category: romantic

UPDATE/MAY 23RD 2013

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:00:57 -0400

TYCA-NE 2013 CALL FOR PROPOSALS

October 3-5, 2013

Hyatt Morristown / Morristown, NJ

Program by Bergen Community College

TYCA-NE of the National Council of Teachers of English is currently seeking presentation proposals for its October 2013 Conference in Morristown, NJ. Presentations should focus on some aspect of the TYCA purpose: “the intellectual and pedagogical growth of English teachers and administrators in the two-year college throughout the northeast region.” Our theme for this year’s conference is:

R/evolutions: Addressing Pedagogical and Institutional Change in Higher Education

The TYCA-NE 2013 Conference asks us to define what changes are taking place, to anticipate future changes and to consider collaborative ways to implement changes, not only in our local institutions, but also in our communities.

Join us in New Jersey this year, at the center of our TYCA region. Morristown is known as the seat of the Revolutionary War, a tactical setting chosen by General George Washington as he led his Continental Army to encamp during the harsh winters. For two pivotal winters, the area served the Patriots who helped change America. Today, Washington Headquarters is maintained and preserved for its critical military history.

What kind of changes are you seeing at your institutions, can you see more changes evolving, and how are you addressing them? Proposals may address the following topics:

Pedagogical Changes:

Readiness, Remediation and Redesign
Developmental Acceleration, Supplementation and Contextualization
In Defense of Fiction
Future of Creative Writing
Using Whole Books with Thematic Content
Flipped Classroom
K-12 English Curriculum Changes
HS-College Collaborative Initiatives
Crafting Authentic Writing Experiences
Beyond First Year Writing
Online Teaching and Learning
Effective E-Materials and Resources
Virtual Innovations and Interactions
New Ways to Teach Writing
Transforming Assessment

Institutional Changes:

Serving more students with fewer resources
Changes in current policies and legislation regarding developmental education
Increasing use of adjunct labor
Changes as a result of administration overhaul
Political change and how it affects community colleges
Faculty bargaining and the future of tenure-track positions
Reaching out into the college community and implementing strategies for retention

We are interested in presentation topics that include revolutions in pedagogical thinking, planning and collaboration.

Format Options:

20 minute talk, discussion, or workshop followed by questions and answers;
60 minute full-panel discussion for groups of two or more followed by questions and answers;
Presentations may be combined with other proposals by the Program Planning Committee;
Computers, LCD projectors, wireless connections and on-site tech support will be provided.
Proposal Requirements:

200-250 word abstract elaborating on both the topic and format of the presentation;
50 word title and description for the conference program and schedule;
Type of session (i.e. 20 min workshop…) and specific audio-visual and technical requests;
A brief biography and contact information of each presenter.

TYCA Northeast hopes to foster creativity, collaboration and innovation. While traditional proposals will be accepted, non-traditional presentations are greatly encouraged and may receive priority consideration.

Proposals should be submitted by June 17, 2013. Presenters will be notified of proposal acceptance by June 30, 2013 and must register for the conference by August 31, 2013. Full submission instructions can be found on the conference website at www.tycanortheast.org/. The registration deadline for the conference is September 10, 2013.

Conference Registration Deadline: September 10, 2013

Short Story at MMLA 2013

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:53:38 -0400

This session welcomes critical papers on the short story for the annual MMLA convention. Proposals may be related to the conference theme of Art & Artifice, but it is not necessary.

Please send 250-word abstracts by May 31, 2013, to Katy L. Leedy, Marquette University, katy.leedy@marquette.edu.

The convention will be held November 7-10, 2013, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more information, visit the conference website at http://www.luc.edu/mmla/annualconvention.html.

Courtly Literature and the Tangled Web of Text, Image, and Culture-- SAMLA 2013 : Nov 8-10

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:23:35 -0400

Courtly Literature and the Tangled Web of Text, Image, and Culture

This year’s International Courtly Literature Society panel questions how the intersection of text, image, and culture serves to make meaning in courtly literature in order to explore SAMLA’s broader 2013 theme of “Cultures, Contexts, Images, Texts: Making Meaning in Print, Digital, and Networked Worlds.” Possible approaches may include investigating the affect of text(s) on culture(s), the influences of broadening cultural awareness on texts, or the inclusion of images within courtly literature.

To be considered for the panel, please send the following information by June 20, 2013, to michelleLgolden@gmail.com

--Panelist name, title, and institutional affiliation
--250-300 word proposal for an (approximately) 15-minute presentation
--Title of paper as it will appear in the conference program
--Brief panelist bio

Reconsidering Sigourney: Essays on Lydia Sigourney (edited collection)

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:32:12 -0400

The co-editors seek essays that showcase the breadth and vigor of the new scholarship on Lydia Sigourney. Though Sigourney was one of the most popular, productive and consequential authors of America’s nineteenth-century (poet, entrepreneur, educational reformer, and essayist), serious critical attention to her work languished until the latter decades of the twentieth-century when the field of American literature and culture underwent the significant revision and revitalization. Her works have been critical to many of these reconsiderations --- whether of romanticism, American identity, the history of the book, disability studies, and, most recently, of the new aesthetics --- but there has yet to be a volume of essays that collects and represents this work.
Interested contributors please send a 300-400 word abstract (as an attachment in Word) and full contact information, including affiliation, to mkete@uvm.edu or Epetrino@fairfield.edu. Abstracts are due by August 1st. Final full drafts will be due January 30, 2014.

Adoption: Crossing Boundaries, March 27-30 (due July 15); Florida State Univ.

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:28:39 -0400

Call for Proposals

ASAC's biennial conferences feature stories and histories of adoption as explored by writers, artists, and scholars across the disciplines, especially the humanities. Adoptions and the lives of adoptees always involve crossing boundaries, whether the boundaries of families, the boundaries of races, the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of aboriginal peoples and others, the boundaries of communities, the boundaries of law, or all of these borders. This conference takes up these themes and threads, and also encourages other kinds of boundary-crossing—boundaries between disciplines; between adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, and social workers; boundaries between creative writers, scholars, and activists. And we extend our topic across other boundaries by considering similar issues with regard to foster care and assisted reproduction.
The conference includes academic work from a wide range of scholarly disciplines and areas—literature, film and popular culture and performance studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, religion, political science, law, women’s and gender studies— as well as film, creative writing, graphic art, music, drama, or productions in other media. We encourage interdisciplinary panels, presentations, and productions.
Keynote speakers:

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing, Newcastle University (UK), Scottish-Nigerian adoptee, author of the groundbreaking volume of poetry The Adoption Papers, the adoption memoir Red Dust Road, and many other works of poetry, prose, and drama.

Laura Briggs, Professor and Chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Duke UP, 2012), the winner of the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians

Featured films will include: Somewhere Between (2012), a documentary which follows four teenage girls adopted from China; Resilience (2009), which shows a Korean birthmother who searches for and meets her son in the US; and Any Day Now, (2012) a fictionalized account of a gay couple’s attempt to adopt a special-needs child they have fostered (the script is based in part on events in Florida, and we hope to have some of the parties at the conference.)

We invite proposals for papers and panels that:
● Analyze literary, cinematic, dramatic, musical, visual, dance, popular culture, or performance art representations of boundary crossing in adoption, foster care, or other nonstandard means of family formation or child care, and boundary crossing in narratives of the lives of adoptees, adoptive parents, and/or birthparents
● Study boundary-crossing in adoption and other reproductive, family and caring structures in historical, anthropological, philosophical, sociological, legal, religious, political, gendered, LGBTQ, and/or psychological perspectives.
● Promote dialogue between people positioned differently with regard to adoption because of their life experience, profession, and/or discipline.
We expect that most papers will run about 20 minutes and that panel proposals should allow some time for discussion (assuming that panels will be about an hour and fifteen minutes ).
We also invite creative presentations (writing, film, drama, graphic arts, other media, etc.) on border crossing in relation to adoption. Writing samples should ordinarily be less than 10 pages.
Please send 200-word proposals for papers or samples of creative work, a cv or resume along with your proposal, and links if you are working in visual or multimedia, to asac2014@fsu.edu. Give your proposal, cv, and/or writing sample a title that includes your last name.

Proposal deadline July 15, 2013

Applications from graduate students interested in submitting papers are invited for a travel grant award of up to $500. Awards will be given based on quality of paper submitted by July 15 (not just 200-word proposal), cost of travel, contribution of papers to scope of conference, and amount we have available.

A conference website is under development and we will soon post information about registration, accommodation, and travel. For additional information, contact Eric Walker at ewalker@fsu.edu

Conference program planning committee includes:

Eric Walker, Department of English, Florida State University, co-chair
Marianne Novy, University of Pittsburgh, co-chair
Karen Balcom, McMaster University
Emily Hipchen, University of West Georgia
Margaret Homans, Yale University

The Literary Legacy of Revelations

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:17:07 -0400

The Literary Legacy of Revelations

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

Always a prominent text in Western culture, the book of Revelations has been in the spotlight during the past year in particular due to the 2012 publication of Elaine Pagel’s Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation. Pagel, like many before her, recognizes the largely political nature of Revelations as she considers it from a historical and typological perspective.

This seminar will explore how Revelations has been either commented on or alluded to in works by prominent literary authors coming from a variety of historical and cultural contexts. I want to look at the book of Revelations and its wide-ranging literary legacy with a specific focus on the political or environmental significance of the texts that have made use of it. How have writers altered, adapted, challenged, or capitalized on Revelations?

The influence of Revelations is evident in countless literary works from the Middle Ages to the present day. Writers considered in this seminar might include, but certainly are not limited to, Dante Alighieri, Edmund Spencer, John Milton, the English Romantics, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, D. H. Lawrence, James Baldwin, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and Tim LaHaye. Ideally, this seminar will include papers representing a variety of writers from different countries, time-periods, ethnicities, and classes; and representing different religious and ideological perspectives.

For the seminar format, participants will submit 10-15 page papers early in 2014. Papers will be circulated and read by all participants. During the two-hour seminar, each presenter will give a five-minute or so presentation—please, no AV. The rest of the seminar will be focused on a structured discussion between all participants.

Please send a 200 word abstract and a one page CV to Todd Williams at williams@kutztown.edu by September 30, 2013.

Deadline: September 30, 2013
Please include with your abstract and CV:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number

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

The 2014 event will include guest speakers, literary readings, professional events, and workshops. A reading by George Saunders will open the Convention. His 2013 collection of short fiction, The Tenth of December, has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the best book you’ll read this year.” The Keynote speaker will be David Staller of Project Shaw.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. http://www.nemla.org/convention/2014/cfp.html

Literature and Medicine in the Eighteenth Century: NEMLA 2014, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; April 3-6

Sat, 18 May 2013 06:13:57 -0400

Literature and Medicine in the Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century has been described as an era of increasing medicalization. Bodies became the subject of extensive political intervention, from mass inoculations to centralized responses to epidemics. For Michel Foucault, medicalization promoted disciplinary control and surveillance into the fabric of the body. With the expansion of print, lay people took responsibility for managing their health through their own knowledge of physiology and medicine. Self-regimen or preventative medicine, based on Hippocratic and Galenic principles, was contingent on the patient’s knowledge of their own lifestyle and constitution. E.C. Spary writes, “the body is central to the transformations of eighteenth-century medical historiography. Once the unproblematic subject of medical interventions, it has become the site of lived experience, a palimpsest on which medical, political, and personal authority are inscribed, and a key locus for the fashioning of identity, subjectivity, and selfhood.” Therefore, the imbrication of medical language and literary composition provide a useful frame for understanding the articulation of the body as a sign. This panel explores the complex intersections between literature and eighteenth century medical discourse, and considers their relation to our understanding of gender studies, gender politics, science, medicine, and literature.

This panel seeks papers that explore the complex intersections between eighteenth-century literature and medical discourse. How does the imbrication of medical language and literary composition provide a frame for understanding the articulation of the body as a sign? How has medical discourse influenced the fashioning of identity, subjectivity, and selfhood? Please submit 300-400 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Kathleen Alves at kalves@qcc.cuny.edu by September 30.

"The Controversy over Attribution of De Doctrina Christiana to Milton." [Revised CFP] Collection of Essays by 15 October 2013

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:49:10 -0400

The manuscript of _De Doctrina Christiana_ was found in the State Paper Office and attributed to Milton in 1823; it was subsequently published by order of King George IV. Although Bishop Thomas Burgess (and others) rejected or doubted the attribution, but editors eventually came to accept the treatise as canonical. In the 1990’s, Professor William Hunter, distinguished editor of the _Milton Encyclopedia_, seconded by Paul Sellin, inaugurated a new phase of the continuing controversy over the attribution of _De Doctrina Christiana_ to John Milton. Hunter’s objections appear in several articles and in _Visitation Unimplor’d: Milton and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana_ (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1998). Scholars like Barbara Lewalski and Christopher Hill maintained the attribution, but the seeds of doubt had been sown, and categorical exponents of Milton’s authorship have made significant concessions. On the one hand, Gordon Campbell, Thomas Corns, John Hale and Fiona Tweedie, in _Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana_ (Oxford: OUP, 2008), defend the attribution and the editors of the new Oxford edition of _De Doctrina Christiana_ [2013], John Hale and Donald Cullington, assume that the controversy is resolved. On the other hand, some reviewers have not been convinced.

We welcome by partisans (or neutrals) in the controversy over John Milton's disputed authorship of _De Doctrina Christiana_. Essays expressing various points of view on the attribution controversy (and anything that might illuminate it) will be considered for possible inclusion in a collection on the controversy. Please submit abstracts or essays by October 15, 2013.

Hugh F. Wilson (wilsonh@gram.edu)
Professor, Grambling State University

[REMINDER] Allegory Studies? (abstracts deadline 31 May)

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:48:16 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

ALLEGORY STUDIES?
University of Warwick
7 November 2013

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Jon Whitman (English, The Hebrew University)

OTHER CONFIRMED SPEAKERS AND CHAIRS: Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (Psychology, UCSC), Lisa Rosenthal (Art and Design, UIUC), Christiania Whitehead (English and CLS, Warwick)

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/emforum/events/allegory

The one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds who share an interest in the history and theory of allegory in order to explore and promote the notion of allegory studies as an emergent nexus of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Since the mid-twentieth century, allegory has increasingly been approached as a subject in its own right, informed by, but transcending particular disciplinary, periodical, or author-focused contexts. This development seems to have reached a critical point over the past two decades, which have seen a steady stream of articles and monographs, as well as such comprehensive reference works as an Encyclopedia of Allegorical Literature (Leeming and Drowne 1996), a Dictionary of Allegorical Meanings (Brumble 1999), a pioneering collaborative overview of allegorical interpretation in the West (Whitman 2000), and, most recently, volumes in the New Critical Idiom (Tambling 2010) and Cambridge Companions (Copeland and Struck 2010) series. A number of recent conferences and seminar panels have approached the subject without disciplinary or periodical restrictions, and the phrase “allegory studies” – although traceable at least to Gordon Teskey’s Allegory and Violence (1996) – has begun to appear in contemporary scholarship on the subject.

By all accounts, then, the current state or research on allegory seems to be marked by the consolidation of a long and extraordinarily productive tradition of scholarship – including contributions from such fields as art history, classics, intellectual history, linguistics and cognitive science, literary studies and literary theory, philosophy, theology, religion studies – into a coherent interdisciplinary formation in its own right. At this propitious moment, papers are invited from scholars of any disciplinary background to discuss the various issues raised by these developments, such as (but not limited to):

- Why allegory studies? What is it about this subject that seems to demand a dedicated interdisciplinary platform in its own right?

- What are the main achievements of allegory studies thus far? What are the most promising avenues of exploration?

- Theory and history in allegory studies – what light does theoretical work throw on the history of allegory, and conversely, how do historically contextualized perspectives bear on the theoretical approaches to the subject?

- What is the relation between the marked rise in allegory scholarship since c. 1950 and the roughly coextensive “revival of allegory” originating in the work of such thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man and permeating various corners of the contemporary academic and cultural sphere?

Papers are solicited from scholars of any disciplinary background and career stage – proposals from graduates and junior academics are especially welcome. Applicants are encouraged to engage with the subject of allegory and allegory studies in ways which transcend traditional disciplinary and periodisational boundaries, and priority will be given to abstracts clearly demonstrating the ability to communicate effectively to the interdisciplinary audience the conference aims to attract. It is hoped that the conference will lead to a publication showcasing the wide array of current approaches to the subject and paving the way for further collaboration and research.

500-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, accompanied by a brief biographical note, to be sent to the convenor, Vladimir Brljak (English and CLS, Warwick), at v.brljak@warwick.ac.uk by 31 May 2013.

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (www.coldnoon.com) Call for Entries (Research Papers/ Poetry), deadline 6th June 2013

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:22:21 -0400

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is an International Print and Online Literary Journal published as a quarterly (online, ISSN 2278-9650) and bi-yearly (print, ISSN 2278-9642).

CALL FOR ENTRIES:

Coldnoon: Travel Poetics invites writers and researchers to submit their original works of poetry, creative non-fiction, art/book/film reviews or research papers on travel/travel poetics for publication in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Jun ‘13, Issue VII (online). The works published in the forthcoming issue will be republished in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Autumn 2013, along with the subsequent online issue of Sep ‘13, Issue VIII, in October, 2013.

The last date of sending submissions is 6th June, 2013.
To read about the concept of Coldnoon, travelogy and travel poetics please visit our website www.coldnoon.com.

The submission categories and criteria are:

POETRY – Submit at least 4 poems, and not more than 6, in MS Word Doc. format only. Please ensure your poems are properly formatted, and the lineation is as desired. Before you submit, we suggest you read our previous publications of poetry, once, so as to have a clear idea of the kinds of poetry we like, or tend to understand better.

NON FICTION, RESEARCH PAPERS & REVIEWS – Works may be based on travel in literature, cinema, culture, and more. Submit a full length essay not less than 2500 words, or review not less than 1500 words. Format your paper on standard A4 (8.3*11.7 sq. inch) paper, with 1 inch margin on each side. Citations, if any, should be in MLA format. Use endnotes instead of footnotes. Also check your paper for proper indentation before submitting. The works will be checked stringently for plagiarism; avoid any whatsoever. Attach your submission in MS Word doc. format only.

We accept only email submissions. In your email mark subject as “Submission”. Along with the submission attach your biographical details of not more than 100 words. Also state in the body of your email that you are the sole author/s of the work submitted and that no other person or institution may assert moral right over the work, but you.

Email your submissions to: submissions@coldnoon.com

Pride and Prejudice at 200

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:02:10 -0400

Call for Papers

"*Pride and Prejudice* at 200"

45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

April 3-6, 2014

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Host: Susquehanna University

In 1813, Jane Austen’s *Pride and Prejudice* was sent forth into the world, to become one of the most beloved Anglophone novels. This panel invites papers that put Austen’s work into conversation with contemporaneous and modern-day cultural issues, especially surprising or heterodox influences or resonances. Considerations of the novel’s adaptations are particularly welcome. Please send abstracts of 250-500 words to Lauren Cameron at lnklap@gmail.com by September 30, 2013.

Deadline: September 30, 2013

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation

Email address

Postal address

Telephone number

A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

Popular and Current Art Submissions and Criticism Wanted: Open Deadline

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:37:42 -0400

While great works of literature were written in the 19th century and prior, we live today in an age with major problems and solutions in the realm of art and communication that should be addressed by current artists and critics. The tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal is in its 5th volume and 5th year in operation. It is available on EBSCO, ProQuest and in print from various distribution channels. It has published interviews with best-selling young adult authors like Cinda Williams Chima and Carrie Ryan, as well as with winners of the Brooklyn Film Festival, and top academic editors across the country. PLJ’s special issues have focused on film, fiction, British literature, formalism, new historicism, and various other fields. In the future years, PLJ would like to see primarily criticism of current research, fiction, poetry, film, and works of art. For example, the most recent issue of PLJ “Reviews of Popular Fiction” includes reviews of Twilight, A Kurt Wallander Novel, and The Last Boyfriend. Most of these reviews are very negative, as the editor-in-chief, Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., is pretty pessimistic about the current state of literature. Thus, negative, sarcastic, and highly critical and detailed book reviews and essays are especially wanted. Reviews of films, TV series, as well as of photography and art are also of interest. Please remember to support your negative criticism with facts and details from the works, but don’t include quotes over 5 lines in length. In addition, if you can access a celebrity (living) author at a convention, a reading, or through their agent and they agree to do an interview with you – PLJ would be delighted to publish interviews with any recognizable or award-winning author. Interviews with filmmakers, poets, editors, and even businessmen are also of interest. Please review prior issues of PLJ for the interview style that PLJ prefers. Scholarly essays on popular, award-winning, or merited literature published since 1980 is also of special interest. Essays on methods for teaching literature, composition and other fields are also a good fit. Also send fiction, poetry, art, photography and other forms of art you’ve created. If you’ve published with a major academic publisher or with one of the best popular presses, and would like to be interviewed or reviewed, send a query. There is no payment for publication, but also no reading fees or publication fees for you. Only famous authors receive a free contributor copy. PLJ is a for-profit venture and subscriptions are what feeds its future success; so feel free to ask your school’s library to subscribe. If you have an idea for an essay, work of fiction, review, interview, work of art, or anything else that was not mentioned above (including criticism of 19th century and prior works), send a query to determine if it’s a good fit for PLJ. While PLJ is moving into popular art, it’s not yet fully there and a wide variety of other projects is still very welcomed. When submitting a project email a Word document with the full text of the work (with an abstract for scholarly articles), and a biography paragraph in the third-person for the author to director@anaphoraliterary.com, to the attention of Dr. Anna Faktorovich, Editor-in-Chief. PLJ is a part of the Anaphora Literary Press (www.anaphoraliterary.com), which has published over 50 book titles and is actively soliciting academic and creative book manuscripts. We are especially interested in books that will be taught as part of the writer’s class(es). To submit a book-length project email the full manuscript, bio, book summary paragraph, and a marketing paragraph (with specifics) to director@anaphoraliterary.com.

International Conference on Romanticism, September 26-29, 2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:33:24 -0400

2013 International Conference on Romanticism
"Romantic Relations"
September 26-29, 2013
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

The International Conference on Romanticism would love to increase the presence of Americanists at its annual conference-- all the more so given our globalist, transnational, transatlantic critical moment. We are extending the deadline for submissions until June 1st. We hope Americanists working across areas of 18th and 19th century studies will consider joining us.

This year's conference returns to metro Detroit and Oakland University (site of the 2008 meeting). In keeping with the spirit of this organization, the conference organizers wish to focus on the cross-disciplinary and international aspects of Romanticism. The conference theme is Romantic Relations, which should be interpreted in its broadest contexst. Possible topics could include but should not be limited to:

Cross-national and Transatlantic relations
Romantic race relations
Colonial relations
Relationships in the arts and music
Relations of Romantic Science
Romantic relations/relationships
Familial relationships
Romantic Others
Animal relationships
Class relations
Labor relations
Gender relationships
Intertextualities
War and Peace
Boundary and border crossings
Critical relations
Romantic Collaborations
Philosophical relationships
Interdisciplinary Romanticism
Romantic travel

Abstracts for complete panels and individual papers are welcome. Please send 300 word abstracts to Rob Anderson (r2anders@oakland.edu) or Chris Clason (clason@oakland.edu). Deadline in June 1.

Conference organizers: Chris Clason, Rob Anderson, Jennifer Law-Sullivan, Jeffrey Insko

ICR 2013: http://www.oakland.edu/ICR2013

ICR Homepage: http://icr.byu.edu

“Embodiments of Horror: William Blake’s Gothic Sensibility.”

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:47:42 -0400

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of Gothic Studies: “Embodiments of Horror: William Blake’s Gothic Sensibility.”

Guest Editors: Dr. Christopher Bundock (Huron College) and Elizabeth Effinger (Western).

Within the frame of the late eighteenth-century Gothic revival, this special issue of Gothic Studies explores the relationship between English poet and engraver William Blake and particularly disruptive affective intensities expressed at the level of image, text, and critical reception as well as their extension into contemporary adaptations. While a critical body of work exists on the relationship between Blake and the Gothic broadly—and in spite of an obvious fascination with a nexus of aesthetic categories such as the grotesque, perverse, and macabre—Blake's focus on affects like physical disgust and horror, specifically, have garnered little sustained critical attention. This special issue seeks to redress this gap by opening up a dialogue between Blake and his gothic sensibility that centers on the affective, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of a physical body and sensorium that turns against itself.

Registering the contestation between introjection and expulsion, the abject – Kristeva’s term for a “massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which […] now harries me as radically separate, loathsome” (2) – is frequently figured in Blake as a monstrous Polypus, organic life in its merely vegetative, abhorrent state. Other examples of Blake’s “body horror” appear in the body turned inside out, revealing organs “Dim & glutinous as the white Polypus,” an uncanny “Fibrous Vegetation” that seems less like animating flesh than the binding vines that tie spirit with “living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing / A self-devouring monstrous Human Death” (Los 4.66; Milton 24.37, 34.25-6). Rending apart the coherence of representation to expose “what I permanently thrust aside in order to live” (Kristeva 3), Blake's revulsion stems –perversely enough—from a willingness to peer into the abyss of origination and expose art's always fragile constitution as an invitation for revision, transformation, and rebirth. But how precisely does this affirmative attitude toward subjective and artistic regeneration square with Blake's tortured affect, especially when this follows from a desire to transcend the physical body, the very matrix of sensibility? If Blake embodies horror, he is also horrified by the body's limitations. How, then, does art—particularly Blake's own art—respond to this problem? How does he make new kinds of bodies to embody desires differently?
We are particularly interested in papers that consider the impact this “thrust[ing] aside” by and of the body has for Blake’s thought and art. What is the work of horror in Blake? What, if any, generative potential is there in the restlessness of Blake’s tortured, gothic bodies? What is the cost of Blake’s investment in horror as a privileged affect? Does Blake’s appeal to horror and the Gothic challenge or render counterfeit his humanism? How does Blake’s revisioning of the body as an intensive site of horror invite new modes of thinking about the human? How do the horrors of Blake’s material bodies (dis)figure or embody the horrors of larger discursive bodies?

While this collection follows in the spirit of recent critical projects such as Blake 2.0 (Palgrave 2012) and Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture (Palgrave 2007) – important studies that foreground the continuing relevance of Blake in contemporary culture – it also distinguishes itself by interrogating the particular affinities between Blake and the embodied experiences of revulsion, abjection, and horror. Given this topic especially, Blake's illustrations may well play a central role in some contributions. And we do hope to be able to reproduce a certain number of his visual artworks. Nevertheless, we ask that contributors use their best judgement and include images only if they come in for substantial, sustained analysis and are necessary for advancing the paper's argument.

This collection is interested in papers that explore any aspects Blake's embodied affects and affects of embodiment, and especially those dimensions wherein the body and affect clash.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Deleuze and the Affect of Terror or Horror
Execrable Topi: Vacuum, Or-Ulro, Satan's Mills
Horrors of abstraction
Embodiment, disembodiment, reembodiment
Birth, re-birth, and the labour of creation
Printing in the Infernal Method
The Pleasures of Pain: masochism, perversion
Transgression and anti-economy
Horror and Function
The Instruments of Terror
Revulsion's limits, borders, or ends
Blake's images as “dark visions of torment”
The image and Evil
Specters, ghosts, and darkness visible
Empiricism and the Body
Subject, Object, Abject

We invite contributions from academics, professionals, artists, and those with a scholarly interest in Blake. All relevant material will be considered. We welcome papers from multidisciplinary perspectives.

Including notes, articles should be between 4000 and 9000 words in length. Potential contributors should send *abstracts (500-750 words)* to both Dr. Christopher Bundock (cbundock@gmail.com) and Elizabeth Effinger (eeffinge@uwo.ca) by *1 October, 2013*. All submissions should be in English and adhere to the “Guidelines on Preparing and Submitting an Article for Gothic Studies”

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

Instrumental Reason/Constellational Form: The Frankfurt School Now

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:19:18 -0400

In “The Essay as Form,” Theodor Adorno writes that the essay (in Montaigne’s sense of an ‘attempt’) presupposes a reader who “does not think, but rather transforms himself into an arena of intellectual experience.”

Frankfurt School critical theory is often regarded as incompatible with contemporary literary and cultural studies, with the latter’s emphasis on sensation, remediation, politicized identities and social networks. We are seeking panels that reimagine Adorno and Benjamin’s work in light of recent scholarly and pedagogical trends. For instance, what can Frankfurt theory contribute to the return of experience as a critical keyword? How does “constellation” compare to other terms for complex compositions (network, assemblage, field, etc.)? Can we still justify reading and teaching literature as a challenge to instrumental reason and the “unconditional priority of ‘method,’” or should new theories and technologies make us rethink the instrumental?

Please send an abstract of about 250 words, along with a 1-3 sentence bio, to Claire Laville (clavill@emory.edu) and Elizabeth Bishop (ebbisho@emory.edu) by June 21, 2013.

For more information about SAMLA, visit http://samla.memberclicks.net/conference

Science and Fiction: Literary Darwinism

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:24:51 -0400

The 55th Annual Convention will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center from November 7-10, 2013.

Topic: Literary Darwinism

I am still seeking papers that explore Darwin and Literature. What are the links between evolutionary psychology/biology and fiction? In what ways might evolutionary theory assist in the understanding and analysis of fiction? This panel will focus on fiction through biology and evolutionary theory.

Please send 250-word abstracts by May 31st to Kevin Swafford, swafford@bradley.edu

Chair: Kevin Swafford, Bradley University

"The Senses of Humour," submissions due 1 July 2013

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:08:52 -0400

This special issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction journal will explore the relationships among various meanings of the term "humour" in the long eighteenth century, from humoral theories of the body to the cultivation and regulation of "senses of humour" in literature, culture, and social interaction. We invite submissions on eighteenth-century legacies of classical humoral theory; the philosophy of laughter; the emergence of modern forms of wit, satire, and other humorous genres in literature and illustration; cultural negotiations of body and mind as sites of "humour"; and the role of humour(s) in discourses of feeling, sentiment, sensibility, and sociality. *We welcome articles that treat the topic in areas inside or outside of imaginative prose fiction.* Please note that this issue is NOT limited to work on traditionally defined prose humour -- we are very interested in interdisciplinary and cultural studies work on laughter, feeling, and affect in a variety of 18th-century contexts. Manuscripts (5,000-8,000 words) should reach ECF by 1 July 2013. Further details about submitting articles can be found at http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~ecf/guidelines.html
To submit an article for a special issue, or a call for articles, or a regular issue of the journal, which publishes 4 issues per year, choose "Submit Article" at http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/
We encourage electronic submissions at Digital Commons (see above), but if you have any concerns about this online submissions system, you may contact the ECF editors at ecf@mcmaster.ca

‘Is the Biographer an Artist?’: Tracing Authority within Collected Remembrance--NeMLA 2014 April 3-6

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:40:59 -0400

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

In 2000, critic Tom Paulin attacked biographer Richard Holmes’ Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, asking: ‘Is the biographer an artist who can and should exist on equal terms with the dramatist, fiction writer and poet? The short and robust answer is ‘certainly not.’’ Even today, many biographies are treated as permanent (if frequently flawed) vessels conveying important knowledge about their subjects rather than dynamic texts worthy of aesthetic study. Jean Marc Blanchard speaks to this problem by assuming in his criticism that "autobiography is a literary genre, whereas biography is not." Laura Marcus, in her text Auto/Biography, comments on biography’s strange position between history and literature, noting that while autobiography is approached as a literary genre, biography "remains very largely untheorized."

This panel seeks papers discussing authority, performativity, or the relation between subjectivity and objectivity within autobiography and/or biography. While this panel welcomes papers centering on auto/biographies of specific subjects, it also aims to query the extent to which auto/biographies can be considered as subjective artistic works of aesthetic value, theoretically objective works of reference, or somewhere in between. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Amanda Weldy Boyd at weldy@usc.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2013

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

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

Littérature et anachronisme, NeMLA, Harrisburg, PE, April 3-6, 2014 (deadline September 30)

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:07:23 -0400

Littérature et anachronisme

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

Ce panel cherche à mettre à profit dans le champ de l’histoire littéraire francophone la critique récente de la version téléologique de l’histoire. Usant du rapprochement et de l’anachronisme, la pensée glissantienne offre un modèle pour une telle tentative. Quels autres paysages littéraires et culturels émergent d’un tel déplacement épistémologique ? Merci d’envoyer les propositions de communication accompagnées d’une courte description biographique à maxime.philippe@mail.mcgill.ca.

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

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

[NeMLA 2014] Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:14:15 -0400

Conference: Northeast Modern Language Association Convention (2014)
Date: April 3-6, 2014
Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Panel Title: "Critical Feelings: Redefining Cultural Agency in Affect Theory"

Panel Description:

While affect theory has expanded the analysis of affect and emotion within the humanities, a surprisingly small set of feelings has taken prominence within the field. Indeed, critics such as Heather Love, Sianne Ngai, and Sara Ahmed evince a strong bias toward negative affects. Within a consumer culture that praises positive feeling at every turn, these scholars argue, "ugly feelings" appear to afford critical agency for cultural resistance. One consequence of this thesis, however, is that positive affects such as pleasure, happiness, and peace appear suspiciously complicit with dominant ideologies. Recently, critics within queer studies have begun to challenge this logic. For example, Elizabeth Freeman, Jose Munoz, and Michael Snediker each identify the critical agency of pleasure, hope, and optimism for marginalized communities. Yet much work remains to be done within affect theory to challenge the binary between positive and negative feelings and to complicate their respective relationships to cultural power. To that end, this panel seeks papers that expand the palette of affects traditionally analyzed within affect studies. How might these understudied affects operate as "critical" in contemporary literature and culture? Why do certain affects signify as "critical" whereas others fall to the margins? How can affect theory redefine our conceptions of cultural critique and critical agency more broadly?

Papers are welcome to focus on a single affect, a genera of feelings, or the theoretical problem of affect as a whole. However, panelists are encouraged to ground their arguments within a specific a cultural and historical context.

Submit 250-500 word abstracts to tyler.bradway@gmail.com by September 30th, 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

[UPDATE] CFP Four Nations Fiction: Women and the Novel 1780-1830 - Deadline Extended

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:44:05 -0400

In Blackwood’s Magazine in September 1819, John Wilson reflected on the towering fame of three contemporary women poets in the following terms: ‘Scotland has her Baillie – Ireland her Tighe – England her Hemans.’ The work of these women in fact represents all four parts of Britain in 1819, but who would replace them if fiction was the focus, rather than poetry?

Recent book-length studies of women writers who have, until now, occupied more peripheral positions within accounts of the period – Anna Seward, Elizabeth Hamilton, Joanna Baillie, Margaret Holford Hodson – and republications of lesser-known novels by major writers, such as Lady Morgan, have moved these writers into new zones of reception and criticism. But as literary canons continue to be contested and reconfigured by new readings and scholarly editions, where should we be looking next? Who will move into the spaces formerly occupied by familiar-but-peripheral writers? How, in the case of Welsh, Scottish and Irish novelists, might they be viewed within a comparative but often problematic four nations framework? What about regional or provincial English writers, and the ways in which identity may be shaped or played out in these contexts? What do form and narrative contribute to the creation of national fictions, or representations of Wales, Ireland or Scotland in the period?

Proposals are sought for 20-minute papers on fiction by women in the period 1780-1830, including but not limited to the following: the national tale; representations of local, regional or national identities; depictions of place, especially in Welsh, Irish, Scottish and regional English contexts; history and historical fiction; national Gothic and the novel; emerging or little-known women writers; the role of modern editions; digitising novels by women.

Please send abstracts (c. 250 words) to Elizabeth Edwards: e.edwards@wales.ac.uk

Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2013

http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Centre/Four-Nations-Fiction-p...

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Thu, 09 May 2013 05:11:49 -0400

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Edited by Robert McKay & John Miller (University of Sheffield, UK)

The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

Wolves lope across the gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to the human, they become, in the figure of the werewolf, liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal: humans in animal form and animals in human form. They are metonyms of forbidding landscapes, an unsettling howl in the distance; more intimately, their imposing fangs and gaping mouths threaten a monstrous consumption. The gothic wolf is singular, anomalous but gothic wolves form a demonic multiplicity, a pack. Wolves and werewolves function as a site for working out or contesting complex anxieties of difference: of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality; but the
imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long demonized and persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Wolves, then, raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

We welcome proposals for chapters on any aspect of wolves, werewolves and the Gothic on page or screen in any historical period for a collection of essays to be submitted to The University of Wales Press series of Gothic Literary Studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that seek to read gothic wolves in the context of material histories of (for example) human/animal relations; environmental development; empire and globalization; and gender and sexuality.

Please send chapter abstracts of 500 words along with a short biography to Robert McKay (r.mckay@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by July 31st, 2013. Completed essays will be 6500 words in length and will be commissioned in September 2013 for delivery in the autumn of 2014.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not restricted to:

Lycanthropy/metamorphosis
Real and imaginary wolves
Animal ethics and the anthropomorphic imagination
Monstrosity
Fangs, mouths, the oral and the abject
Lupine presences and gothic spaces
Wolves and the Postcolonial Gothic
Captivity/escape
Wolf to Man – gothic politics from Plautus to Hobbes to Agamben
Gothic wolves, capital and globalization
Sublimity
Natural and unnatural histories
Wolf packs/lone wolves: multitudes and singularities
Ecocritical readings
Zoonosis
She-wolves, he-wolves and gender criticism
Wolfish appetite
Howling and gothic soundscapes
Queer readings
Dogs/wolves; ferity/ferocity
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Wolves and psychoanalysis from Freud to Deleuze and Guattari
Reforming the Gothic: comic (or teen) werewolves

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

trans* : Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference, Keynote José Muñoz, October 18, 2013

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:08:23 -0400

Call for Papers

3rd Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference
Tufts University
October 18, 2013
Keynote: José Muñoz

trans*

In the Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway famously suggests, "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras." Chimeras are amalgams, hybrid beings that stand both in and between disparate identities. They are bodies in transit; they are transforming and potentially transformative bodies. At a contemporary moment in which identity politics have material, potentially violent, effects on bodies and subjects, the mobile and undecided limits of what Judith Butler terms the "recognizably human" pose an especially pressing set of questions. This year's conference theme takes up the questions of the transnational, the transsexual, the transhistorical, and other states of being in trans*.

We solicit papers from all areas of the humanities on being suspended between or moving across two states of being. Some questions of interest include: What are historical moments of fissure at which trans* figures emerge? How might the trans* figure transfigure structures of identity and power? In what ways are identities and bodies transfixed? What constitutes an act of transgression? How do new technologies translate and transform identities?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Citizenship and transnationalism
- Translation and transposition
- Technology and the mechanical
- Queer bodies and identity politics
- Temporality and historiography
- Intersectionality and interdisciplinarity

Please send abstracts of 250 words or less to tuftsgradhumanitiesconference@gmail.com by June 15, 2013.

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.

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.

CALL FOR PAPERS Vol 4, No 2: ECOLOGY

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:50:06 -0400

The Dandelion editors seek submissions on the theme of ecology for our next issue.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Ecocriticism
• Political ecology
• Eco-poetics and nature writing
• The pastoral
• Urban/rural space and/or wildness and civilization
• Ecology and interdisciplinarity
• Romantic ecology and its legacy
• Biotechnologies
• Cybernetics and ecology
• Art and eco-activism
• Ecology and the military-industrial complex
• Nuclear criticism
• Ecofeminism
• Ecology and modernity/postmodernity

This issue is inspired by Silent Spring: Chemical, Biological and Technological Visions of the Post-1945 Environment, a collaborative workshop series taking place at Birkbeck School of Arts and the Centre for Modern Studies at York University.* Rachel Carson’s classic polemic Silent Spring celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2012: it still stands as one of the most influential texts on the damage caused to the natural environment by chemicals and nuclear fallout in the twentieth century. In line with the workshop series, this issue takes the anniversary of Carson’s text as a starting point for exploring how biological, chemical and technological changes to the environment have shaped cultural explorations of nature and landscape across the humanities.

We welcome both long (5000-8000 words) and short (under 5000 words) articles. We also encourage conference and event reports, blog posts, book, film and exhibition reviews, podcasts and artwork. We welcome submissions from doctoral students, early career researchers, established academics and independent practioners, working in all disciplines.

Send submissions by 31 July 2013 to the editors via mail@dandelionjournal.org or through the Dandelion website. Complete instructions for submissions can be found at http://dandelionjournal.org/

All referencing and style is required in full MHRA format as a condition of publication. Submitted articles should be academically rigorous and ready for publication.

*To register for the next workshop, set to take place on 7 June at Birkbeck, email silentspring2013@gmail.com or visit www.silentspringboard.or

Dandelion is an online postgraduate journal and research network, supported by Roberts Funding and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It aims to bring together a diversity of works from researchers in the arts, to offer collaborative research and training possibilities, and to promote an independent, cross-institutional space for professional development.