category: religion

The Films of Robert Rodriguez

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:27:02 -0400

Call For Papers: The Films of Robert Rodriguez

POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities invites submissions for a special issue on the Films of Robert Rodriguez.

The issue will be guest edited by Professor Christopher González (Texas A&M University-Commerce).

Texas-based director Robert Rodriguez is arguably one of the most important Latino filmmaker of his time; his enterprising approach has now taken him into other forms of visual media, such as his El Ray television network and his latest “Project Green Screen” venture with the cell phone giant, BlackBerry. This special issue seeks to continue the exploration of this significant filmmaker first begun by Charles Ramírez Berg in his Latino Images in Film, and continued most recently by Frederick Luis Aldama’s Robert Rodriguez and the Cinema of Possibilities, to be published later this year. Submissions are open to a variety of theoretical approaches.

Post Script encourages original manuscripts of no more than 7,000 words in this area from scholars and academics as well as filmmakers. Essays will be subject to peer review. The guest editor invites submissions on the following topics or related topics:

• The impact of Rodriguez’s first feature film, El Mariachi, made for only $7,000
• Films such as The Faculty, where Rodriguez served as director only
• Directorial collaborations, such as Sin City, where he worked alongside Frank Miller
• Larger filmic canvases like the Spy Kids and Machete franchises, and the Mexico Trilogy
• Shorter films such as “Bedhead,” “The Black Mamba,” and “The Misbehavers”
• The “Ten Minute Film School” tutorials Rodriguez regularly features on his films’ DVDs
• Rodriguez’s filmmaking partnership with Quentin Tarantino, from cameos in Desperado, and Planet Terror, to more substantive collaborations in From Dusk Till Dawn and Grindhouse
• An exploration of Rodriguez’s filmmaking philosophy and technique, the speed at which he shoots; the economy of his productions; etc.
• The formal elements of Rodriguez’s films, including visual, sound, dialogue, and so on
• The politics of films like Machete, Planet Terror, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico
• Rodriguez’s penchant for using many of the same actors across his films; or example, Danny Trejo’s rise as voiceless villain in Desperado to brown superhero in Machete
• Rodriguez’s oft-criticized representation of women.
• An exploration of how Rodriguez’s films often engage in a Chuck Jones- or Tex Avery-style cartoon sensibility
• The adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City
• Rodriguez’s subversive use of stereotypes and cultural clichés
• Substantive interviews
• Book reviews (up to 1,000 words)

Please note that Post Script does not reprint previously published material.

Submit manuscripts via a virus-free attachment, with author identification on a separate page and not in the headers, by e-mail to guest editor Christopher González at the address below by November 1, 2013. Manuscripts must be in English and must conform to the MLA Style Manual, 3rd edition.

Professor Christopher González
Department of Literature and Languages
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Email: Chris.Gonzalez@tamuc.edu

For questions about Post Script not related to this special issue, contact the general editor:
Professor Gerald Duchovnay Gerald.Duchovnay@tamuc.edu

[UPDATE] SAMLA 2013: (Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean (due June 10)

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:39:01 -0400

2013 SAMLA CONFERENCE, NOV 8-10, ATLANTA

SPECIAL SESSION: "(Con)Textual Networks and the Globalized Caribbean"

We often think of globalization as a contemporary phenomenon, characterized by the way high-speed technologies have changed everything from market dynamics to social relations. Many scholars, however, see the current phase of globalization as part of an historical process beginning as early as the sixteenth century. The Caribbean has, indeed, been a transnational site from the time of its original European colonization, soon followed by the importation of coerced labor from Africa, South Asia, and China. Today, the region remains populated by a wide variety of ethnic groups, highly trafficked by tourists from around the world, and economically tied to foreign currencies and markets. Additionally, high rates of migration from the Caribbean to North America and Europe have created an immense Caribbean diaspora that retains cultural and economic ties to the region, facilitated in part by new technologies and alliances.

Images of the Caribbean have thus been documented, constructed, and circulated globally from the rise of print culture to the dawn of the digital age. This panel seeks proposals engaging any aspect of the conference theme, “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds,” in relation to literature and/or other media from any part of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Some possible topics include:

The “digital humanities” and Caribbean studies
Visual images of the Caribbean
Cartographic representations of the Caribbean
Caribbean service economies—tourism, textiles and “free trade” zones, data mining, banking, etc.
Regionalism, Nationalism, Transnationalism
Marketing the Caribbean/the Caribbean market
Intra-Caribbean exchange and migration
Local and regional grassroots activist networks in the Caribbean
Caribbean diasporas—cultural, economic, and/or social networks

Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words and a brief bio (not CV) of <100 words, in Word or PDF, to Kristine A. Wilson (wilson67@purdue.edu). DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 10, 2013.

Apollon eJournal - Undergraduate Submissions deadline 6/15/2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 4-5, 2013

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

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

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

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Abstracts due 6/1/13.

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

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

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

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

Positively Papist: Catholic Culture and Renaissance England

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:25:08 -0400

Pamphleteers, clergymen, and political officials demonized recusant Catholics in Renaissance England, but early modern English culture is inextricable from the influences of the medieval Catholicism from which it emerged. This SAMLA session will look at the ways that Catholic culture, broadly interpreted, influences English literary and artistic endeavors between 1534 - 1660.

We are accepting papers that show the subtle ways that visual and textual representations incorporate evidence of a continuing Catholic culture in an officially Protestant England. How is English Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism complicated by artistic forms? Under what circumstances is Catholic influence viewed favorably? How do writers and artists nuance our understanding of the numerous religious conflicts in the period?

By June 14, 2013, please send abstracts of 250-300 words to Christina Romanelli, University of North Carolina Greensboro, at c_romane@uncg.edu.

SAMLA 85 will take place November 8-10 at Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, GA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All selected papers should be twenty minutes long.

Deadline for submission is 16th August 2013.

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

Salaam Cinema: Representations and Interpretations - Celebrating 100 Years of Bombay Cinema

Tue, 07 May 2013 23:47:28 -0400

Book Proposal

Salaam Cinema: Representations and Interpretations
Celebrating 100 Years of Bombay Cinema

Edited by Vikrant Kishore, Amit Sarwal and Parichay Patra

On 3 May 1913, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (popularly known as Dadasaheb Phalke) presented to India its first silent film, Raja Harishchandra. Phalke proved that film-making can be a lucrative business in India – expected to grow to US$ 3 billion by 2014. A century later, from its transition from silent to sound, the term ‘Bollywood’, though incorrectly, is used to refer to the whole of Indian Cinema. Indian cinema, with aesthetics of its own, is a veritable storehouse of material that can be read in as many ways as possible. As a genre that has grown and developed over a period of 100 years, it is coloured by history, politics, socio-economic conditions, culture, sensibilities, dreams, fantasies, hopes and expectations of Indian people. It is a globalized cultural industry, cinema of attractions and the most fascinating film industry of the world packaged with romance, melodrama, action, costumes, songs and dance extravaganzas.
Success of the Festival of Indian Films, the search for Bollywood’s Star on SBS ONE, the Australian Film Festival, the Australian Prime Minister’s visit to India, and Oz Fest 2012 (the biggest Australian cultural festival ever staged in India) has also demonstrated that the two great nations are coming closer in terms of understanding each other beyond clichés of curry and cricket or economics of export and marketing. It is through Indian Cinema and the journeys of our filmmakers and their representations that new adventures in cultural engagement are being charted out between the two countries.
We invite you to celebrate 100 years of Bombay Cinema and share views on the key representation, transformative moments; changing faces and phases; re-evaluate Australian-Indian film connections; and find ways to engage and build meaningful collaborative film projects between the two countries.

Please submit your papers to Parichay Patra (parichay.patra@gmail.com) by 30th July 2013.

About the Editors
Vikrant Kishore is an alumnus of prestigious institutes like RMIT University—Melbourne, AJK Mass Communication Research Centre – Jamia Millia Islamia and St. Stephens College—Delhi University, India, Dr. Vikrant Kishore is an Academician, Filmmaker, Journalist, and a Photographer. Currently based in Newcastle, Dr Kishore is working at the University of Newcastle as a Lecturer-Communication and Media Production and Course Coordinator (Music Video) in the Bachelor of Communication. Dr. Kishore completed his doctorate in “Bollywood Cinema and Dance” from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in 2011. After the completion of his PhD. he worked as a researcher on ”Australian Research Council” funded project on “Mapping Lifestyle Television in Asia” at RMIT University, Melbourne under the leadership of Dr. Tania Lewis. Dr. Kishore has more than 25 documentaries, and corporate films to his credit and his area of expertise are Bollywood Films, the folk and tribal culture of Eastern India, as well as the issues of caste politics in India. His documentaries on Chhau Dance have been screened in various international film festivals.

Amit Sarwal is Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia and also the Founding Convenor of Australia-India Interdisciplinary Research Network (AIIRN). He has taught as Assistant Professor in the Department of English at SGND Khalsa College and Rajdhani College, University of Delhi, India. He was an Honorary Visiting Scholar (2006-2007) at Monash University as an Endeavour Asia Award winner. His areas of interest include South Asian Diaspora Literature, Australian Literature and Popular Fiction on which he has organised and presented in many conferences and published in various journals and books. He has co-edited a number of books on Australian studies, prominent being: Creative Nation: Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader (2009); Wanderings in India: Australian Perceptions (2012); and Enriched Relations: Public Diplomacy in Australia-Indian Relations (2013).

Parichay Patra is a doctoral candidate in the department of Film and Television Studies, Monash University, Melbourne. Patra studied English literature and Film Studies at Jadavpur University, India. He has published in reputed film journals like the Journal of the Moving Image and in a number of edited volumes. Patra has presented papers in various conferences / seminars / symposia in India, Taiwan and Australia. His area of interest is the history of the Indian New Wave cinema of the 1970s. He is currently working on an article on Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha (1962) for a collection of essays to be published by Orient Blackswan.

Secular Shakespeares - 21-27 April 2014, Paris

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:32:10 -0400

The last decade has seen a return to religion in early modern studies. A previous generation of scholarship had sublimated questions of theology and religious identification in favor of the cultural studies "holy trinity" of race, class, and gender. However New Historicist criticism began to embrace and understand Renaissance texts through the lens of Reformation theological disputation and the religious environment in which individual texts were created. Shakespeare, the most towering figure of English Renaissance writing is no exception. As a case in point Stephen Greenblatt’s popular biography of the author Will in the World spends ample time investigating the evidence for possible recusant sensibilities in that most English of writers. This panel invites papers that return to a more secular understanding of Shakespeare. How much of Shakespeare’s continued popularity is precisely because he largely avoids antiquated doctrinal concerns that occupied other playwrights? In what ways does Shakespeare both negotiate and negate the perilous dichotomy between Catholic and Protestant? How is the metaphysic engaged in his drama and verse materialistic, Epicurean, or even atheistic? Does Shakespeare mock religion, exult it, or largely ignore it? What can critics make of his avoidance of writing a biblical play while still mining English translations of scripture for rhetorical and thematic tropes? Is there any way in which it is fair to say that Shakespeare is the first of the moderns, the primogeniture of the secular human? The panel would also be considered in proposals that consider the opposite possibility, that even with a seeming lack of interest in theological disputation, how does Shakespeare inevitably seem to embrace particular theological positions? And perhaps more widely, how do we conceptualize secularism as a construct, category, and discourse in the early modern period? Is it possible to speak of any text as "secular," or do even the most profane of works reflect and suggest some sort of theological commitment? Is secularism even possible in representation, literature, or culture? And how does Shakespeare enter into these particular questions? Special attention will be paid to abstracts which look at productions or interpretations of Shakespeare in the modern world, and the ways in which religion is side-stepped or embraced.

Please send 300-400 word abstracts by August 1st 2013 to Ed Simon of Lehigh University at ens310@lehigh.edu. This panel is planned for Shakespeare 450 commemorating the 450th anniversary of the author’s birth by the Société française Shakespeare and to be held in Paris 21-27 April 2014.

Translation and Transcendence conference: 25-26 October, 2013, Toronto

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:22:23 -0400

Modern Horizons CFP – Translation and Transcendence

For the third annual Modern Horizons conference—to be held October 25th and 26th, 2013 in Toronto, Ontario—we invite proposals for 20 minutes presentations, in English or French, on ‘Translation and Transcendence.’
Translation is prevalent in many aspects of life, whether one works between languages or across cultural divides. If translation happens each time something different, new, or unexpected is confronted or experienced, then it is basic to almost any register of human life. While recognizing that translation is often thought of as communication between languages, we wish to expand on this concept with the aim of addressing issues of identity, tradition, relationships, responsibility, and forms of culture. This conference will re-examine these ideas by considering translation alongside transcendence.

Considering translation and transcendence together is significant; since translation is literally a carrying across of meaning, transcendence is what makes this possible as it allows translation to be distinguished from mere imitation, formal repetition, or reproduction in other media. Thought of in this way, translation involves both continuity and change, because transcendence allows for the rejuvenation of ideas and experiences across change of context. Change and continuity are essentially related: we can only recognize either one through the presence of its counterpart. Contextually present, translation denies an overemphasis of one’s own time (and place), for it necessarily conjugates past with present, and in doing so prepares for a translated future.

Along with its fundamental connection with transcendence, one may think of translation in terms of appropriation and completion. Translation as appropriation occurs when the Other (text or person) is drawn into and becomes a part of our own ethos (our being, sensibility, or ethical disposition) and yet does not lose its own proper essence, its 'transcendent' difference. Translation as completion occurs when we recognize that the Other (text or person) must be read or heard in order for its meaning to be complete. This is not to say that meaning is finalized, but rather that nothing stands in a vacuum, and encounter and affirmation are essential to meaning.

With these ideas in mind, we invite abstracts of 500 words or full papers (taking not more than 20 minutes). Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
- translation and justice
- translation within tradition
- translation and scripture/the sacred
- translation as appropriation
- translation as completion
- translation and threats to integrity
- translation and fragments/the fragmentary
- translation, immanence, and transcendence
- translation and hermeneutics
- translation as response
- translation as mimesis
- translation and the question of origin
- translation and authenticity
- translation as dialogue
- translation and the question of form
- translation and fundamentalism
- the question of untranslatability
- the role of the translator today
- the limits of literal translation
- translation, metaphor, symbolism

Please submit abstracts or full papers to editors@modernhorizonsjournal.ca by 15 June 2013.
Modern Horizons
modernhorizonsjournal.ca
editors@modernhorizonsjournal.ca

The Medium, Before and After Modernism (EXTENDED: 13 May)

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:17:41 -0400

The medium and its specificity have oriented the discourse on the arts throughout various historic and historiographic periods. For modernism, for example, Clement Greenberg advocated the specificity of the medium as the legitimate drive of artistic production for the avant-garde. The critical discourse that emerged around Greenberg and his followers was oriented around the various articulations and possibilities of the medium, an investigation played out across the history of the twentieth-century’s art and its historiography. While the advent of performance, installation, and new media art challenged these particular narratives and developed new spaces of investigation, the discipline of art history as a whole still bears traces of these divisions along areas of specialization and study, given that the question of the medium emerged alongside the birth of the discipline, specifically in G. E. Lessing’s Laocoön (1766), itself a response to the work of Johann Winckelmann.

In past years, the revitalized interest in phenomenology, materiality, and object-oriented ontologies have drawn attention back to the aesthetic and material underpinnings of the arts. These trends evidence a burgeoning return to the notion of the medium and its various ontological and phenomenological specificities. However, these methods have become predominant in moments outside of modernity, such as the Ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern period. Likewise, the same questions have been brought to bear on investigations concerning the recent past in spaces normally excised from a certain history of art, such as popular culture, technology, and videogame studies. Therefore, the medium and its specificity, while a necessary investigation, can no longer be addressed in terms of flatness or opticality alone, but must rather be developed from both its historiographic tradition in modernity along with its own specificities within each area of study. Thus, this panel engages the fundamental questions that emerge in such a global project: How does one articulate a notion of the/a medium in periods outside of a Euro-American modernism, or where the term itself is wholly inexistent? Is the medium a technical, material support for art, or is it an epistemological field for artistic production? This session seizes such questions as a shared discursive space for art historians of various fields to engage with what constituted a medium for their respective areas of study and how these orienting concepts construct notions of disciplines and subfields.

For submission details:
http://www.collegeart.org/proposals/2014callforparticipation

Writing Ireland: Identity, Memory, and Place

Mon, 06 May 2013 23:52:44 -0400

"Writing Ireland: Identity, Memory, and Place"

In keeping with the special focus of SAMLA 85, we welcome papers that focus on the ways Irish identity, space, and memory are shaped through conventionally understood literary genres (poetry, fiction, drama, memoir) as well as work from related fields, including but not limited to art, critical theory, folklore, and film studies. This panel seeks to address recent trends in scholarship and the ways Irish identity (systemic or individual) and space are constructed and defined. By June 1, 2013, please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Sarah Dyne, Georgia State University, at sdyne1@gsu.edu.

The Phenomenology of Reading: Experiencing Literature Today, Keynote: Charles Altieri, Oct. 11-12, Philadelphia, PA

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:48:30 -0400

The Phenomenology of Reading: Experiencing Literature Today
October 11th-12th, 2013
Temple University: Philadelphia, PA
Keynote: Charles Altieri (Berkeley)

As a result of the ongoing rhetoric of “crisis” in the humanities, literary and cultural studies scholars seem to be perpetually reassessing their vocation. While the introduction of new theoretical models or critical approaches promise to carry the torch for scholarship into the era of the globalized university, other scholars seek to exhume past methodologies that were possibly lost in the scramble for innovation. Within this intellectual climate one topic has repeatedly come under critical scrutiny: reading. Whether it is the concern over the fate of close-reading, the return to aesthetics, surface reading, distant reading, new formalism, the digital humanities, ethics, affect theory, “world” literature, medical humanities, network/systems theory, newer historicisms, or new materialisms, all of these topics are not only attempts to rethink how we read, but also efforts to buttress what seems to be a perilous state for certain disciplines and practices.

This conference seeks to assess these recent scholarly trends and, to this end, we invite papers from different fields and disciplines that interrogate the relationship between theories of reading and past, present, and future directions for literary and critical theory. Because the goal of this conference will be to foster a dialogue concerning these debates, we will attempt to limit the conference’s size to prevent overlapping panels and allow for ample feedback from respondents, other speakers, and guests.

The conference will take place at Temple University in Philadelphia on October 11th and 12th, 2013. Feel free to ask any questions and send abstracts of 250-500 words by June 30th, 2013 to: templegeaconf@gmail.com

‘Bibliography in the Digital Age’ conference: Sydney, Australia, 20–22 November 2013 [CFP deadline 26 July]

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:25:07 -0400

The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will be held at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 20–22 November 2013 on the theme of ‘Bibliography in the Digital Age’.

The Society invites abstracts for presentations relevant to the theme of the conference, ranging from digital scholarship, digital scholarly editions, digitising and promoting collections online through to antiquarian dealers and the material book in the digital age.

Abstracts should be of approximately 250 words for 20 minute presentations and should be received by the conference convenor, Maggie Patton, Manager, Original Materials, State Library of New South Wales, Macquarie Street, Sydney, 2000 (mpatton@sl.nsw.gov.au) by Friday 26 July.

See www.bsanz.org for further information and updates.

[UPDATE] Medieval and Early Modern Witchcraft Panel, PAMLA,Deadline extended to May 12, 2013

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:46:24 -0400

The deadline for this PAMLA session has been extended to May 12, 2013. Please submit your idea for a presentation, including title, 50-word abstract, and 500-word proposal, at the PAMLA website, www.pamla.org/2013. You will be asked to create an account in order to submit your material. In addition, please send a brief CV to the panel organizer, Dr. Logan Greene, at lgreene@ewu.edu. PAMLA will meet November 1-3, 2013, in San Diego, California.

This panel is an approved special session of PAMLA, following the success of a special session on this topic last year.

Witchcraft was a powerful cultural phenomenon that has continued to grip our imaginations throughout the centuries. The religious, folk, and divinatory practices contained in this label are varied and ancient and have continued in changing forms to the present day. This panel invites speakers in the fields of historical, cultural, literary, and religious studies to contribute to our understanding of medieval and early modern witchcraft. Topics might include the following:

*famous (or obscure) witch trials
*witch-hunters' manuals
*representations of witches in literature and culture
*religious proclamations against or about witches
*psychological or psychoanalytical interpretations of witchcraft
*gender issues in representations of witches
*later writing about medieval and early modern witchcraft

Please write to Dr. Greene, lgreene@ewu.edu, if you have any questions.

UVA-Wise Medieval/Renaissance, Sept. 19-21, 2013 (Undergrad) (proposals by July 17, 2013)

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:27:58 -0400

Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXVII
Undergraduate Sessions
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
September 19-21, 2013

Keynote Address: “Charlatans and Wonders in the Medieval Mediterranean”—Michael Ryan, University of New Mexico

The University of Virginia's Medieval-Renaissance Conference is pleased to accept abstracts for our twenty-seventh conference. The conference is an open event that promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. Papers by undergraduates covering any area of medieval and renaissance studies—including literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts—are welcome. Abstracts for papers should be around 300 words in length and should be accompanied by a brief letter of recommendation from a faculty sponsor (the latter can be mailed or emailed separately). A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia.

Abstracts (and letters) should be submitted electronically or by regular mail by July 17, 2013 to:

John Adrian
University of Virginia’s College at Wise
One College Ave
Wise, VA 24293
(276) 376-4588
jma6x@uvawise.edu

Forms of Reading, Forms of Life

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:56:47 -0400

Forms of Reading, Forms of Life

Observing a national decline in literary reading, in 2006 the National Endowment for the Arts instituted the Big Read Program to revivify what it deemed an indispensable, but endangered, civic activity. In 2009, the NEA celebrated new research indicating that, for the first time in twenty-five years, literary reading in the US was on the rise. Yet what grounds are there for such consternation or celebration? Indeed, why a governmental investment in this cultural practice? And, in a digital era, as new forms of textual production and consumption proliferate, why the emphasis on traditionally defined literary reading? Taking seriously the NEA’s claim that literary reading has “demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications,” this panel asks what distinctive forms of life such reading might nourish. We are particularly interested in considering questions such as the following: How do literary texts exert pressure on readers’ behavior? How do authors and poets imagine the act of interpretation itself in their creative work? Does digital media entail substantively different ethics of reading? How might the study of literature participate in alleviating social problems, such as poverty, illiteracy, debt, global war, or a diminishing food supply? We invite papers exploring these and related issues in the phenomenology and ethics of reading. Papers may address imaginative and/or theoretical texts from any historical period, national provenance, or (non-)print idiom. All critical orientations are welcome. By June 15, 2013, please submit abstracts of no more than 350 words to Benjamin Sammons, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at bsammons@email.unc.edu and Benjamin Mangrum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at bmangrum@email.unc.edu.

UPDATE: CFP: Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s New Elite. CAA Chicago, February 2014

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:38:38 -0400

CFP: Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s New Elite. CAA Chicago, February 2014

During the late Middle Ages, the rise of urban centers and long-distance trade brought the emergence of wealthy mercantile elites who spent lavishly on funerary monuments. In contrast to royal and aristocratic tombs, these monuments have received comparatively little attention from scholars outside the Italian context. In order to reach a more thorough understanding of this increasingly influential strata of late medieval society, this session seeks papers exploring the role mercantile mentalities and practices played in shaping artistic patronage and reception of tombs. How did merchants construct memory and identity through the medium of the tomb? What role did fraternities and trade networks play in shaping iconographic choices? In what ways did their access to foreign art markets position merchants as conduits for new artistic forms and media? How were existing aristocratic and royal traditions of funerary art appropriated and adapted to meet the needs of the merchant class?

Please submit a 1-2 page (double-spaced) abstract with paper title by May 6, 2013. Abstracts should be emailed to Vanessa Crosby and Emily Kelley. Email: vanessacrosby2013@u.northwestern.edu and edkelley@svsu.edu

Abstracts should be accompanied by a CV (indicate summer contact information if applicable) and a letter indicating speaker's interest in and expertise in the topic. Please also include CAA membership status and member number if applicable.

CREATING MYTHS AS NARRATIVES OF EMPOWERMENT AND DISEMPOWERMENT

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:52:45 -0400

Call for Papers: CREATING MYTHS AS NARRATIVES OF EMPOWERMENT AND DISEMPOWERMENT from 10 to 12 March 2014.
LDC of the High Institute of Human Sciences of Jendouba, University of Jendouba, Tunisia and the Institut de Recherche en Langues et Littératures Européennes, ILLE of the University of Haute Alsace, Mulhouse, France are pleased to announce the organisation of an international conference on ʻCreating Myths as Narratives of Empowerment and Disempowermentʼ to be held at the High Institute of Human Sciences of Jendouba from 10 to 12 March 2014.

Literacy, the advance of philosophical inquiry and Plato’s separation of ‘mythos’ from ‘logos’ signaled the birth of an intellectual hierarchy that caused the association of myth with implausibility, something that was later corroborated by the growth of scientific inquiry and rationalism. Yet, while myths seem to become distinctively associated with fantasy, their impact can still be contemplated with respect to every aspect of human history that implicates narration and (dis)empowerment. The discourses that have accompanied rising and waning orders and monarchies have shaped national feeling and identity as ‘myths’, whereby private and public narratives intersect. Whether we try to think of narratives related to the Arthurian tradition, the birth of Rome or the founding of Carthage out of an oxen skin, national identity is shaped as a space where myths of beginnings overlap with history and power. Political narratives turn into mythical accounts in the sense that they interfere between leaders and social groups to shape, explain and justify ideologies. In politics, mythologizing the narrative produces narratives that are repeatedly replicated to spawn an illusion of truth. Thus, terms such as the ‘Cold War’ or the ‘Arab Spring’ may lead us to think of uniform patterns that guided a complex set of events, disregarding their complexities and discounting alternative narratives. Moreover, as nationalism consolidated the mythologization of narratives, alternative histories started to acquire mythological significance, borrowing mythical names and imports, a trend postmodern thinking has supported.
Branches of the social sciences like anthropology and sociology have equally lent attention to myth as a space through which unrepresented groups can tell their stories in non-linear patterns, hence, for instance, the growing interest in myth in relation with gender studies and folk studies. With the works of De Saussure and Levi Strauss, linguistics and structuralism acquired a novel interest in myth. Believed to be a big vessel for collective consciousness in the Jungian sense, structuralism contends that myths of the ancient times are still present with little variations in their essential structures. While it is believed that the fading of religion and spirituality in contemporary times led to the obliteration of myth, it is not difficult to find traces of myth within the recurrence of symbols and paradigms in media and popular culture. This recurrence is akin to the telling and retelling of narratives, serving, as Hanno Hardt argues, ‘the new gods of mass culture.’

Starting from these assumptions, the organizers invite proposals for papers (of 20 minutes duration) addressing ‘Creating Myths as Narratives of Empowerment and Disempowerment.’ They particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions, especially ones that bridge the domains of literature, cultural studies, gender, psychoanalysis and linguistics, but they equally encourage submissions on all aspects of myths that involve the ideas of narrativity, empowerment and disempowerment. To encourage innovative dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from diverse disciplines, falling within the scope of one of the following themes, among others:
Redefining myths
The Arab world, change and myth
Myth and narratives in the postcolonial context
Postmodernism and myth
Myth and folk studies
Myth and the politics of race and ethnicity
Myth as resistance and/or perpetuation
Myth in popular culture
Responses to myths
Myths, rewriting history, and power
Creating new myths
Myths of political reform and/or political repression
Myth and national identity
Feminist approaches to myths
Revisionism and myths
Science vs. myths
Myth and rhetoric
Myths and oral traditions of the Americas
(Dis)empowering myths and visual arts

PROPOSALS should be about 400 words, including the abstract and a brief biography and sent to myth.creation2014@gmail.com NO LATER THAN 30th November 2013.

CONFERENCE FEES: -Either 70 Euros for international participants and 100 Tunisian dinars for local participants (including publication, accommodation, food, refreshments, printing services, and cultural programme).
-Or 35 Euros for international participants and 50 Tunisian dinars for local participants (including presentation, lunch, coffee break, and publication).

CONFERENCE LANGUAGE is English, but proposals in French can also be accepted.

NOTIFICATION: Acceptance of proposals will be notified by December 2013.

CONTACT: For questions, please write to myth.creation2014@gmail.com

“CASCA” – Journal of Social Science, Culture and Arts (Deadline September 1st 2013.)

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:55:28 -0400

Interdisciplinary journal CASCA enables authors to publish papers in various areas of social sciences, culture and art. The journal publishes scientific papers and book reviews thematically related to literary theory, history of art, philosophy, anthropology, history, archeology, sociology, culturology, politicology, communicology, etc.
We are interested in publishing scientific and expert papers, book reviews, exhibition reviews, web portals, etc.
All the submitted papers are to undergo an adequate double blind peer review.
It is required of all the potential authors to prepare their papers in accordance with our Instructions to Authors and send them to the following email address of the journal: journal@casca.org.rs.
For detailed information visit our website http://www.journal.casca.org.rs/eng/about-journal/

[UPDATE] PERSPECTIVES, 2013 - 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS (Deadline 31st May)

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:36:07 -0400

PERSPECTIVES ON PROGRESS 2013
An interdisciplinary postgraduate and early career researcher conference.
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. November 27-29, 2013.

In 1968, historian Sidney Pollard defined the Victorian ideal of ‘progress’ as, “the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind... that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement.” Despite the increasingly problematic nature of this ideal, the ‘progress myth’ still remains pervasive in the Western cultural tradition.

This postgraduate and early career researcher conference seeks to promote innovative interdisciplinary dialogues interrogating the concept of progress by bringing together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.

The conference committee invites proposals for papers in the form of an abstract of between 250 and 300 words to perspectivesonprogress2013@gmail.com by 31 May 2013.

Paper format is a 20 minute paper with a 10 minute period for questions and answers.

[UPDATE]
The organising committee is pleased announce that Dr. Alastair Blanshard, Dr. Sarah Pinto, and Dr. Catherine Mills have each agreed to deliver Key Note Addresses at Perspectives on Progress, 2013.

More information about the keynotes and the conference is available on our website - http://perspectives2013.org/

For periodic updates please subscribe to our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/perspectives2013

Link to full CFP: http://perspectives2013.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Perspectives2013-...

Apollon eJournal - Undergraduate Submissions deadline 6/15/2012

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:37:24 -0400

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

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

[UPDATE] Extended deadline for Fashion panels at 2013 MPCA/ACA conference

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:39:13 -0400

FASHION
2013 Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference
Friday-Sunday, October 11-13, 2013
St. Louis, MO
St. Louis Union Station Hotel, A Doubletree by Hilton

Deadline: May 15, 2013
Submissions.mpcaaca.org

Topics can include, but are not limited to fashion as it is represented in literature, film, television, or music, fashion as it pertains to current popular culture or popular culture of any time period of the past, the fashions of celebrities, or sociological implications of fashion in our culture.

Please upload 250 word abstract proposals on any aspect of Fashion to the Fashion area, http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/.

Any questions? Please email Kelli Purcell O’Brien at kobrien1@memphis.edu.

More information about the conference can be found at http://www.mpcaaca.org/

Please note the availability of graduate student travel grants: http://mpcaaca.org/conference/travel-grants/.

Please include name, affiliation, and e-mail address with the 250 word abstract. Also, please indicate in your submission whether your presentation will require an LCD Projector.

Call For Papers - Journal of English Language, Literature and Culture

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:51:38 -0400

JELLiC: Journal of English Language, Literature and Culture is currently accepting manuscripts for publication in its next issue – July 2013. JELLiC is an international peer-reviewed journal that publishes research articles from and across different academic disciplines that examine issues related to Language, Literature, Culture and Critical Theory, as well as dynamic cross-disciplinary discussions that engage the links between these and other domains.

All papers published in JELLiC are peer-reviewed. The first round of review is done by internal editors to ensure that the paper conforms to the style and specialty of the journal. Papers selected from this initial review are submitted for a second round of review, which is done by external Reviewers. Contributors whose papers are accepted will be notified by email. All submitted papers are considered subject to the understanding that they have not been published and are not being considered for publication elsewhere.

Manuscripts should not exceed 6,000 words and should be double-spaced on A4 paper with a 1 inch margin all round. Pages should be numbered consecutively throughout. A cover sheet should include author(s) name(s), affiliation, full postal address and email address, telephone and fax numbers where possible. The name and address of the principal author responsible for correspondence concerning the manuscript should appear first. A brief (max. 250 words) abstract should be provided plus up to 5 keywords.

For more details visit www.cella-cameroon.org/publications

Whose Beloved Community?: Black Civil and LGBT Rights Movements (cfp deadline June 17, 2013; Conference is March 27-29, 2014)

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:28:49 -0400

Whose Beloved Community?: Black Civil and LGBT Rights Movements
An international conference at Emory University, March 27-29, 2014
Call for Proposals: Review of proposals begins June 17, 2013. Notification of acceptance will be no later than September 15, 2013.

The role of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in both race-based and sexuality-based civil rights movements is frequently rendered invisible as a result of prevailing national narratives that present (presumed white) LGBT communities and (presumed straight) Black communities as opposing forces. In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars and activists have produced work seeking to make visible the vital points of intersection and contention among the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the LGBT equality movement, and Black LGBT communities. This work is shaped by questions related to identity formation, intersectionality, tokenism, marriage equality, the role of religion and “respectability” in African American communities, the emergence of the South as a center of Black LGBT life in the U.S., HIV/AIDS and its continuing effect on African American communities, the proliferation of a prison-industrial complex unprepared for its LGBT population, and the appropriation of the civil rights movement by the right. This conference seeks to make visible and critically engage the points of convergence and divergence between these two historic, overlapping, yet distinct social movements that continue to transform civil society, law, and the academy.

We encourage paper and panel proposals on a wide range of topics including, but not exclusively encompassing, the following:

· The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
· Identifications and disidentifications with “movements”
· Black LGBT leaders and popular figures, historical and contemporary
· Literary, artistic and popular culture engagements with Black LGBT identities
· Inclusion and marginalization of transgender and bisexual identities in Black LGBT communities/politics
· Intersections with other post-1960s civil rights movements (other racial groups, people with disabilities, women, etc.)
· Black LGBT activism in relation to work in other LGBT communities of color
· Racial diversity in White-led LGBT organizations
· Law and politics
· Black queer politics of space
· Public health
· Memory, mourning, trauma, and resilience
· Black LGBT families
· Marriage equality movements
· Sexuality and respectability
· Class and elitism
· Sexism, classism, and other “isms” in the Black LGBT movement
· Black masculinity in LGBT communities
· Black feminism in LGBT communities
· Intergenerational issues
· Intersections between public advocacy/policy and academia
· Intersections of U.S. Civil Rights with Black queer Atlantic political movements
· The future of Black queer studies
· Teaching Black LGBT history, Black queer studies, etc.
· Black LGBT university populations
· LGBT issues and Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Each submission must include a cover page with paper titles, presenters, their affiliations, and a current email contact, along with a maximum two-page c.v. of each presenter. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words. For panels, submit an overall abstract of no more than 500 words and individual paper descriptions of no more than 250 words each. Please submit materials via email to Whose.beloved.community@emory.edu.

This conference is generously supported by the Arcus Foundation and Emory University.

ACIS Midwest Regional Conference (Deadline: August 1, 2013)

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:59:52 -0400

The 37th annual ACIS Midwest Regional Conference in Iowa City (October 10-12, 2013) welcomes proposals for papers on any and all topics related to Irish studies – from new and existing ACIS members, alike. The conference theme of “Other Irelands” considers all disciplines and approaches as warranted in our continued explication of Irish studies. Some of the many, many topics papers might address include:

-Immigration, emigration and the changing face of racism

-Architectural developments beyond the thatched cottage or Georgian house

-The social and economic impacts of the Celtic Tiger’s rise and fall

-Literary evolutions in 21st century Ireland

-Digital landscapes and historical Ireland

To propose an individual paper (twenty minutes in length), please submit the following information in a PDF:

Name, academic affiliation, title of paper, a 250 word abstract

Proposals should be submitted by no later than 1 August 2013 to conference director Tom Keegan at: acismidwest@gmail.com

The conference organizers are pleased to announce that Dr. Stephanie Rains of NUI Maynooth will deliver the 2013 Lawrence MacBride Memorial Lecture at 6PM on the Thursday, October 10th. Dr. Rains is the programme coordinator for NUI Maynooth's BA in in Media Studies. Her most recent work, Commodity Culture and Social Class in Dublin 1850-1916 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010), addresses the transformation of Irish society and commerce in the nineteenth century as well as the "changing conceptions of shopping as a social or political practice." Her talk, "'Get On, or Get Out!': Publishing, Class and Social Aspiration in Edwardian Ireland" will explore the "other Ireland" of the lower-middle class.

Additional information can be found at www.acismidwest.com

"Shakespeare and the Human" a special section of The Shakespearean International Yearbook abstracts due 1 August 2013

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:10:40 -0400

A Special Issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook
Edited by Tiffany Jo Werth

The guest editor of this special issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook invites papers to think beyond “the human” as a distinct—and privileged—ontological category in Shakespeare. Stressing the need to revisit fundamental questions about the
nature of matter and the place of embodied humans during a time of religious upheaval and emergent new philosophies, early modern scholars have contended that human indistinction shadowed the celebration of humanity’s preeminent place within the created
universe. How does the variety of life forms and forms of life in Shakespeare’s work allow us to glimpse the complexity of “the human” in the context of theological, political, and cultural debates? How might humanist philosophy, new- and old-world
investigations of the natural world along with their technologies, or other contemporary currents of thought and writing, collapse or uphold the limits that Shakespeare places on the definitions of “the human”?

The editor welcomes contributions in English that address the topic, focusing its scope by addressing one of the following early modern scales of being (perhaps as a criterion to facilitate a reading that swerves across such categories) in an effort to analyze its creaturely qualities, and its relationship to “the human” in Shakespeare’s works:

• God(s), Angels, Demons
• The Heavens, including Air, Flames, and the Waters
• Animals, Beasts, and Birds or Fowl
• Vegetables, Plants
• Matter, including Minerals, Soil, Earth, and Slime

Papers theorizing hierarchies, taxonomies, chains, ladders, scales, degrees or ontological categories (with consideration for their placements, energies, relationships etc) in Shakespeare, as well as papers interrogating how the performance of Shakespeare
influences, inflects, or limits such categories, are also welcome.

Edited by Alex Huang (George Washington University) and Tom Bishop (University of Auckland), The Shakespearean International Yearbook
(http://www.ashgate.com/Default.aspx?page=2875) surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies, addressing issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare’s work and his time, across the whole spectrum of his literary output.
Each issue includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist Guest Editor.

Proposals or abstracts of c.500 words, a brief cv, and paper title should be emailed to Tiffany Jo Werth (twerth@sfu.ca) by 1 August 2013. Full articles (5k-8k) of accepted abstracts will be expected by May 2014 to allow for peer review, revision, and publication in 2015.

Margaret Atwood Studies

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:30:12 -0400

Margaret Atwood Studies, the journal of The Margaret Atwood Society, invites submissions on a rolling basis from both members and nonmembers. Essays submitted must be the original work of the author(s) and neither published nor under consideration for publication elsewhere. Essays should be focused primarily on the work of Margaret Atwood, between 2,500 and 7,000 words, double-spaced, and documented following the conventions outlined in the latest MLA Handbook. To facilitate blind review, submissions should include a cover sheet with contact information and include no references to authorship in the essay. Submit via email as a .doc or .pdf attachment to Dr. Karma Waltonen at kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu. (Book reviews and other contributions to Atwood scholarship will also be considered.)

Imagining Alternatives: A Graduate Symposium on Speculative Fictions Oct 18-19, 2013

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:26:47 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

Imagining Alternatives: A Graduate Symposium on Speculative Fictions

October 18-19, 2013

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Submission Deadline: August 23, 2013

http://imaginingalternatives.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/ImaginingAlternatives

In her 1973 essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie,” noted fantasy and science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin writes that fantasy is “a game played for very high stakes….It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence….[it is] superrealistic, a heightening of reality.” The Imagining Alternatives Graduate Symposium invites proposals for papers and panels that interrogate the alternative possibilities imagined in the heightened realities of speculative fictions: fantasy, science fiction, horror, the weird, alternate history, the utopian, and the dystopian, in literature, film, television, and video games. Such fictions give us not only alternative worlds, but alternative views of our own pasts, presents, and possible futures. They reflect our hopes and fears; they offer alternative narratives of race, gender, sexuality, and nation; they suggest the magic and the horror embedded in our own realities. We suggest the topics below, but are open to other interpretations suggested by the symposium theme and genre focus.

Proposals should consist of a 200-300 word abstract in .docx or .rtf format to:

imaginingalternatives@gmail.com

Panel proposals should include a 100-200 word panel description as well as abstracts for up to 3 papers.

We also invite proposals for alternatives to traditional panel sessions; we particularly encourage submissions of creative work (visual arts, short films, performance pieces, and creative writing) exploring the conference theme.

The deadline for submissions is August 23, 2013.

Participants are invited to imagine alternative…

Embodiments
Identities
Races
Genders and Sexualities
Communities and Nations
Religions
Languages
Models of Citizenship
Diplomacies and Geopolitics
Economies
Landscapes and Spaces
Futures
Histories
Epistemologies
Pedagogies
Values and Ethics
Texts and Canons

UPDATE: Extended CFP Deadline PAMLA Conference (11/1-3, 2013, Bahia Resort, San Diego): Now May 12

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:55:40 -0400

Forty approved sessions for the November 1-3, 2013 PAMLA Conference (at the Bahia Resort Hotel, San Diego, California) have extended their paper proposal deadline until May 12. Go to http://www.pamla.org/2013/ to see the complete list of open sessions and to propose a paper. Sessions still looking for papers include:

Autobiography & Fiction in American Women’s Writing
Beowulf and Related Topics
Biopolitical Time: Biomedicine, Science Fiction, Lifespan
Chaucer and Related Topics
Childhood & Hybridity in the Lit. & Film of Indian Diaspora
Classics (Greek)
Constructing a “New” America: The United States in the 1930s
Continental Romanticism
Crime Narratives
Discovering Feminine Identity Through Their Literary Work
East-West Literary Relations
English as a Second Language Studies
Environment and Ecology in Italian Literature and Culture
Fiction Featuring Older Protagonists
Film in the French Language Classroom
Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Literature
Gender, Mind Science, & Literature in Early Modern Spain
Graphic Novels
Indigenous Literatures and Cultures
Limits of Humor: Provocation & Political Correctness in French Media
Linguistics
Linguistics: Time, Language Variation, and Language Change
Lyric Theory in the 21st Century
Memoir as a Scholarly Pursuit
Mid-Twentieth-Century Poetry & Culture (Robert Lowell Soc.)
Modern Austrian Literature
Native North American Literatures
Oceanic Literatures and Cultures
Satire and Humor
Scandinavian Literature
Teaching the Writing of Age/Aging in the Creative Writing Classroom
Technology and Communication
The Unreal in Literature for Children and Young Adults
Translating/Interpreting: Issues and Questions
Visible Difference and the Travel Seminar Experience
Webcomics: Coming of Age?
Woody Allen
World Language Programs in the 21st Century
World Literature in Theory and in Practice
Young Adult Literature

Female Reputation: Historical Recovery and Restitution

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:53:24 -0400

Call for Essay Proposals

Book Proposal: Female Reputation: Historical Recovery and Restitution
Editors: Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet

In Feminist Rhetorical Practices, Jackie Royster and Gesa Kirsch explain that “tectonic shifts” in feminist research are now altering the “rhetorical landscape” to include a blurring of the “persistently elite, male-centered boundaries” of historical studies and an expansion of “rhetorical performance, accomplishment, and possibilities” (29). We applaud these shifts and the resulting expansion of the rhetorical canon to include a more accurate map of female agency and contributions to their respective fields. To that end, we seek accounts and profiles of women’s accomplishments from across the disciplines. In some cases, we suspect authors will revisit existing reputations of these figures, examining the cultural circumstances that led to constructed identities; in other cases, we hope to hear stories of recovered women, those who have been neglected or overlooked in traditional historical accounts.

While we do not limit the scope and direction of proposed essays, we especially welcome accounts of women whose:
• Names and contributions were omitted from accounts of scientific and medical advances
• Reputations were maligned to make them less threatening to those in power
• Accomplishments were dismissed because they were gender specific
• Roles were overlooked in well-known historical accounts
• Contributions to their well-known male relatives’ successes were not recognized
• Role was played behind the man
• Sexual identity was misrepresented in a patriarchal society
• Role was seemingly insignificant or ignored but changed the course of events
• Students, children or mentees went on to achieve success
• Successes in socioeconomic circles outside traditionally documented venues went unrecognized
• Contributions were overlooked because of racial identity or geographical location
• Religious work was ignored within their local communities or secular circles

Proposals for essays should include: a 350-500 word abstract, a 100 word bio for each author, and complete contact information. Essays must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.

Please send proposals and contact information to both editors by July 1, 2013:

Lynée Lewis Gaillet lgaillet@gsu.edu and Helen Gaillet hgaillet@gmail.com

Writing Ireland: Identity, Memory, and Place

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:00:31 -0400

IRISH STUDIES at SAMLA- Nov. 8-10, 2013

Writing Ireland: Identity, Memory, and Place

By June 1, 2013, please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Sarah Dyne, Georgia State University, at sdyne1@gsu.edu

https://samla.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/2013_samla_cfps.pdf

Leonard Cohen Conference/Collection

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:07:35 -0400

Proposed presentations are sought for a one-day conference (and subsequent collection) on the art of Leonard Cohen at the University of Westminster in London, U.K. in December 2013. Presentations may focus on any aspect of Cohen's work although papers on his fiction and poetry are particularly welcome. The deadline is 1 June 2013.

Circling Our Wagons: Reflections on Hip-Hop Landscape(s) Conference April 11-13 2014

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:02:14 -0400

In Hip Hop Wars, Tricia Rose argues that, “Hip Hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States.” Rose’s insight delves into the historical evolution of the genre and the sociological progression of the movement called Hip Hop. More importantly, Rose’s inquiry of Hip Hop admits that Hip Hop has become an important apparatus by which critics, scholars, and artists can engage and examine the American social, personal, public, and private landscapes.

This conference seeks essays/papers that relate to any aspect of Hip-Hop or Hip Hop studies and pedagogy. Subjects may include, but are not limited to: literature, demographics, history, politics, economics, education, health care, fine arts, religion, social sciences, business and many other subjects. Each presenter will have 15-20 minutes for paper presentations, 45-minute round table discussion on targeted issues or topics are welcome as well as other formats (i.e., ethnodrama, performance, poetry, autoethnography, and fiction). We are also seeking regional and local talent to perform on the final night of the conference. Please include your name, (institutional affiliation) contact information, including email address, and phone number. Send 200-300 word abstract for papers, round tables and other formats to andre.johnson@asurams.edu by December 15, 2013.