category: popular culture

Children, Childhood, and Popular Culture

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:37:52 -0400

The Children and Childhood Studies Area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association invites you to participate in the annual MAPACA conference. Papers in this area examine intersections of childhood and pop culture including the impact of pop culture on children and childhood, representations of childhood in pop culture, and the role of children and young adults as influencers and creators of popular and American culture.

Single papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative formats are welcome. Proposals should take the form of 300-word abstracts. The deadline for submission is Friday, June 30, 2013. This year’s conference will be in Atlantic City, NJ, Nov. 7-9, 2013. For the complete call as well info on how to submit a proposal, please see http://mapaca.net/. Please direct any questions about the Children and Childhood Studies area to area chair Patrick Cox at ptcox@camden.rutgers.edu.

MAPACA welcomes proposals on all aspects of popular and American Culture. For a list of MAPACA’s other areas and area chair contact information, visit Subject Areas. General questions can be directed to mapaca@mapaca.net.

MAPACA is an inclusive professional organization dedicated to the study of popular and American culture in all their multi-disciplinary manifestations. The association is comprised of college and university faculty, independent scholars and artists, and graduate and undergraduate students. It is a regional division of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association, which, in the words of Popular Culture Association founder Ray Browne, is a “multi-disciplinary association interested in new approaches to the expressions, mass media and all other phenomena of everyday life.”

Thanks
Patrick Cox
Area Chair, Children and Childhood Studies
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Studies Association

[UPDATE] (Extended Deadline) Pastoral Artifice - MMLA/November 7-10, 2013

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:15:51 -0400

Recent publication of The Arcadia Project, an anthology of "North American postmodern pastoral," highlights the interest of contemporary writers in pastoral artifice. In highly original compositions, these writers repurpose and self-consciously misuse pastoral conventions to evoke simulations of pastoral in the contemporary world. Paradoxically, these simulations are more real than the pastoral fantasies on which they are based. For example, the pastoral simulation called suburbia continues to expand in unsustainable ways, and to degrade our environment.

This special session asks contributors to consider how contemporary authors write and represent pastoral simulations. How do their techniques stem out of past writers and works? What is the relationship between pastoral artifice in literature and environmental activism? How can we conceptualize of pastoral artifice with reference to postmodernism, or even to the “post-pastoral,” as theorized by Terry Gifford?

Please send 250-word abstracts and a brief bio by June 28th, 2013 to Peter Monacell, plmonacell@ccis.edu

Chair: Dr. Peter Monacell, Columbia College, Missouri

http://luc.edu/mmla/callforpapers.html

JOHN BERRYMAN: A CENTENARY CELEBRATION (24-25 October 2014)

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:17:41 -0400

Born in Oklahoma in 1914, John Berryman is one of the most significant American poets of the twentieth century. Recognised from the beginning of his publishing career as a poet and critic of distinction, his books of poetry and prose are among the most important works by any writer in English in the period up to the early 1970s. Since his death in 1972, further posthumously published works have added to his oeuvre, marking him out as one of the most brilliant poetic and critical minds of his generation.

This two-day conference, to be held between the University of Minnesota and Trinity College Dublin, will celebrate Berryman’s mind and its lasting influence by considering his legacy in a number of respects. It will involve reflections on Berryman as teacher and scholar by some of those who knew him, as well as an opportunity for those doing new research to discuss his work. The field of Berryman Studies is as wide open in 2013-14 as it was when the journal John Berryman Studies was published in the 1970s. One of the aims of this conference, therefore, will be to look back at the work that has been done on Berryman in the decades since his death, but the event will also provide a forum to discuss areas that remain uncharted, including projects currently being undertaken in University of Minnesota Libraries and Special Collections and Berryman’s lasting influence on poets and other creative artists who came after him.

Proposals are invited for twenty-minute papers on any aspect of John Berryman’s writing, published or unpublished, in verse or prose. Individuals interested in participating in the conference should send proposals of no more than 300 words, with a short biographical note indicating institutional affiliation (if available), to berryman2014@gmail.com by the 25th of October 2013. A provisional conference programme with additional details will be made available in January 2014.

[EXTENDED DEADLINE/JULY 15] The Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Charleston, S.C. (Nov 14-17)

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:58:30 -0400

"Freedom and Utopia" : 38th Annual Meeting , Francis Marion Hotel, Charleston, South Carolina November 14-17, 2013

We welcome papers from a diversity of disciplines that explore utopian and dystopian thought and practice: including art, architecture, geography, history, literature, music, film and new media, political science, rhetoric, sociology, theory and philosophy, and urban and rural planning.

We invite you to submit abstracts for any of the following:
• a paper (between 15-20 minutes): a 150-250 word abstract summarizing the paper 
• a pre-constituted panel that consists of a title, designated Chair, and an abstract for each of three, related papers (150 words minimum abstract/paper) • an informal roundtable panel on a topic (e.g., 3 presenters, or a presenter and 2 or 3 respondents): 250 word abstract defining the roundtable panel 
• a presentation or performance of creative work on any topic related to utopia: a 150 words abstract summarizing the presentation.

Please submit paper/panel/roundtable submissions via the SUS conference web page by July 15, 2013:  http://utopian-studies.org/conference2013/

For additional information, please contact:
Dr. Dina Smith, Drake University 
dina.smith@drake.edu

CFP Celebrity Studies Journal Conference 2014

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:13:12 -0400

2nd Biannual Celebrity Studies Journal Conference – CFP

http://celebritystudiesconference.com

When: June 19-21, 2014

Where: Royal Holloway, University of London

Deadline for abstracts: November 4th, 2013 (250 words, +50 word bio)

Successful abstracts notified by: December 6th, 2013

Enquiries/abstracts to: celebritystudies@gmail.com

Organisers: James Bennett and Su Holmes

Routledge and Royal Holloway, University of London are pleased to announce the 2nd biannual Celebrity Studies Journal conference: ‘Approaching celebrity’.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Richard Dyer (Kings College, University of London)
·

Diane Negra (University College Dublin)
·

Mandy Merck (Royal Holloway, University of London)
·

Sean Redmond (Deakin University, Melbourne)
Theme

The 2nd Celebrity Studies Journal conference will be themed around questions of methodology: ‘Approaching celebrity’. We invite abstracts for individual 20minute papers or pre-constituted panels of 3 x 20minute papers that speak to this theme or on any topic in celebrity studies.

We also invite submissions for Pecha Kucha style presentations, either individually or as part of a pre-constituted panel of 3-4 speakers. See the website for more info.

PhD Competition

A travel bursary and fee waiver will be available to the best two abstract submissions (including abstracts for Pecha Kucha presentations). See the website for more info.

A special issue of the best papers from the conference will be published in Celebrity Studies Journal in 2015.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Method: how to do celebrity studies

· The celebrity studies canon

· The value of fame

· Celebrity and power

· Star and celebrity images

· Pop stardom

· National cinema, international stars

· The TV Personality

· Celebrity and performance

· Digital platforms

· DIY celeb

· Ordinary celebrity

· Austerity and celebrity

· American Quality TV

· Entrepreneurial celebrity

· Celebrity fandom

· Literary celebrity

· Queer celebrity

· The celebrity ambassador

· Fame damage

· Celebrity affect, emotion

· Celebrity and gender

· Anti-celebrity

· The phenomenology of celebrity

· Cult stardom and celebrity

· Charisma and celebrity

· Pathology and celebrity

· Toxic celebrity

· Celebrity and news

· The sexualisation of celebrity

· Celebrity art/artists

· Race, ethnicity and celebrity

· Celebrity and persona

· Porn stars

· Sport and celebrity

· Gaming and celebrity culture

· Political fame

· Celebrity’s right to privacy

· Leveson inquiry and celebrity

· Reality TV

Exegesis CFP 'Landscapes: Real, Digital, Imagined

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:29:52 -0400

Landscapes: Real, Digital, Imagined

‘Any landscape is a condition of the spirit’
- HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL

Exegesis, the peer-reviewed academic e-journal of the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, is now accepting submissions for the Autumn 2013 edition on 'Landscapes: Real, Digital, Imagined'. For this issue we hope to attract creative writing dealing with the notion of landscape, broadly considered, as well as literary, historical and other critical readings informed by considerations of space, form and location. Authors may choose to investigate this topic literally, metaphorically, or theoretically, and in terms of specific texts, authors, times, or places. Articles and creative pieces might address, but are not limited to, any of the following subjects:

Natural landscapes: forests, rivers, mountains
Man-made landscapes: the city, the road
Transitory landscapes: weather, the seasons, natural disasters
Fantasy landscapes: utopias, dreamscapes, extra-terrestrial worlds
Imagined landscapes: migration and memory
Journeys: on foot, by car, at sea
Conservation and destruction: heritage, environmentalism, ecocriticism
Regional landscapes: within Britain, Europe, the world
Pastoral: its meanings and history
Psychological: landscapes of the mind
Literary movements and the landscapes they reflect (and reflect on)
The digital landscape and a place for the humanities
Aesthetics, style and form: reading a landscape
Domestic landscapes: interiors, homes

We welcome previously unpublished essays, short articles, reviews, and creative pieces on each issue’s theme from postgraduate research students and early career academics. Essays and short articles should be between 4000-6000 words. Creative pieces are welcomed of no more than 5000 words.

Exegesis is also interested in analytical exhibition, film, theatre, conference, and book reviews of 800 – 1000 words (including references) on the broad theme of ‘British Cultural Landscapes’. Please ensure that books reviewed were published within the last three years, and that other events reviewed occurred within the last six months. Exegesis is particularly interested in covering exhibitions running across the United Kingdom.

Submission deadline is Monday 22 July 2013. Please submit via the following email addresses:

To submit a critical work, critical@exegesisjournal.org
To submit a creative work, creative@exegesisjournal.org
To submit a book review, reviews@exegesisjournal.org

Please include your name, academic affiliation, the title of your submission, 5-7 keywords, and a 3-5 sentence abstract of the article or review piece.

Please note: All submissions must adhere to MHRA style guidelines. Additionally, we now require submissions to be in our Submission Template which can be found at www.exegesisjournal.org; please read the instructions within the template closely.

[UPDATE] Postcolonial Filmmaking in French-speaking Countries

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:06:57 -0400

Black Camera invites submissions for a Close-Up devoted to a critical assessment of Postcolonial Filmmaking in French-speaking Countries to be published Fall 2014.

We seek essays on films by African filmmakers that challenge “absolute otherness” in postcoloniality. Consider, for example, films by Ousmane Sembène, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Merzak Allouache, Moufida Tlati, Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Jean-Marie Teno, Sylvestre Amoussou, Mahmoud Zemmouri, and Nadia El Fani.

We also encourage submissions that address aspects of the postcolonial experience in France by first- and second-generation filmmakers such as Rachid Bouchareb, Karim Dridi, Abdellatif Kechiche, Mehdi Charef, Yamina Benguigui, Bourlem Guerdjou, Roschdy Zem, et al. Thematic concerns, from the role of public school education in the integration of children of North African descent in French society (Games of Love and Chance, Kechiche) to memory of the Algerian independence war (Cartouches gauloises, Charef) articulate an experience which has yet to be inscribed in the national discourse, and that interrogate the émigré experience through the prisms of ethnicity, class, gender religion, and diasporic affiliations. Essays that interrogate the ideological discourses of these films through narrative and aesthetic strategies are especially welcomed.

Consider, too, how postcolonial films foreground awareness of diasporic consciousness as more than exile and homeland – real or imaginary. Such films as Little Senegal (Bouchareb) evoke an experience shared across the Atlantic with African Americans.

Topics may include but are not limited to individual and comparative analyses of diasporic and "exilic" films; their production, exhibition, distribution, and reception; interviews with directors of such films; language of postcolonial cinema; the representation of émigré women of African descent; transcending national and regional divides; cityscapes; memory and diasporic identities; African queer diasporas; transnationality, metropolitanisms and diasporic cosmopolitanisms.

Essays, book and film reviews, interviews, and commentaries are welcomed. Essays should be 6,000–10,000 words. Interviews (6,000 words), commentaries (1,000–2,000 words), and book and film reviews (500–1,500 words) should also pertain to the theme of the Close-Up. Please submit completed essays, a 150 word abstract, and a 50-100 word biography by December 1, 2013. Submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Please see journal guidelines for more on submission policy: http://www.indiana.edu/~blackcam/call/#guidelines

Direct all questions and correspondence to guest editor Delphine Letort (delphine.letort@univ-lemans.fr)

Common Criminals- C19 (Chapel Hill, March 13-16, 2014)

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:58:06 -0400

Common Criminals

Nineteenth-century U.S. print culture is replete with sensational accounts of crime: from the lurid coverage of real-life cases in the penny press to the popular fictions of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and George Lippard. In her influential study _Murder Most Foul_, Karen Halttunen argues that this body of literature emphasized the exceptional status of violent criminals, portraying them as monstrously and unknowably other. This panel seeks 15-20 minute papers that push back against this critical paradigm for the C19 conference on “Commons,” to be held at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 13-16, 2014. To what extent do criminals and their crimes get associated during this period not just with the exceptional or sensational, but with the everyday, the ordinary, the commonplace? How might thinking about the representation of “common criminals” reorient our understanding of the ways in which nineteenth-century Americans imagined crime? Possible topics might include (but are not limited to)

- Boundary-blurring between criminals and the public at large
- Criminals as a collective
- Anxieties about the “mob”
- Lesser, non-violent offenses
- Crime examined from a statistical or demographic perspective

By September 1, please email 250-300 word abstract and a short biographical statement (including contact information) to Jon Blandford, Bellarmine University, jblandford@bellarmine.edu. For information about the C19 organization and its third biennial conference, see http://c19.psu.edu/ and http://as.vanderbilt.edu/c19/.

[UPDATE] Doubting Faith and Believing Unbelievers

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:55:46 -0400

SOUTHEAST CONFERENCE ON CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE (SCCL)
Doubting Faith and Believing Unbelievers
Issues of religion continue to dominate intellectual, academic, personal, and social environments in the West, particularly in the US. The “New Atheists” (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) have an aggressive agenda that calls for ongoing efforts to eradicate religious belief through debate and dissemination of information. Websites exist which provide venues through which ex-Christians (and former adherents of other religions as well) can find support, encouragement, and validation. Interestingly, some, though certainly not all, unbelievers demonstrate the same level of what some observers might term dogmatism as fundamentalist believers do. Writers of novels and poems continue to produce works in which the topic of religion plays a significant role. To what extent has “deconversion” surfaced in literatures of the past and present and to what techniques have debunkers of faith resorted in these literatures? How has the depiction of this phenomenon changed (if at all) since the flurry of Victorian instances of loss of faith? How have the reactions of believers evolved or remained static? To what degree has language reflected this issue? Participants may submit papers which identify and analyze current or past poetic and fictive responses to this ongoing struggle, hopefully in light of the contemporary climate. Papers analyzing the intellectual and emotional tension within both believers and unbelievers might be particularly interesting. Contributors may also explore the various roles television, web sites, social media, radio, newspapers, magazines, online news outlets, literary journals, or other media play in this debate. Papers focusing especially on Southern writers are welcome, since the American South still holds the designation of “Bible Belt.” Members of CCL are strongly encouraged to participate, but the session is open to all interested scholars. By June 25, 2013, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Lawton Brewer, Georgia Northwestern Technical College, at lbrewer@gntc.edu.

[UPDATE] Second Chances, Final Glances: Media Afterlives - Extended Deadline & Keynote Speaker

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:48:51 -0400

University of Pittsburgh, October 18-19, 2013
Hosted by the Film Studies Graduate Student Organization (FSGSO)
EXTENDED Deadline: July 17, 2013

Keynote by Homay King, Associate Professor of History of Art and Director, Center for Visual Culture at Bryn Mawr College. King teaches Film Studies and her fields of specialty include American cinema, film theory, psychoanalytic theory, and feminist film theory and criticism. King is author of Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Projection, and the Enigmatic Signifier (Duke University Press, 2010).

If obsolescence is both a condition and consequence of media culture, how can we approach and articulate the relationship between oldness and newness, obsolescence and innovation, with regard to changes in cinematic form, technology, and scholarship? This conference reconsiders obsolescence as a strategic anachronism, focusing not only on technological formats but also on genres, critical approaches, and texts. To address the allure of the “now” which pervades approaches to everything from Blu-ray technology to Speculative Realism, we affirm the need to turn back in order to imagine what lies ahead.

When an idea, object, medium, or thinker passes into obsolescence, what anxieties or nostalgias does it engender? How are communities formed by shared investment in the displaced, and how are they stimulated by the possibilities of reappropriation? What explanatory frameworks and affective experiences apply when the genealogies of obsolescence are primarily material (e.g. celluloid or 8-bit video games) or discursive (e.g. forgotten critics and faded schools-of-thought)? What can a technology or idea’s reemergence tell us about the context in which relevance is regained?

As technologies, formats, exhibition sites, kinds of objects, and even particular critical archives go out of (and, perhaps more importantly, back into) favor or fashion, they acquire a different aura, such that what's relegated to the margins of the market economy is often central to alternative circuits of the antique, the collectible, kitsch and camp, etc. By exploring transformative moments and practices of moving image production and reception as well as theory and criticism, Second Chances will engage notions of obsolescence and reemergence that determine how we contextualize, historicize, and promote our scholarly projects.

We are particularly interested in submissions that seek to engage topics in Film, Television, and Media Studies Critical Theory and Historiography. In addition, possible topics may include:
• Form/content relations: obsolescent platforms and platforms for obsolescent texts.
• "No one reads ____" : recuperations and other engagements with "passé" thinkers, concepts, or methods.
• Outmoded genres and aesthetic/narrative conventions in film and TV.
• Racialized and gendered implications of progress, anachronism, and futurity, particularly via critiques of neoliberalism, and interventions from queer theory, critical race, and feminist film/media scholarship.
• Dead or dormant production cycles and their imagined audiences.
• "Unofficial" or forgotten archives: their discovery, organization, and research.
• Preservation practices and the politics of conservation.
• Abandoned/neglected exhibition sites and practices.
• Unusable/unplayable audio and video playback and projection formats.
• Found footage, “obsolete technologies,” cinematic detritus, and residual media.
• Stars and obsolescence: celebrity cycles and finitude.
• Time and media formats (e.g. film, video, TV, digital): ephemerality and duration.
• Media archaeology and historical methods.
• Changing technologies and policies in screen translation: (dubbing and subtitles).
• Obsolescence and Ontology (being-toward-death).

We welcome approaches from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to: Film and Media studies, Art and Art History, Visual Culture, Feminist and Queer Studies, Communication, Critical Theory, Literature, Musicology, and Philosophy.

Interested graduate students may submit abstracts (maximum 300 words) – along with institutional/departmental affiliations and current email – to pittfilmgradconference@gmail.com by July 17, 2013. For more information, please contact the FSGSO by email at the above, or visit our website, Special Affects: http://www.fsgso.pitt.edu
cfp categories:
african-american
american
cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches
ecocriticism_and_environmental_studies
ethnicity_and_national_identity
film_and_television
gender_studies_and_sexuality
graduate_conferences
humanities_computing_and_the_internet
interdisciplinary
popular_culture
postcolonial
rhetoric_and_composition
science_and_culture
theory
twentieth_century_and_beyond

Essays on teaching HBO's The Wire (due September 3, 2013)

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:48:32 -0400

Considered one of the greatest television programs and one of the greatest contemporary American narratives of all time, The Wire has received much scholarly and critical attention since its run on HBO from 2002 to 2008. With its rich critique of how American institutions continually fail the citizens they serve, The Wire has been taught in college classrooms across the country, including places such as Harvard, Duke, Drexel and Middlebury College. We seek submissions for a collection of scholarly essays titled All in the Game: Pedagogical Approaches to The Wire, which focuses on pedagogical uses of The Wire in the college classroom. Submissions may come from any field within the Humanities or Social Sciences and may address any aspect or season of the show so long as the focus is on using and teaching The Wire in the college classroom. For example, the editors will be contributing a chapter on using The Wire as the centerpiece of an inquiry and research based composition course.

Please send a 750-1000 word abstract (single-spaced), or five page sample of a completed essay, to ncrummey@gmail.com AND karenleedillon@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions is September 3, 2013.

Food Across Borders: Production, Consumption, and Boundary Crossing in North America

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:29:35 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS
Food Across Borders:
Production, Consumption, and Boundary Crossing in North America

Recent criticism of our global food system has obscured a longer, and still healthy, tradition of food cultivation and circulation among nations. Our own national diets are a product of long-existing agricultural empires across the North American continent. This is especially true in relationship to Mexico: corn, chocolate and peppers are just three of the many indigenous foods that became central to the diets of other nations, including cuisines of the United States. North of the border, Canada has played a significant role in the cultivation of grain for both nations and is a consumer of many U.S. products. In terms of U.S. agriculture, without Mexican workers, our national food production system would not function. These conditions reveal a transnational project, north and south, which have existed for more than a century. Food Across Borders seeks to examine this world in which boundaries create exclusions and dialogs, coercions and collaborations. In our examination we hope to uncover both the ways that boundaries represent true divides in terms of rights and power, and also create and reify false categories of “inside” and “outside” that often do not fit the realities of our current food system.

The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies is joining with Comparative Border Studies at Arizona State University for the 2014-2015 symposia on Food Across Borders. On behalf of the conference organizers/editors, Matt Garcia, E. Melanie DuPuis, and Don Mitchell, we invite proposals for scholarly papers dealing with food and boundary crossings in North America. We welcome a range of interpretations, from the movement of people and goods across land and bodies of water to the passage of food over and through our bodily boundaries. We welcome proposals that explore these issues historically and/or in the contemporary moment. Possible subjects for exploration include:

• The dependency of the North American food system, from farm to food preparation, on the migration of guest and immigrant labor, and the effects of that dependency on source countries, cities, and villages.
• The ways in which climate change will result in the adaptive migration of agricultural ecosystems and social systems across northern and southern borders, and what that might mean for local, regional, and larger food cultures and practices.
• The public health implications for one nation when it embraces the food consumption and production practices of another.
• The ways in which media represent and reify the boundaries of territory and identity in food discourses.
• The challenges of cross-border food justice organizing in light of the "liberalization" of agricultural trade and the changing geography of agricultural production.

The Food Across Borders symposia will occur in two stages and in two places. The first will be held on October 3-4, 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona, where there will be a workshop for participants and an opportunity to give initial public presentations of their work. The second scholars’ workshop and public symposium will be held in Dallas, Texas at SMU in spring 2015. Each Clements Center symposium follows a similar model and each has resulted in a book or a soon-to-be published book (http://smu.edu/swcenter/Symposia.htm).

We welcome submissions from scholars of any rank—from graduate students to full professors. Please send a CV and description of an original proposal to Matt Garcia (Matthew.J.Garcia@asu.edu) by September 15, 2013. The proposal, of up to five pages, should describe the research and explain how it serves the goal of the symposia. Eight to ten papers will be chosen for the symposia and resulting volume. For more information see either, http://borders.asu.edu or http://smu.edu/swcenter.

Into The Pensieve: The Harry Potter Generation in Retrospect, NeMLA 2014 4/3-4/6

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:04:54 -0400

As professors, we now teach the first generation of students to grow up reading Rowling’s books and watching the movies based on them. How have a generation of children, now adults, been shaped by this phenomenon? What future is there for Harry Potter studies? Are we still in the Harry Potter Age, or have we entered a Post-Potter age? This panel seeks papers that address the idea of a Harry Potter Generation broadly, with perspectives including fan studies, pedagogy, and traditional theoretical lenses. 250-word abstracts to Emily Lauer by September 30 at lauere@sunysuffolk.edu.

Getting the Picture: On Recent Evolution in the Comics Industry (Roundtable) NeMLA 2014 4/3-4/6

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:02:05 -0400

From one perspective, the comics form is becoming more weighty and legitimized as graphic novels are sold in standard bookshops. However, at the same time, the comics industry is moving online, where free serialized webcomics such as Penny Arcade and Homestuck create new distribution and fandom models. This roundtable seeks papers that address webcomics as a form and/or an industry, changes in comics fandom due to these newly-popular forms, the role of manga or video games in these changes, or related issues.

Please note that this will be a roundtable discussion, and I welcome comics creators and fans as well as scholars.

250-word abstracts or submissions to Emily Lauer by September 30 at lauere@sunysuffolk.edu

Commemorating Augustus: a bimillennial re-evaluation

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:38:43 -0400

Commemorating Augustus: a bimillennial re-evaluation

University of Leeds, 18th-20th August 2014

Deadline for abstracts: 1st December 2013

Recent publications by Barbara Levick, Karl Galinsky and others demonstrate the ongoing strength of contemporary interest in the historical Augustus. But while the reception histories of figures such as Nero, Julius Caesar and Elagabalus have benefited from focused large-scale scholarly investigations, Augustus’ remains seriously under-explored. Given the controversial nature of his career and the widely variant responses which he has provoked, this is a serious barrier to a full 21st-century understanding of Augustus. We cannot see him clearly for ourselves until we have explored the full range of his past receptions and their impact on our own view.

The bimillennium of Augustus’ death on 19th August 2014 is the perfect opportunity for a systematic assessment of his posthumous legacy and a re-evaluation of his current significance. Commemorating Augustus, a major international conference running over the bimillennium itself, will bring together experts from a wide range of disciplines to undertake this work. The aim is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and enable new perspectives through a shared focus on a single iconic figure.

The over-arching questions which will define the conference and its debates include:

What range of responses to Augustus has been expressed between his death and the present day?
Who has generated them, when, where and how?
How has Augustus’ equivocal and contradictory career been received in different cultural contexts?
How and to what effect have receptions of Augustus reflected cultural exchange and interaction between past and present, and between contemporary cultures?
How do 21st-century assessments of Augustus reflect those of the past?

Invited speakers include:

Mary Harlow (Leicester), Ray Laurence (Kent), Valerie Hope (Open University), Alison Cooley (Warwick), Steven J. Green (Leeds), Shaun Tougher (Cardiff), Russell Goulbourne (Leeds), Barbara Levick (Oxford: keynote 1), Martin Lindner (Göttingen), Lucy Moore (Leeds Museums), Karl Galinsky (Austin Texas: keynote 2, provisional).

For their titles / topics, please see http://augustus2014.com/conference.

Call for papers and suggested topics:

Proposals are now invited for papers which explore the conference’s major questions through specific aspects of Augustus’ death and posthumous reception. Papers should be 20 minutes long, and will be followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Topics might include:

Augustus’ preparations for his own death
Augustus’ funeral, burial and deification
Responses and reappropriations by Roman emperors up to late antiquity
Early Christian responses to Augustus – e.g. Origen, Orosius, John Malalas
Medieval political responses and reappropriations – e.g. Holy Roman Emperors, Philip II of France, Cola di Rienzo
Renaissance / early modern political responses and reappropriations – e.g. Charles II, Louis XIV, House of Hanover, electors of Saxony / kings of Poland
Modern political responses and reappropriations – e.g. Napoleon, Mussolini
Explicit and implicit evaluations in political thinking – e.g. Petrarch, Machiavelli, Bodin, Justus Lipsius, Erasmus, Thomas Elyot, Montesquieu, Jonathan Swift
Augustus in European literature – e.g. Dante, Montaigne, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Pierre Corneille, Heinrich von Kleist, Balzac
Augustus in English literature, especially of the ‘Augustan age’ – e.g. Ben Jonson, Donne, Dryden, Pope, Robert Graves, John Williams, Allan Massie
Art and architecture – e.g. images of Augustus, emulation of his buildings
Augustus in modern popular culture – e.g. novels, films, television, comics, computer games, tourism and Augustan monuments
Changing scholarly evaluations of Augustus – e.g. Thomas Blackwell, Gibbon, Mommsen, Meyer, Betti, Last, Buchan, Syme, Millar, Zanker, Levick, Galinsky
The 21st-century Augustus – current perspectives, their relation to past views of Augustus and the implications of passing judgement on a historical figure.

A fuller list of suggestions is available at http://augustus2014.com/conference; though neither is exhaustive, and proposals for papers on topics not listed are welcome.

Submitting an abstract:

If you are interested in offering a paper, you should first email Dr. Penny Goodman (p.j.goodman@leeds.ac.uk), indicating the general topic which you wish to explore. This is to pre-empt overlaps between papers. A title and abstract (c. 300 words) will then be required by 1st December 2013.

The conference will take place in Devonshire Hall, a self-contained University of Leeds residence in the style of an Oxbridge college. A selection of papers offered at the conference will be published afterwards in the form of an edited volume.

Conference CFP: Doctor Who and Religion [Manchester 2nd Nov 2013] - August 16th Deadline

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:07:41 -0400

Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon in both the UK and the United States, continuing to go from strength-to-strength as it celebrates its 50th anniversary in November 2013. Over the show’s long history on television—and in various spin-off TV shows, audio adventures, novels and comic books—religion and religious themes have consistently been a subject of interest. From early depictions of Buddhism and pagan religion to recent years in which the show has attracted everything from Church of England conferences dedicated to its use in preaching to guest appearances by Richard Dawkins, religion has always had some role within the universes of Doctor Who. Proposals for 20 minute papers are therefore invited for a day conference on this theme to be held at the historic John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester on November 2nd 2013. Possible subjects include, but are not limited to:

• Religious or mythic themes (salvation, return, ritual etc.) in the series.

• Critiques and deconstructions of religion in Doctor Who.

• The use of Doctor Who to chart British religious history from 1963 to the present.

• Death and the afterlife in Doctor Who and Torchwood.

• The Doctor as a Christ figure.

• Portrayals of non-Christian religion in the classic series or BBC revival.

• Fan response to “religious” episodes.

• The use of Doctor Who by religious organisations.

• Religion in audio adventures, comic books and novels.

• Canonicity and Doctor Who as a surrogate religion.

• Doctor Who as a tool for theological reflection.

• Using Doctor Who to teach Religious Studies.

Abstracts should be 250 words in length, and include a short biography of the author. Abstracts should be sent to DrWhoReligion@gmail.com. Deadline for receipt of abstracts: 16th August 2012.

[UPDATE] Human/Animal Encounters in Contemporary Culture 10/05/2013

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:44:12 -0400

In her recent work on human-animal encounter, Donna Haraway asks us to consider ‘who “we” will become when species meet’. At the centre of Haraway’s question is a concern for the mutuality of species, and a desire to reconfigure those Enlightenment inheritances which dialectically position ‘animal’ as the other of ‘human’. Such interests demand a reappraisal not merely of humanist discourse, but also of related questions regarding ethics and responsibility.
This one day symposium hosted in conjunction with Cultural Histories at Kingston aims to consider how contemporary cultural texts in their broadest definition (literature, performance, creative writing, film and television) not only engage with the human-animal encounter, but also how this relationship might speak to a transformative social discourse in terms of ‘beingist’ agendas that interrogate not only humanist allegiances, but also more traditional identity politics.
Confirmed guest speaker: Professor John Mullarkey, Professor of Film and Television Kingston University.
The organisers welcome 20 minute papers that speak to any aspect of this theme, which might include, but are not limited to:
 Animal-human encounters
 Animal as metaphor/anti-metaphor
 Animal-human transformations
 Performing the ‘animal’
 The animal other in popular culture
 ‘Beingist’ interrogations of identity politics
 Revisions of humanism/ posthumanism/ transhumanism in the context of animal encounters
 Speculative realism and the animal
 Animal ethics/responsibility
 Animals and anti-correlationist perspectives
The organisers intend to put together an edited collection based on the symposium theme. Selected presenters may be invited to submit essays based on their papers. Postgraduate students are encouraged to apply.

Please send 200 word abstracts to s.upstone@kingston.ac.uk by 15 July 2013.

Banquets and Borders in Language and Literature October 25-26, 2013

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:40:55 -0400

CFP: Banquets and Borders in Language and Literature

The English Graduate Organization (EGO) of Western Illinois University is currently seeking both individual papers and panel proposals for our tenth annual EGO Conference in Macomb, IL on October 25 – October 26. We are interested in the production, consumption and the symbolism of the culinary within and beyond English Studies. Our conference will feature a keynote speech by Dr. David B. Goldstein entitled “Toward a Skeptical Ethics of Eating: Shakespeare, Montaigne, Levinas.”

Our keynote speaker, Dr. David B. Goldstein (PhD, Stanford University), is an associate professor of English and coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has published articles on Emmanuel Levinas and eating, Titus Andronicus and American cannibalism, and Martha Stewart and domestic labor. His forthcoming works on food and hospitality include a scholarly monograph Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England (Fall 2013) and the SEL article “The Price of Pork: Jews, Scots, and Pigs in The Merchant of Venice” (2014). In addition, Dr. Goldstein is a widely published poet and a founding member of the Wa-KOW! art collective. A former restaurant critic and journalist, his food writing has appeared in SAVEUR, The New York Sun, and numerous other publications.

Paper topics (both creative and critical) may include, but are not limited to the following:

Colonization and food
Consumption and Consumerism
Cooking in popular culture
Culinary histories
Culinary intersectionality
Culinary Travelogues
Cultures of the Raw
Ethics of food
Excess and overindulgence
Food and consuming motifs in literature
Food and Globalization
Food in visual culture
Gender and food
Hospitality
Landscapes of Food
Pedagogy of Food and Eating
Psychology and/of food
Representations of the culinary in film
Rhetoric of food
Rituals of consumption & abstinence
Socioeconomics of fictional cuisine
Sustainability

The EGO conference intends to explore all areas of English Studies, including pedagogy, cultural studies, creative writing, literary studies, linguistics, and critical/literary theory. Furthermore, we welcome interdisciplinary interest and participation, and encourage scholars from all areas of the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences who have an interest in food or consumption-related studies to submit proposals.

Please send 250-word abstracts (and any questions) to ego@wiu.edu by September 5, 2013.

We also welcome submissions by post: English Graduate Organization, Department of English & Journalism, 1 University Circle, Macomb IL 61455-1390.

For further information, please visit our website: www. wiu.edu/cas/english_and_journalism/ego/

Landscapes: Digital, Real, Imagined

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:26:48 -0400

Exegesis, the peer-reviewed academic e-journal of the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, is now accepting submissions for the Autumn 2013 edition on Landscapes: Real, Digital, Imagined. For this issue we hope to attract creative writing dealing with the notion of landscape, broadly considered, as well as literary, historical and other critical readings informed by considerations of space, form and location. Authors may choose to investigate this topic literally, metaphorically, or theoretically, and in terms of specific texts, authors, times, or places. Articles and creative pieces might address, but are not limited to, any of the following subjects:

Natural landscapes: forests, rivers, mountains
Man-made landscapes: the city, the road
Transitory landscapes: weather, the seasons, natural disasters
Fantasy landscapes: utopias, dreamscapes, extra-terrestrial worlds
Imagined landscapes: migration and memory
Journeys: on foot, by car, at sea
Conservation and destruction: heritage, environmentalism, ecocriticism
Regional landscapes: within Britain, Europe, the world
Pastoral: its meanings and history
Psychological: landscapes of the mind
Literary movements and the landscapes they reflect (and reflect on)
The digital landscape and a place for the humanities
Aesthetics, style and form: reading a landscape
Domestic landscapes: interiors, homes

Exegesis is also interested in analytical exhibition, film, theatre, conference, and book reviews of 800 - 1000 words (including references) on the broad theme of 'British Cultural Landscapes'. Please ensure that books reviewed were published within the last three years, and that other events reviewed occurred within the last six months. Exegesis is particularly interested in covering exhibitions running across the United Kingdom.

Submission deadline is Monday 22 July 2013. Please submit via the following email addresses:

To submit a critical work, critical@exegesisjournal.org.
To submit a creative work, creative@exegesisjournal.org.
To submit a book review, reviews@exegesisjournal.org.

Please include your name, academic affiliation, the title of your submission, 5-7 keywords, and a 3-5 sentence abstract of the article or review piece.

Please note: All submissions must adhere to MHRA style guidelines. For complete style guidelines, please refer to the website www.exegesisjournal.org. Please read the instructions within the guidelines closely and adhere to the submission template.

If you have any questions, please email Kelly Centrelli at chief.editor@exegesisjournal.org.

Birth of the Tramp June 26-28, 2014, Bologna, Italy

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:24:07 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Birth of Chaplin’s Little Tramp: A 100th Anniversary Celebration
June 26, 27& 28, 2014 Cineteca di Bologna, Bologna, ITALY

Conference Website: TBA

Statement of Intent: This 100th anniversary celebration of Charlie Chaplin’s iconic persona, the Little Tramp, or as he himself named him, the Little Fellow, will be an event geared towards the public first and film scholars and aficionados second and third. We wish to invite abstracts/proposals from speakers who can accommodate this audience effectively, i.e., potential speakers should suggest topics dealing with historical or humanities-related foci, rather than theoretical or academic. The best proposals will discuss the Little Tramp persona in some manner.

The event will be held in the beautiful northern Italian city of Bologna, with one day of the celebration to coincide with the beginning of the world -renowned Il Cinema Ritrovato festival (June 28-July 5, 2014): http://www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato

PROVISIONAL KEYNOTE AND/OR FEATURED SPEAKERS (OTHERS TBA):
David Robinson, Film Critic and author of Chaplin: His Life and Art
Kevin Brownlow, film historian and director of The Unknown Chaplin
Kate Guyonvarch, Director of Roy Export S.A.S. /Association Chaplin office, Paris Cecilia Cenciarelli, Archivist and Head of The Chaplin Project, Cineteca di Bologna, Italy Lisa Stein Haven, Associate Professor of English and author of Syd Chaplin: A Biography

The following topics are meant to generate ideas for presentations, not limit creativity or exclude participation:
 The Little Tramp’s Music Hall origins
 Chaplin at Keystone: The Process of Creating a Character
 The Little Tramp’s Final Appearance: The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux, or Limelight?
 The Chaplin Imitator Phenomenon (Feel free to discuss a circumscribed time period for this topic)
 The Little Tramp in Contemporary Film Criticism
 Audience Reception: The Little Tramp
 Consequences of A Woman of Paris: Chaplin’s Film Endeavor without the Tramp

All are welcome to submit proposals for consideration
Please send a 500-word abstract, a short bio and your contact information by June 30th, 2013 to
Kate Guyonvarch (office@charliechaplin.com)
(please place Birth of the Tramp event in your subject line)
Conference Organizers: Kate Guyonvarch
Roy Export S.A.S.
58 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau 75001 Paris www.charliechaplin.com

Cecilia Cenciarelli
The Chaplin Project
Cineteca di Bologna
Via Riva di Reno, 72
40122 Bologna http://www.cinetecadibologna.it
http://www.facebook.com/CharlieChaplinOfficial
www.charliechaplinarchive.org

MMLA 2013 - Session on Canadian Literature (New Deadline)

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:43:37 -0400

This permanent section invites papers on any aspect of Canadian Literature. Proposals related to the conference theme of "art and artifice," are encouraged, although this theme can be broadly construed. The new deadline for abstracts is June 28, 2013.

Conference: Locating the Gothic, October 22-25, 2014

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:36:39 -0400

The Gothic is a mode that is intimately connected to location. Sites and spaces both define and demarcate the limits of Gothic aesthetics and have shaped the way varieties of the Gothic have developed over time. From hazy moors and dense forests, to urban labyrinths, contemporary cyberscapes and postmodern dystopi-as, the Gothic has traversed many varied landscapes, both internal and external, historic and contemporary, from which fearful and disturbing atmospheres emerge. Psycho-geographical underpinnings in the Gothic are often the basis for key Gothic experiences such as the sublime and the uncanny. The correlations between space and identity, site and narrative, are central to this and evoke new and interesting approaches to Gothic art, literature, and culture. Thus, we seek to engage with the notion of location as it underpins the literary, artistic, and physical formations of Gothic, and as it may allow us to ‘locate’ the Gothic, or versions of the same in artistic, critical and cultural terms. We are par-ticularly interested in papers which approach alternative forms of Gothic spatiali-ty, particularly those which discuss the Gothic in contemporary art and media. Proposals should be e-mailed to Maria Beville (mariabeville@gmail.com and Tracy Fahey (tracy.fahey@lit.ie) by 1st May 2014.

Panels/Papers - Themes suggested (but not limited to) the following;
Urban Gothic/ Rural Gothic
Regional Gothic/ National Gothic
Gothic Utopias/ Dystopias/ Heterotopias
Spatially based contexts of Gothic (i.e.; mythology, folklore, oral traditions)
Colonial/Postcolonial/ Transcultural Gothic
Dramatic spaces Gothic places and spaces; Psychogeography and the Gothic
Gothic and Architecture
Cartography and the Gothic Spatial structures of Gothic
Cybergothic/ Gothic and multimedia/digital media Limits and boundaries in the Gothic
The Gothic and Domestic space
Locating the Gothic in genre/locating the Gothic in culture

[UPDATE] Deadline extension - June 30, 2013, Religion and Popular Culture

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:32:17 -0400

Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association
2013 Conference, Nov. 7 – 9, 2013, Atlantic City, NJ
Religion and Popular Culture Area
Call for Papers

The Religion and Popular Culture area seeks presentations on the following topics:

Choosing the Leader: This past year Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen to become Pope Francis, the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church. During the conclave that elected the new pope, the popular news media predicted that the Church would, and should, take into consideration the political ramifications of the selection. Would the new pope come from Africa? Would the new pope modify the Church’s stance on abortion or gay/lesbian rights? The opposing perspective from those within the Church claims that although the pope is elected by the College of Cardinals, the Holy Spirit intervenes within the election process so that the chosen candidate will be the expression of God’s will, which subsumes all other political concerns.

The area seeks abstracts and panels that explore how leaders of religious institutions are selected. Within the selection process, how do the human, political interests interact with spiritual doctrine? How does the selection of a new leader influence the religious institution? How does one identify the traits and characteristics of leadership within a religious context, and are those traits similar or different when compared with leaders of various secular institutions? How are religious leaders, religious leadership, or the selection of a new leader portrayed in popular media (literature, television, film, and so on)? Proposals can explore these issues; however, proposals can also engage with any aspect of religious leadership or the selection of leaders. Proposals about any religious tradition from any point in history will be considered.

Weather as a Spiritual Event: In 2012 Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and, more recently, in May 2013, Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City, was destroyed by a tornado. When interviewed, survivors often interpret these weather events in religious terms. In the midst of chaotic destruction, people express a faith in God; in the aftermath, people who have lost their homes, property and, in some cases, loved ones explain that the help they have received from others is a spiritual blessing.

The area seeks abstracts and panels that explore the interpretation of weather events as spiritual acts. Weather phenomena—like hurricanes and tornadoes—are ripe for religiously allegorical interpretations (this is blessing from God, this is a warning from God, this is God’s punishment, and so on). What factors determine how a weather event will be interpreted? Ancient religious texts describe and interpret weather phenomena; how do those ancient accounts compare and contrast to current portrayals of weather events? Does contemporary, popular media forums influence how weather is interpreted? How are weather events symbolically utilized and explained in contemporary, popular media (literature, television, film, and so on)? How do secular explanations of the weather compare and contrast to religious interpretations? Proposals can explore the aforementioned questions; however, proposals can also engage with any aspect of weather and its possible connection to religious understanding. Proposals about any religious tradition from any point in history will be considered.

We also welcome other panel or paper proposals on other themes relevant to Religion and Popular Culture.

Panels of 3 presenters, single papers, roundtables, or alternative formats are encouraged. Students (both graduate and undergraduate) are encouraged to submit proposals and sliding scale registration fees are available. The deadline for proposals is June 30, 2013.

To submit a proposal, please log in at the MAPACA website before submitting your proposal. The address is http://mapaca.net. If you do not already have an account on the website, you will need to create one. Full instructions on logging in, creating an account, and submitting can be found at http://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference. Please review the instructions before submitting to prevent errors that may disqualify your proposal. Submitted abstracts should be limited to 300 words.

If there any questions please contact the area co-chairs, Anthony Zias and Pam Detrixhe, by clicking the “Contract area chairs” button on the Religion and Popular Culture page on the MAPACA website. Do not email your proposals directly to the area chairs; MAPACA will only accept proposals submitted through the association’s website.

Panel Sponsored by Italian Americana at the Italian American Studies Association 2013 Conference in New Orleans, LA Oct. 4-5

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:11:34 -0400

Call for Papers for a Panel Sponsored by Italian Americana at the Italian American Studies Association 2013 Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana October 4-5.

The overall IASA conference theme is Italian-American identity politics. For the panel sponsored by Italian Americana, we are looking for papers on Italian-American beat poets such as Gregory Corso, Philip Lamantia, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Diane Di Prima. Some of the suggested paper topics include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Who gets to speak for Italian Americans, both within and
outside of academia, political venues, cultural venues, etc.;

• The use of identity politics by community leaders, the press, scholars, writers, and others;

• The self-conscious development and use of cultural and expressive forms of ethnic identity;

• Resistance to elite notions of Italian-American identity.

Submit a 250 word abstract and send materials to Dr. Alan J. Gravano at gravanoa@marshall.edu by June 27. Italian Americana will contact you by July 3rd.

Thank you very much for your interest in Italian Americana and the Italian American Studies Association. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Alan J. Gravano
Marshall University
Department of English
One John Marshall Drive
Huntington, WV 25755
304-696-5831
gravanoa@marshall.edu

Eco-dystopias: Special Issue of Critical Survey- Completed articles by 1st September 2013

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:56:19 -0400

CFP: Special issue of Critical Survey on Eco-dystopias for publication in 2013.

Submissions are invited of completed articles for a special issue of the journal Critical Survey, devoted to representations of environmental dystopias in literature and the visual arts.
Recent discussions in the media have focused attention on the emergence of ‘cli-fi’ (climate fiction) as a sub-genre of science fiction. Works of cli-fi explore imaginary futures and places in which global environmental catastrophe, brought on by climate change, has come to pass. Writing in The Guardian in May 2013, the novelist Rodge Glass noted that “[w]hereas 10 or 20 years ago it would have been difficult to identify even a handful of books that fell under this banner, there is now a growing corpus of novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come.” This crop of recent responses to climate change can, however, be mapped against a much more extensive body of dystopian imaginings that might broadly be termed ‘ecological’ rather than – or as well as -- ‘social’ or ‘political’. A great deal of dystopian writing and film-making since the 1950s has responded to the prevailing discourses of environmentalism.
This special issue invites critical essays that consider dystopian imaginative responses (in fiction, poetry, film, or the visual arts) to environmental anxiety, not necessarily limited to our current focus on climate change. Potential submissions might explore, for instance, how writers, film-makers or artists have addressed the ecological implications of:
• Overpopulation
• Viruses, outbreaks, epidemics
• Genetic engineering
• Virtual reality, cybernetics, robotics
• Deforestation
• Species extinction
• Climate change
Completed essays should be submitted to Dr Rowland Hughes (r.w.hughes@herts.ac.uk) and/or Dr Pat Wheeler (p.a.wheeler@herts.ac.uk) by 1st September 2013, with the intention of going to press before the end of 2013.

UPDATE (Extended Deadline) - MMLA 2013 (Milwaukee, Nov. 7-10) - Popular Culture - Illusion

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:53:25 -0400

“Remember: all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

Appearances can be deceiving, as the adage goes, meant to warn us against those who would present a false image in order to take advantage, like the machines who control the Matrix in the Wachowskis’ 1999 film. But is fabrication always a question of deception vs. truth? Invention can also be beautiful and empowering, allowing us to see something we otherwise would not see, to conceive of possibilities hitherto inconceivable. And artfully constructed performance can enable us to express aspects of ourselves no less authentically than we do through less intentional presentation of our identities.

This session invites proposals for papers on the theme of illusion in any aspect of popular culture from any region or period. Papers might draw on representations that interrogate the fake/real binary, that challenge notions of illusion as bad and reality as good, or that showcase the potential of illusion to create something meaningful irrespective of its truth value.

Please send 250-word abstracts by June 28th to Marla Arbach, marla.arbach@gmail.com

Chair: Marla Arbach, University of Santiago de Compostela

http://luc.edu/mmla/callforpapers.html

[UPDATE] SAMLA 2013 Making Feminist Meanings Across Worlds: Print, Digital, and Networked Feminisms and Women's Studies

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:07:16 -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

[UPDATE] CFP: Urban Culture Area, MAPACA, 11/7-11/9/2013, Atlantic City, NJ (June 30th, 2013, deadline for proposals)

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:18:40 -0400

This year, we continue to explore various matters of the urban, but in particular, education and this city. Sunday schools, regular schools, symposiums, workshops, libraries, newsletters, e-learning, expositions, exhibitions, street festivals, travel, field trips, block associations, reading groups, elders, blogs, youtube, revolutionary buildings, performance, music education -- what are the various forums that we build, sustain, and perpetuate in our cities, in order to know more about the city? Of particular interest will be issues of place, sustainability, class, race, and gender, as they play with or against access to the various forms of education in the city. How does the city that we teach (or the city that we learn) correspond (or not) to the physical map of the city? How many and what different kinds of cities are out there? As in previous years, please send your proposals about these and related issues to the Urban Culture Area of MAPACA. Historical or ethnographic studies of particular philosophies and forms of education, poetic accounts of personal journeys through city education, and explorations of highly orchestrated or surprisingly improvised forms or systems of education in the city are welcome, as are studies of particular cities. If interested in participating in a workshop on “writing the urban,” in addition to presenting a paper, please, indicate so. June 30th, 2013 is the deadline by which you can submit your proposal through our website, http://mapaca.net/conference. If you have any questions, please, email Dr. Blagovesta Momchedjikova, Urban Culture Area Chair, bmm202@nyu.edu. This year, the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association meets November 7-9, 2013, in Atlantic City, NJ. For further information, check www.mapaca.net.

Critiquing Culture: The Cultural Studies Graduate Conference - submission extension to June 22, 2013

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:38:39 -0400

Critiquing Culture: The Cultural Studies Graduate Conference (21/9/13) at George Mason University is now accepting paper proposals. We encourage papers that take a cultural studies approach including Marxist political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical theory and post-colonial studies to investigate cultural objects. Papers may be related to the broad themes of political economy, mass & popular culture, gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity, representation & aesthetics and American electoral politics. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be submitted to critiquing.culture@gmail.com by 22 June 2013. http://culturalstudiesconference.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/2013-critiq...

CFP:Looking Beyond First Impressions:Diversity and Multiculturalism in the Performing Arts

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:48:04 -0400

The New England Theatre Conference is soliciting papers for its 62nd annual convention that address this year’s theme, Looking Beyond First Impressions: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the Performing Arts. The Convention will be held in Natick, MA, the weekend of October 24-27, 2013. All papers that address the convention theme are encouraged and welcome. We are especially interested in papers related to the following topics: Diversity on the Stage in New England, Women Pioneers on the Stage, Diversity in Musical Theatre, and LGBT theatre and performance. Please send your abstract of 250 words or less by July 20 to Sabine Macris Klein at sklein@westfield.ma.edu. Please include your name and affiliation, your email address, and any A/V requirements you might have. Convention registration is required of all presenters. For more information about the convention, visit netconline.org.

CFP: Making Meaning with the Work of N. Katherine Hayles, SAMLA, Nov. 8-10, 2013

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:02:08 -0400

This panel seeks to explore a wide range of research that engages the writings of N. Katherine Hayles, SAMLA 85 Critical Plenary Speaker. We invite papers on topics that include but are not limited to the following: theoretical extensions of Hayles’s concepts/approaches; critical applications of her work in analyses of literature, film, digital media, etc.; suggestive combinations of Hayles with other theorists and critics; and explorations of the implications of her ideas for the humanities, the classroom, scholarly publishing, etc. By June 25, 2013, please submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio to Lynn Page Whittaker, University of Georgia, at lynnpw@uga.edu.

SAMLA 85 (Nov. 8-10, 2013) will be held at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center. Accepted presenters must join SAMLA (membership information available here: http://samla.memberclicks.net/membership-information) and register for the conference.

[UPDATE: DEADLINE APPROACHING]

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:15:21 -0400

From Science to Sensation: Art and Artifice in Wilkie Collins (MMLA November 7-10 2013)

A special session on the relation between science and sensation in the work of Wilkie Collins at the Midwest Modern Language Association 2013 conference that focuses on the theme of Art and Artifice.

Accused of such literary crimes as sensationalism and dilettantism, Collins is too often dismissed as a writer of lighter fare, passed over for studies of the period's more serious writers - like Dickens, for instance, with whom he worked closely as a journalist for Household Words and as a a dramatist. This session puts Collins and his work in the critical spotlight, looking from an interdisplinary perspective at how Collins's writing explored deeper social issues - marriage, sexuality, ethics and science, to name but a few - while catering to his audience's taste for art and artifice.

We are particularly interested in papers that explore Collins's writing that receives less critical attention.

Deadline for abstracts June 14, 2013

Please submit a 300-word proposal and a brief bio to
Professors Elizabeth Anderman and Erika Behrisch Elce:

Erika.Behrisch.Elce@rmc.ca
Elizabeth.Anderman@Colorado.edu

Beat Literature in Europe - Oct. 15, 2013, Nov. 30, 2013, Feb. 28, 2014

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:27:52 -0400

Call for contributions

Harri Veivo (University of Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, University of Helsinki), Petra James (Free University of Brussels/Université libre de Bruxelles) and Dorota Walczak-Delanois (Free University of Brussels/Université libre de Bruxelles) are editing a collection of articles on Beat literature in Europe.

The editors aim to chart the networks, mediators and communication channels that permitted the circulation of Beat literature in Europe in general and in countries where the original Beat writers did not reside in particular. At the same time, the editors would like to enhance reflection of the specific local political and sociocultural contexts that motivated interest in Beat literature and influenced its reception, translation and interpretation, with analysis of the eventual mutations in the poetic, ethic and political aspects of Beat.

Authors are invited to frame Beat literature in a large context, reading literary texts in relation to issues of lifestyles, gender, media, visual arts, music, subcultures and politics, especially if Beat literature can be linked with lawsuits, press scandals or other clear indices of subversive action. The editors welcome articles dealing with the Cold War period and with countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, but also with the lasting interest for Beat literature in the contemporary context as evidenced for example by new translations. The contributions can focus on one country or language only or address topics with wider transnational dimension.

Please use the following address for all correspondence: beatliterature@ulb.ac.be

Preliminary enquiries encouraged before October 15, 2013.
Abstracts and short biographical notes by November 30, 2013.
Essays by February 28, 2014.

Rituparno Ghosh- Call for Papers

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:26:48 -0400

Rituparno Ghosh-Call for Papers

Academic papers are invited on the films and gender performativity of ace filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh who breathed his last on 30 May 2013 at his ancestral home in Calcutta. Ghosh had a significant contribution to Bengali Cinema, and he arrived at a time, when Tollywood, the Bengali film industry, seemed to be on its last legs. Satyajit Ray had passed away two years back, Mrinal Sen hardly made films, whereas Aparna Sen, who seemed to have some promise, made films far in-between. The Bengali film industry was dominated by amateurish filmmakers who reproduced sloppy copies of Bangladeshi and South Indian films, or replicated on screen tropes of folk-theatre (or jatra), completely alienating the educated, urban Bengali bhadrolok. Ghosh gave Bengali Cinema a new lease of life with his first film Hirer Angti (1994), and within a year, his second, Unishe April (1995), an intelligent adaptation of Bergman’s Autumn Sonata. Overnight, Rituparno Ghosh became a household name, and in film after film for the next ten years, he continued to mesmerize them. While a few of his films, post Dosor, did not do well, he bounced back into the limelight with Ar Ekti Premer Golpo (2010) in which, he played a transvestite filmmaker, shocking as well as fascinating his bhadrolok audience. This volume of essays that would be dedicated to Ghosh’s work, his sexuality, and his impact on the LGBT scene of Calcutta, proposes to take each film of Ghosh and dissect it critically, and analyze his iconic status as a queer filmmaker. Apart from that, the book would also like to look at Ghosh’s multiple talents as a lyricist, a writer and a talk-show host.

The papers might examine his films from various perspectives. More than one paper on each film is accepted, as long as the points-of-view are different:

· Probable theories speculating what made Rituparno Ghosh’s films such a runaway success with the urban bhadrolok audience

· Theoretical engagement with the question as to whether Ghosh’s films consciously or unconsciously endorsed the late capitalist market economy and sold a dream world

· How Ghosh merged literature and cinema, and brought back to Tollywood the practice which had initially generated the term ‘boi’ (as in book) as a Bengali synonym for film

· How Ghosh made Rabindranath Tagore a template from which human life could draw lessons in life and death, moral values, and even revolting against normative assumptions

· Although very consciously bourgeois in his approach, how Ghosh shook the Bengali bhadrolok audience by shaking them out of their complacency by talking freely about marital rape, sexual desire of widows, adultery, passion, parallel sexualities, etc.

· How Ghosh attributed to his female characters an agency, yet, could not make a completely feminist film ever

· How Ghosh’s queerness has time and again made itself evident in several of his films, long before he consciously took up the issue of same-sex desire in Ar Ekti Premer Golpo, Memories in March and Chitrangada

· Ghosh’s unpretentious engagement with his queer self, his performance of his sexuality in public and its impact on the general cultural scene of the city

· Ghosh’s abiding fascination with the film industry, filmmaking, and stardom as testified by several of his films, Ashukh, Titli, Shubho Muharat, Badiwali, Abohomaan, Khela, etc.

· Ghosh’s handling of detective fiction, in Shubho Muharat, Tahar Naamti Ranjana (telefilm), and Satyanweshi (to be released).

· Ghosh as a lyricist: the inspiration he took from Vaishnabpadabali, Meghdoot, Bhanusingher Padabali, etc.

· Ghosh as a talk show host

· Ghosh as a writer

About the editors:
Sangeeta Datta is a Film maker. She directed the film Life Goes On (UK, 2009) and author of Shyam Benegal (British Film Institute, 2002); Kaustav Bakshi is Assistant Professor at Sanskrit College India. He edited Anxieties, Influences and After: Critical Responses to Postcolonialism and Neocolonialism (2009) and Rohit K Dasgupta is Associate Lecturer, University of the Arts London. He is the Assistant Editor of the Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas.

Please send us a 200 word abstract and 50 word bio by 01 July. We shall let you know by the end of July if your abstract has been accepted after review. Complete papers between 5000-6000 words will need to be submitted by 01 October, 2013. Please send abstracts to rituparnovolume@gmail.com

Poems Are Being Written: The Scenes, Surfaces and Textures of Creativity in Contemporary Literature

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:23:22 -0400

We are pleased to announce that the seventh Annual Symposium of the Centre for Studies in Literature (University of Portsmouth) will take place on the 28 of November 2013. The topic this year is ‘Poems Are Being Written: The Scenes, Surfaces and Textures of Creativity in Contemporary Literature’.

The keynote speakers at the event will be Michael Wyndham Thomas and Kerry Featherstone, and the symposium will be followed by a poetry reading by Simon Armitage.

In recent years, while there has been what Marjorie Perloff calls a ‘dismissal of the first-person “voice”’ as the ‘foundational principle of lyric poetry’, there has also been a new interest in the specificity and particularity of the scene of poetry writing, or what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls, ‘the tableau of the poem itself’. Writers and critics have been concerned with how the writing process leaves its trace on the words of the poems, but also on their arrangement on the page; for, according to Susan Howe, ‘In the precinct of Poetry, a word, the space around a word, each letter, every mark, silence, or sound volatizes an inner law of form’.

With the words of these writers in mind, the symposium organisers would welcome papers that include, but are not limited to, the following topics: the foregrounding of scenes of writing and/or reading in contemporary poetry; the emphasis on visuality and materiality in contemporary poetry’s negotiation between immediacy and formality, and spontaneity and orchestration; and the representation, fetishisation, visualisation and framing of the poet’s creative process in contemporary literature and culture.

Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes in length. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit a 300 word abstract to Dr Christine Berberich (christine.berberich@port.ac.uk) and Dr Páraic Finnerty (paraic.finnerty@port.ac.uk)on or before the 9 of September 2013.