lauren Goodlad will be on this panel as a respondent.

Submit 300-word abstracts by 10 March 2012 to Benjamin Kohlmann (bk1010@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de). All panelists must be members of the MLA; special sessions are subject to approval by the MLA.

2012 PAMLA Conference: The Beatles as Literature

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:58:08 -0500

Have you long pondered Ringo’s existential torpor in “A Hard Day’s Night”? Hotly debated the gender politics of “Girl”? Are The Beatles your “myth to live by”?

Turn your Beatle musings into a creative academic treatise and submit an essay for The Beatles as Literature section at the PAMLA Conference this October at Seattle University.

The Beatles' wildly diverse catalogue and career offer infinite opportunities for studies in mythology, folklore, gender politics, Marxism, poetry, childrens literature, and comparative religion, to name just a few.

Abstracts and paper proposals are due March 31

Please write to Jocelyn Heaney for details:

jheaney@glendale.edu

[UPDATE] What's Love Got to Do With It?: Shakespeare and Ovidian Violence (MLA 2013, Boston)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:32:52 -0500

For a proposed session at the 2013 MLA conference, we seek papers that offer new thinking about Shakespeare's relationship to Ovid.

For example, how does Ovid influence Shakespeare’s visions of gender? How is desire manifested in Ovidian violence, whether on Shakespeare's stage or in his poems? How do modern adaptations of either author's work ask us to rethink the relationship between Shakespeare and Ovid? Can Shakespeare's classical sources help us understand the linkages between gender, love, and brutality in his plays and poems? How do Ovid’s mythical or poetic paradigms for transformation, desire, and transgression resonate in scenes of Shakespearean violence?

Please send a 500-word abstract and a brief biographical statement or short CV to kpivetti@csbsju.edu or jgarriso@carrollu.edu by March 1, 2012.

LGBTQI Graduate Students and Academia

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:15:31 -0500

The Graduate Student Caucus, an affiliate organization of the MLA, invites proposals for papers to be presented at the 2013 MLA annual meeting (Boston, Jan. 3-6, 2013). Please send abstracts (ca. 250 words) to Ervin Malakaj (emalakaj@wustl.edu) by March 10.

LGBTQI graduate students encounter a variety of barriers – structural, institutional, covert, implicit – as they prepare to enter the profession, which remains an unchanged challenge for many young scholars. We invite scholars from all stages of their academic career to submit proposals for papers that call attention to areas where higher education is falling short of its commitment to equality, diversity, accessibility, visibility, and integration. We welcome papers that would contribute to a larger discussion about how these barriers can be identified and suggestions for how they can be overcome.

English Renaissance Literature, RMMLA, Boulder, Colorado, Oct. 11-13, 2012

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:12:08 -0500

This session seeks papers on any aspect of English Renaissance literature. Abstracts of 250-300 words are invited for papers to be delivered at the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain MLA in Boulder, Colorado, Oct. 11-13, 2012. Email abstracts – including your title, institutional affiliation, and email addresses – to Kirsten Inglis (kainglis@ucalgary.ca) by March 1, 2012. All submissions will be acknowledged and notifications sent by March 15, 2012. Non-members are welcome to submit abstracts, but presenters must be members of the RMMLA by April 1.

More information is available on the conference website: http://rmmla.wsu.edu/conferences/default.asp

[UPDATE] Call for Environmental Literature

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:30:03 -0500

Kudzu Review is looking for environmental essay, art, fiction & poetry for issue 1.2, Summer Solstice!

DEADLINE CHANGE:
March 1st!

We look for savvy, sharp, well polished literature that captures life in a post-natural world, & publish work, bi-annually, that is outstanding and motivated by concerns with human’s place in the world.

Visit the site for details: www.kudzureview.com

Somaesthetics Essay Prize 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:48:06 -0500

The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University is pleased to announce its first annual Somaesthetics Essay Prize competition. The award for the 2012 prize will be $500. Essays should be academic in style and focus on the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics from such perspectives as philosophy, aesthetics, art history and theory, literary and cultural studies, dance, design, music, theatre, cognitive science, gender and sexuality studies, sports, movement, and health studies. The prize essay will be recommended for publication in an upcoming special issue of the philosophical journal Pragmatism Today on somaesthetics.

Submissions should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words in length, including notes and references, and should be e-mailed in Word format to bodymindculture@fau.edu. The deadline for submission of essays is September 1, 2012, and the prize winner will be announced in December 2012. Essays will be evaluated by an interdisciplinary panel of judges appointed by the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture.

For more details, including bibliographies on somaesthetics, please visit http://www.fau.edu/bodymindculture/Somaesthetics_Essay_Prize.php.

[UPDATE:Extended Deadline and New Email Address] “Rough Music”: Representing Violence (March 31, 2012)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:05:10 -0500

CFP
“Rough Music”: Representing Violence – an interdisciplinary graduate conference sponsored by the Southern Methodist University Department of English on
March 31, 2012

In The Plague of Fantasies, Slavoj Žižek describes Lacan's readings of classical, literary, and philosophical texts as "a case of violent appropriation…displacing the work from its proper hermeneutic context." And yet, he argues, "this very violent gesture brings about a breathtaking 'effect of truth'" and "a shattering new insight."

This conference, hosted by the English Department at Southern Methodist University, invites graduate students to interpret and explore the function of violence in all of its multitudinous forms, including, but not limited to, its function in literature. We invite proposals for consideration that reflect any and all interdisciplinary explorations of violence as trope, historical event or discursive technique.

Papers may engage violence from a variety of directions and deal with violence in any of the arenas in which it arises: politics, cultural studies, class, ethnic and racial discourses, gender, religion or in the very act of writing itself. Papers might examine questions such as:

• How do physical acts of violence obfuscate systemic violence? How does literary writing participate in or act against that obfuscation?
• How is violence enacted in, on or through a text?
• Why do some texts marginalize violence, pushing it off-screen, while other texts foreground it, making it a central part of their subject or, at times, the subject itself?
• What happens to a subject who is subjected to violence, physically or systemically?

The keynote speaker for this conference will be Dr. Richard Rankin Russell, Associate Professor of English at Baylor University. Dr. Russell specializes in 20th century British and Irish literatures. Among his numerous publications, Dr. Russell’s most recent book, Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (2010) was published by Notre Dame University Press. It received the 2011 SCMLA award and 2010 SAMLA award for best book published by a member of the association.

Please submit a 250-word abstract for your 20-minute presentation to smugradconference@gmail.com by February 15, 2012. Please specify your institutional affiliation, if applicable, and any technological requests.

[UPDATE] Rated-X: Perversion and Exclusion (Deadline Extension), Feb 15

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:53:25 -0500

Conference Date: Friday, March 30, 2012
Abstracts (250-500 words) Due: February 15, 2012

Submit abstracts via email: brandeis.grad.conference@gmail.com

Conference website:
https://sites.google.com/site/brandeisgradconference/

Plenary Speaker: Lee Edelman, Chair, Department of English, Tufts University

In celebration of the 36th anniversary of the initial publication of Foucault’s first volume of The History of Sexuality, the 6th Annual Brandeis Graduate student conference will explore the ins and outs of various forms of an X-Rating. Being Rated-X implies being marked as other/as outside/as unacceptable as well as being marked as desirable/as visible/as exceptional. Rated-X implies the nakedness of porn and the openness that comes with that. For some there is liberation in this openness. For others there is only exposure. This necessitates the question of whether certain populations are made disposable through exile or instead through visibility; through the erasure or marking of bodies as other. We would like to use this conference to explore some slippage—between these two (and more) types of identification with otherness: the transgression that empowers and enables pleasure versus the polarizing otherness that disenfranchises and dehumanizes. Relevant questions include: Who is doing the marking? Who draws the boundary lines? Does an “X” marking/rating make the bodies of those so-rated untouchable or excessively available for use; or does an “X” rating elevate a body to exceptional status or release it from the strictures of its prescribed social identities? Thus, we will be accepting papers about the exiled body, porn, and anything in between.

Round Table
This round table discussion will consider a study of what is rated-x in academia. What is not worthy of study? What is shameful? What are the margins of acceptability in the academy? We are accepting abstracts for participation in a round table discussion that explores these boundaries and the means by which they are established.

This past year, the question of what is acceptable in the academy was brought to a head when a psychology professor at Northwestern University’s job was threatened after he allowed a live sex act on his stage after class. This is one of many instances that highlights the urgency of a self-reflexive study of censorship.

Participants will submit 5 minute papers on this topic for circulation, addressing any of the following concerns or other related questions: What are the limits of what is an acceptable object of study? What is the expected object of study? What is exposed to observation in academia? What words can or cannot be used? What images can or cannot be shown in professional scholarship or in the classroom? What methodologies are supported or excluded by institutional practices? Please feel free to submit to the Round Table discussion panel in addition to submitting a paper to present.

Abstracts for round table: February 15, 2012
Papers submitted for pre-circulation: March 1, 2012

Creative Arts Panel
We will be accepting submissions for a creative arts panel in order to allow critical discussions to engage with artistic practice. This panel will allow us to further explore disciplinary boundaries and the possibility of interdisciplinary and cross-media discussion. We will accept paintings, poetry, stories, videos/DVDs, and any other media. Please submit a 250 word abstract via email/mail and relevant slides/images on CD or DVD via mail.

Suggested List of Topics
-Citizenship/Exile
-Immigration
-Fantasy/Desire/Pleasure
-Porn/Anti-Porn
-Erotica
-Kinks
-Censorship
-Genres of Smut
-Porn and Race
-Histories of Sexuality
-Sex and Madness/Pathology
-Punishment/Violence/Gore
-Unwritten/Unspeakable
-X as a variable
-Slippage
-Feminist approaches
-Queer approaches
-The problem of academic “sexiness”
-Eco-porn
-Pornographic gaze in science
-GPS tracking of bodies for surveillance, for pleasure, etc.
cfp categories:
african-american
american
bibliography_and_history_of_the_book
cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches
eighteenth_century
film_and_television
gender_studies_and_sexuality
graduate_conferences
humanities_computing_and_the_internet
interdisciplinary
medieval
modernist studies
popular_culture
postcolonial
professional_topics
religion
renaissance
romantic
theatre
theory
twentieth_century_and_beyond
victorian

CFP: First Annual Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture, March 31-April 1 2012 [DEADLINE EXTENDED]

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:07:54 -0500

We've extended the deadline for submissions for the first annual Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture (3/31-4/1). The deadline is now February 10, 2012. Please consider submitting!.

The Department of Popular Culture of Bowling Green State University, one of the nation’s preeminent academic departments focusing on popular culture studies, is closing in on some impressive landmarks. 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the first Master’s Degrees given in Popular Culture and in 2013 the Department of Popular Culture will celebrate 40 years in existence. With these milestones on the horizon, it is appropriate that the Department of Popular Culture has recently founded the Popular Culture Scholars Association, a student organization for undergraduate and graduate students dedicated to examining the prominent subjects, concerns and ideas of 21st century popular culture.

To celebrate the Department of Popular Culture’s anniversaries and the formation of the PCSA, we would like to invite any and all students (undergraduate and graduate), scholars, critics, former members of the POPC program and friends of the department to join us for the first ever Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture on March 31st through April 1st 2012. The conference will be held on the Bowling Green State University campus. We are pleased to announce that Dr. Gary Hoppenstand will be the keynote speaker. Dr. Hoppenstand received his Ph.D. in American Culture Studies and his M.A. in Popular Culture from Bowling Green State University. Currently he is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Popular Culture and University Distinguished Faculty at Michigan State University.

Dr. Ray Browne founded the Department of Popular Culture to give students an opportunity to intelligently consider the cultural forms of their everyday lives. Nearly 40 years later, our everyday lives are much different. New mediums, genres and industries have been introduced into the complex world of popular culture and innovative perspectives, methods and models have presented new ways in which to investigate popular culture.

In light of these changes, potential topics for paper, panel and roundtable proposals include, but are not limited to:

· How have these additions and shifts altered popular culture, and how do we explore them?
· What are the most pressing issues for popular culture scholars in the 21st century?
· What are the texts, genres, individuals and theoretical approaches that will define popular culture in the years to come?
· Which new media, texts, genres, etc. deserve attention from academics and scholars?
· Are there individual popular culture texts, genres or individuals that embody the important shifts and changes in popular culture as a whole?
· Explorations of specific 21st century popular culture texts, genres, trends and approaches

In short, the Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture hopes to address this question: what is popular culture in the 21st century and how must we study it?

Again, we welcome proposals and participation from any interested undergraduate and graduate students, as well as any scholars, critics, former members of the POPC program and friends of the department.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, February 10, 2012. Individual paper proposals should be between 300-400 words. Full roundtable and panel theme proposals can be longer, but should include as much prospective information about the topic and number of possible participants as possible. Please email your abstract and a short biography to bgpsca@gmail.com. The subject line should contain the writer’s surname followed by “BCPC12” Abstract. Notifications for decisions will be sent by Friday, February 17, 2012. Please contact the PCSA if you have any questions or concerns atbgpcsa@gmail.com or via our website at http://bgsu.orgsync.com/org/pcsa.

1st Global Conference Making Sense of: Play

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:53:28 -0500

1st Global Conference
Making Sense of: Play
Wednesday 11th July 2012 – Friday 13th July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

“Unlike children in other countries, the Eskimos played no game of war. They played with imaginary rifles and harpoons, but these were never directed against people but against the formidable beasts that haunted the vast wastes of their land.”
(Marie Herbert)

The Call For Papers:
The interdisciplinary project Making Sense Of: Play seeks to examine the various meanings of “play”, elucidate their inter-relationships and trace the origins of the patterns of play and their place in the human condition. Variations in cultural conditions naturally impact on play, its meanings and its forms, as do, often in a different way, economic inequalities both within and between different cultures. Our deliberations will necessarily takes this into account. In many languages, as in English, throughout its etymological history “play” has been closely connected to the world of children and make believe. Academic study of play, too, deals predominantly with various aspects of children’s play and its importance in development. There is, in fact, a lack of balance between the study of play in relation to children and childhood on one hand, and “play” more generally, as outlined above, on the other. For this reason our project explicitly emphasizes the comparatively under-explored aspects of play in linguistic, literary, philosophical, historical, psychological and evolutionary frames of reference.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
(Plato)

Possible Themes:

- in politics
- in literature
- throughout history
- in philosophy
- as a psychological issue
- its evolutionary significance
- in language
- as humour
- in metaphor
- play of perception
- play and the life-course
- relating to existential crisis (illness, death)
- and love
- and hatred
- and power
- animal play

When:
The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 13th January 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday11th May 2012.

How:
Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 key words
E-mails should be entitled: PLAY Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Who to:

Joint Organising Chairs:
Wendy Turgeon: turgeon@optonline.net
Rob Fisher: play@inter-disciplinary.net

More Details:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/making-sense-of...

[UPDATE] Call for Book Reviews: Bondage and Power, 15 February 2012 (journal issue)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:07:09 -0500

Deadline: February 15, 2012

Book Reviews for Schuylkill graduate journal: Bondage and Power -- Special Issue

Schuylkill graduate journal is seeking submissions from all disciplines for our 10th volume of critical essays and book reviews to be published in Spring of 2012 (online and print). We are seeking book reviews on works addressing the question of bondage and power (broadly defined), 5 pages in length; double spaced; MLA format; no footnotes. Current graduate students should direct their work to Colleen Hammelman and Beth Seltzer at skook@temple.edu by February 15, 2012; no simultaneous submissions please. All reviews will be anonymously reviewed by at least two staff members. Please e-mail submissions with author name and contact info on first page only. In an effort to minimize our environmental impact, copies of submissions not accepted for publication will be recycled.

In his renowned 1992 book City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1992), Mike Davis describes the social warfare in Los Angeles that pits the interests of the urban poor and the middle classes. He argues:

The obsession with physical security systems, and, collaterally, with the architectural policing of social boundaries, has become a zeitgeist of urban restructuring, a master narrative in the emerging built environment of the 1990s. Yet contemporary urban theory, whether debating the role of electronic technologies in precipitating ‘postmodern space’, or discussing the dispersion of urban functions across poly-centered metropolitan ‘galaxies’, has been strangely silent about the militarization of city life so grimly visible at the street level.

Davis further describes the ways in which “redevelopment massively reproduced spatial apartheid” and how the new architecture and security apparatus in LA has served to bound the poor and homeless to a life as fugitives and always in motion, “pressed between the official policy of containment and the increasing sadism of Downtown streets.” This is but one demonstration of the complexity of bondage and power in society. This is a multifaceted issue in the humanities: the definition and re-definition of these terms and the nature of their interaction has been debated by philosophers, literary theorists, sociologists, novelists, poets, journalists, political theorists, geographers and other scholars of the humanistic sciences across various time periods.

Because we want to provide an original and important angle to the discussion of new works, we will publish reviews by graduate students exclusively. Additionally, the reviews will explicitly address the reviewer's impressions of the importance of the work to future research as well as emerging fields, disciplines, approaches, etc.

To compliment the articles centered on this issue’s special topic of bondage and power, The Schuylkill seeks book reviews of recent scholarship that in some way deal with this topic. Below is a list of suggestions, but the editors are open to other works provided they were published in the past two years.

A few suggestions (though the possibilities are by no means limited to this list):

Gene Sharp’s Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts. (2011)
Isa Blumi’s Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State. (2011)
Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong’s Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen.(2011)
John Hench’s Books as Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II. (2010)
Stephanie Li’s Something Akin to Freedom: The Choice of Bondage in Narratives by African American Women. (2010)

We welcome reviews focusing on any of the multi-dimensional aspects of power and bondage, ranging from the bondage of labor to power and the environment to institutional bondage and power, and topics in between. Please feel free to write with questions or proposals.

The Schuylkill is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal founded, edited, and run by graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia. We are looking to publish the scholarly work of graduate students in the humanities from around the globe. We are especially interested in work that, in presenting a rich and nuanced perspective on the topic of bondage and power, blurs the boundaries of the disciplines (literary theory; philosophy; history; political theory; religious studies; cinema studies; women’s studies; art history; etc.)

[UPDATE] Bondage and Power: 15 February 2012 (journal issue)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:51:09 -0500

We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning. -- Aldous Huxley

The representation and experience of bondage and power is a complex, multifaceted issue in the humanities: the definition and re-definition of these terms and the nature of their interaction has been debated by philosophers, literary theorists, sociologists, novelists, poets, journalists, political theorists, and other scholars of the humanistic sciences across various time periods. Schuylkill graduate journal is seeking submissions from all disciplines for our 10th volume of critical essays and book reviews to be published in Spring of 2012 (online and in print) which seek to push against, transform, or invigorate traditional and standardized notions of bondage and power, exploring how these variables act upon each other to produce layered and complex combinations. We are seeking papers on the relationship between bondage and power, 10-15 pages in length; double spaced; MLA format; no footnotes. Current graduate students should send their work to Jennifer McKim at skook@temple.edu by 15 February 2012. No simultaneous submissions please.

The Schuylkill invites submissions from across the humanities and social sciences that reflect on the relationship between bondage and power, in the broadest interpretation of these terms. We invite submissions from a diverse range of disciplines, critical perspectives, and time periods.

Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:

The bondage of labor: wage labor, domestic labor, sweatshops, sex work, debt bondage, social justice

Slavery: narratives of captivity in literature, film, video games and other media; psychological enslavement; Hegelian master-slave dialectics; imperialism and colonial appropriation; fiscal or agricultural enslavement; modern-day slavery; human rights

Visual/auditory representations of power and/or art as resistance to power

Power and the environment: electricity, wind power, steam power, solar energy, nuclear power, sustainability

Bondage to hegemonic structures or systems that foster racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, jingoism, ableism, xenophobia, religious persecution, genetic discrimination, linguicism, reverse discrimination, or any other form of intolerance

Power of the digital humanities and/or its limits

Cultural representations of sexual bondage, erotica, and sadomasochism

Institutional bondage and power: incarceration; social mobility; marital and family bonds; religion and power; intellectual bondage; spatial bondage and hyperghettoization; pedagogical power

The relationship between bondage and power on warfare and torture; for example, Abu Graib, its media coverage/ the impact of its iconography

Performances of power

Acts of resistance, subversion, and protest to various forms of bondage and power-based relationships

Power over control/dissemination of information via journalism, blogs, government agencies, television news media, censorship, and propaganda

The Schuylkill is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal founded, edited, and run by graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia. We are looking to publish the scholarly work of graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences from around the globe. We are especially interested in work that, in presenting a rich and nuanced perspective on the topic of the relationships between bondage and power, blurs the boundaries of the disciplines (literary theory; philosophy; linguistics; sociology; history; political theory; religious studies; cinema studies; women’s studies; classics; art history; geography and urban studies, etc.)

[UPDATE: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEB 15] UCLA Southland Graduate Conference: Art and Accident: June 1, 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:04:04 -0500

2012 UCLA Southland Graduate Conference: Art and Accident
June 1, 2012

“Step accidently on your untied shoelace, fall down and you’ll understand a thing or two about the theory of literature.” --Viktor Shklovsky

We might think of the history of modern criticism as a history of denials of the importance of accident in the experience of art, from the central role of “purposiveness” in the Kantian conception of beauty to twentieth-century literary critical debates about authorial intention and organic integrity. The apprehension of accident as such is parried in New Historicist explorations of the complex causal mechanics of “the political unconscious,” and dodged as thoroughly (if much differently) in newer inquiries into the structural roles that affects play in our aesthetic categories. Critics of all stripes know there’s something a little funny when we say “it’s no accident…”—Eve Sedgwick, even, has shown us the joke (we are the kid who’s peed himself on purpose)—but collectively seeing through this gesture does not keep us from making it. It’s difficult for the literary critic to embrace accident, to find a rubric for its appreciation. What’s at stake in learning how? At a critical moment poised for an “aesthetic turn,” that is to say for the reactivation of big questions of art and its systematic study, it is possible to frame anew and ask afresh questions like this; we wager that answering them is a vital task.

This spring, we invite you to untie your shoes and join us in this important work at the annual Southland Graduate Student Conference at UCLA, sponsored by the Friends of English. Possible topics may include, but are in no way limited to, the following:

• changing historical conceptions of the accidental, and how literary art makes its meaning
with, against, or alongside them
• “bad copies” and deviant reprints
• science and the accident of human existence; social history and the accidents of social
forms; accidental institutions and accidents of specialization and discipline
• a “divinity in odd numbers”: theologies of accident; providential interpretation and its discontents
• semiotics and accident; the role of chance in etymology and metaphor
• identity categories: essence and/or accident; accidental sex (and gender)
• the material text as something more than an accident of “the text itself”
• modernism and contingency, modern art and “the arts of contingency”
• realism and “the world of chance”; coincidence and historical causality
• contingency before modernity
• conventional accidents and accidental innovations; genre as literary historical accident
• rhyme and accident; the poetics of mishap; puns and verbal play
• performance and contingency; staged accidents and accidents on stage
• the unpredictability of political crisis and revolution; the logic of mob versus organized protest; terrorism and disaster
• genres of the accidental: essay, picaresque, jazz, found art, flarf poetry, and others; literary evolution and its vicissitudes

This conference is open to all fields and specializations, and we actively encourage speculative and interdisciplinary work. Panels will be organized according to theme. To promote discussion and debate, each panel will feature a brief response from a UCLA graduate student. Keynote speakers: Michael Cohen and Louise Hornby.

Please send 250-word abstracts to art.and.accident@gmail.com by February 15th, 2012. Please paste the abstract the body of the email. Include your name, contact information, department, and institution. Prospective participants will be notified by February 20th. The conference will be held on June 1st, 2012, on the UCLA campus. Send any inquires to the same email address.

Sylvia Plath Symposium 2012: The October Poems

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:54:10 -0500

The Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington is accepting papers for the Sylvia Plath Symposium 2012: The October Poems. This interdisciplinary event to be held on the Bloomington campus runs from Thursday through Sunday, October 25-28.

While topics on any aspect of Plath’s work are welcome, featured speakers and artists will respond to what Plath called “the best poems of my life” – including “Daddy,” “Lady Lazarus,” “Ariel,” “Fever 103°” and the Bee Sequence poems.

Day one of the Symposium focuses on the phenomenon of inspiration and the creative imagination, and literary panels will take place on Friday and Saturday. Papers should be 15-20 minutes. Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words to plath70 (at) indiana.edu. Deadline is July 1, but earlier submissions are encouraged, especially for international scholars.

“Robin Hood and the Canon," MLA Boston, January 3-6, 2013

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:27:36 -0500

“Robin Hood and the Canon," MLA Boston, January 3-6, 2013

What is the place and status of the Robin Hood texts and tradition in the canon? The Robin Hood literary texts are decidedly varied in terms of genre and form (historical writings, ballads, broadsides, dramas, novellas, and novels, for example), and the tradition stretches from the medieval period to the present. While such canonical writers as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Keats, and Sir Walter Scott, among others, have written about the outlaw, Robin Hood’s presence within the canon is, for many, questionable. While Arthur and the Matter of Britain are fixtures within the canon (and like Robin Hood associated with aspects of popular culture), Robin Hood and the Matter of the Greenwood are in many ways still outside of literary and cultural officialdom – why?

This panel seeks papers that examine the reasons behind the status of the Robin Hood tradition in the canon. Papers that address the interdisciplinary nature of the tradition as it relates to canonicity are encouraged.

Please send 300-word abstracts to Alexander L. Kaufman (akaufman@aum.edu) by March 15, 2012.

2012 International Conference on Future Communication and Computer Technology (ICFCCT 2012)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:30:01 -0500

2012 International Conference on Future Communication and Computer Technology (ICFCCT 2012)
ISTP indexed
2012年未来通信与计算机技术国际学术会议
http://www.icfcct.org/

2012 International Conference on Future Communication and Computer Technology (ICFCCT 2012) will be held in Beijing, China during May 19-20, 2012.
The aim objective of ICFCCT 2012 is to provide a platform for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals from all over the world to present their research results and development activities in Computer, Network and Communication Technology. This conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration.
Submitted conference papers will be reviewed by technical committees of the Conference.
ICCNCE 2012 will be published in the conference proceeding, and will be indexed by Thomson ISI Proceedings.
ICFCCT 2012由国际信息与计算机科学研究学会主办,会议将在北京召开。全部论文将送交学术委员会严格审阅后录用，会议论文集将由科学技术出版社出版，将被ISTP检索。
ISBN: 978-988-15121-4-7

Important Date
Paper Submission (Full Paper) Before February 29, 2012
Notification of Acceptance On March 15, 2012
Authors' Registration Before March 25, 2012
Final Paper Submission Before March 25, 2012
ICFCCT 2012 Conference Dates May 19-20, 2012
本次会议投稿中文、英文都可以，中文稿件须有英文题目、英文摘要、英文关键词。参考文献需为英文。中文论文中的图片注释需要中英文对照，中文论文中的表格的标题需要中英文对照。标准注册费用论文版面按照模版排版后不超过5页，超过5页后按照350元/页收取超页费。
SUBMISSION METHODS:
Email: icfcct@163.com ( .pdf and .doc)

Topics:

Information Engineering
Artificial Intelligence 
Bioinformatics 
Software Engineering 
VLSI Design and Fabrication 
Photonic Technologies 
Parallel and Distributed Computing 
Data Mining 
Cryptography 
Algorithms and Data Structures 
Graphs and Combinatorics 
E-commerce and E-learning 
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) 
Networking 
Signal Processing 
Embedded System 
Communication and Wireless Systems 
Multimedia Systems and Applications 
Emerging Technologies 
INetwork Technologies
Wireless & Mobile Networking
Wireless Sensor Networks 
Cognitive Radio Networks 
Ad Hoc, Sensor and Mesh Networking 
Next-Generation Networking and Internet 
Wireless Network Security and Privacy 
Networking and Information Security 
Network Protocol and Congestion Control 
QoS, Reliability & Performance Modeling
Mobility, Location and Handoff Management 
Capacity, Throughput, Outage and Coverage 
Multimedia in Wireless Networks 
Optical Networks and Systems  Computer
Algorithm and Applications 
Artificial Intelligence 
Cloud Computin 
Communication Networks and Protocols 
Database Technologies 
Distributed and Parallel Computing 
Hardware Design and Implementation 
Information Security 
Multimedia and Graphics Technologies 
Operating Systems 
Simulation and Modeling 
Communication
Signal Detection and Parameter Estimation 
Signal, Image and Video Processing 
Speech and Audio Processing 
Wireless Communications 
Communications Transmission 
Network Communication 
Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing 
Ad hoc and Sensor Networks 
Network and System Security 

For more information about this conference, please contact:
Dr. Zheng
E-mail: icfcct@163.com
Tel: +86-10-6625-0765

2011 International Conference on Financial, Management and Education Science (ICFMES 2012)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:27:30 -0500

CALL FOR PAPERS

2011 International Conference on Financial, Management and Education Science (ICFMES 2012)
ISTP indexed
2011年金融、管理与教育科学国际学术会议
http://www.icfmes.org/

2011 International Conference on Financial, Management and Education Science (ICFMES 2012) will be held in Beijing, China during May 19-20, 2012.
The aim objective of ICCNCE 2012 is to provide a platform for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals from all over the world to present their research results and development activities in Computer, Network and Communication Technology. This conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration.
Submitted conference papers will be reviewed by technical committees of the Conference.
ICFMES 2012 will be published in the conference proceeding, and will be indexed by Thomson ISI Proceedings.
ICFMES 2012由国际信息与计算机科学研究学会主办,会议将在北京召开。全部论文将送交学术委员会严格审阅后录用，会议论文集将由科学技术出版社出版，将被ISTP检索。
ISBN: 978-988-15121-5-4

Topics:
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Accounting
Business
Financial Economics
Law and Economics
Information Management
Information Systems and Technology
Financial and Banking
e-Business Engineering and Management
Theory and Practice of Modern Management
Modern Quality Management
Knowledge Management
Education Innovation
Educational Theory
Teaching practice
Education Policy
Educational Psychology
Educational reform
Curriculum Reform
Ideological and Political Education
Educational party construction
Vocational Education
Adult Education
Audio-visual education
School Management
Education Economy
Social Development
Technology Development Knowledge innovation project
School and society
Personnel training
Sports Education

For more information about this conference, please contact:
Dr. Zheng
E-mail: icfmes@163.com
Tel: +86-10-6625-0765