category: romantic

Book Prize Call for Submissions (17 March 2012)

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

Robert K. Martin Book Prize
Canadian Association for American Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

NeMLA 2013 Call for Panel & Session Proposals

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

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

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

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

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

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

CFP ICR 2012 Special Session: “Political Catastrophes and Literature for Reform” (4/1/12)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:17:49 -0500

Papers that explore Romantic conceptions of the political function of literature in response to political catastrophes of the era.

The conference website: http://english.clas.asu.edu/icr2012

Proposals must be submitted by April 1st--any submitted proposals not included will be forwarded to the conference organizers for consideration in other panels.

250-500 word abstracts. Michael Demson (mtd@shsu.edu).

CFP MLA 2013 "Independent Publishing in the Romantic Era" (3/1/12)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:42:10 -0500

Papers that explore self-publishing during the Romantic Era: inducements, advancements, and/or ramifications. Papers with a digital humanities component are encouraged. 250-500 word abstracts by 1 March 2012; Michael Demson.

Temptation and Redemption - 12 May 2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:06:26 -0500

The motif of temptation and redemption can be found in almost every area of the humanities and has played a central role in a significant number of works, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to season three of Glee.

For the first annual Carolina Emerging Scholars Conference, we invite papers exploring the complex relationship between temptation and redemption in literature and culture. Abstracts of 250 words or less are due by February 24, 2012. Abstracts should include name, the title of paper, institution, and contact information. For panel proposals, please list topics and titles of papers and an explanation of how these papers fit together. Also, please provide an abstract from each proposed panel member. We welcome submissions from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as independent scholars.

Decisions will be made by March 9, 2012. Conference guidelines will be emailed to participants upon acceptance. Visit our website at usclancaster.sc.edu/cesc.

Submit abstracts electronically via email to cescon@mailbox.sc.edu.

Sex, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian Literature and Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Submission deadline: March 1, 2012.

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

Formal requirements for original critical essays:

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

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

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

Review Process:

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

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

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

CFP MLA 2013 'Peterloo' Revisited (3/1/12)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:26:15 -0500

Special Session: Re-examinations of the historical, political, literary significance of the 1819 Manchester massacre. Papers on Shelley’s 1819 poetry are also welcome. 250-500 word abstracts. Proposals due by 1 March 2012; Michael Demson (mtd007@shsu.edu).

[UPDATE] Principles of Uncertainty: A Conference on Critical Theory

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:34:14 -0500

“Principles of Uncertainty”

A Conference on Critical Theory

Keynote Speaker: Martin Hägglund

The students of the Department of Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center present the first annual interdisciplinary conference on literary theory to be held Friday, May 4, 2012. This conference is being given in support of the CUNY Graduate Center’s proposed certificate for Critical Theory, which is dedicated to the study of literary and critical theory.

We invite papers from all disciplines focusing on works from any period that explore the theme of uncertainty as it pertains to literary and critical theory.

This conference welcomes papers centering upon any individual theorist, period, or school of critical theory, as well as comparisons of various theoretical approaches, including, but not limited to literary theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, gender studies, and political theory. Some of the questions this conference seeks to answer include, but are not limited to:

· How is the meaning of a text uncertain?

· Is this uncertainty purposefully placed within a text or a by-product of the act of reading?

· How is this uncertainty demonstrated in the relationship between author and reader?

· How can uncertainty be understood not only with respect to literature but in ethical, gendered, political, and/or social terms?

· How is identity shown to be uncertain?

· How does an “undecidable” future impact present ethical and political actions?

· How is history (whether of language, narrative, and/or society) destabilized and called into question?

· How does language contribute to the uncertainty of meaning and interpretation?

· How does the theorist’s own writing present the reader with an example of uncertainty?

· How does uncertainty function in the methodologies of interpretation and the making of meaning?

· Can a text have a stable meaning or is it always uncertain?

Please submit a 300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by March 1, 2012 to uncertaintyconference2012@gmail.com. Proposals should include the title of the paper, presenter’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests. We also welcome panel proposals of three to four papers.

This conference is co-sponsored by:

The Writer’s Institute at the City University of New York Graduate Center: an un-MFA program devoted to bringing together the country’s most talented writers and today’s most celebrated editors.

The Doctoral Students’ Council: the sole policymaking body representing students in doctoral and master’s programs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Medical Economics in American Literature - [UPDATE]

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

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

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

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

CONF: Wasted Spaces – University of Virginia – Charlottesville – FEB 17-18

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:59:21 -0500

Wasted Spaces
19th Annual German Graduate Studies Conference at the University of Virginia
Charlottesville (February 17-18)

Organizers: Charles Taggart and Rebekah Slodounik (University of Virginia)
Further Information: www.uvagermangradconference2012.wordpress.com
Charles Taggart: (cwt5z@virginia.edu)
Rebekah Slodounik:(ras9rb@virginia.edu)

In an age of heightened awareness over the depletion of natural resources pitted against an ever-growing and increasingly interconnected global population, the problematics of space have assumed a prominent position in contemporary discourse. The issue of space, including its definitions and uses, comes at a time in which current and future human endeavors face the challenge of a rapidly changing social and natural world. Our conference aims to explore different approaches towards space in discourse, culture, and the environment.

Program

FRI / Feb 17 / 2012 / Nau 101 / 5 p.m.

Professor Rochelle Tobias
(Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, The Johns Hopkins University)
"Rilke and the Landscapes of the Heart"

Opening Remarks: Rebekah Slodounik and Charles Taggart
Volker Kaiser (Department Chair)

SAT / Feb 18 / 2012 / Olsson Hall 120

8.30-9.00 a.m.: Breakfast

Panel I : Spatial Legacies
Moderator: Beatrice Waegner

9:00 - 9:30 Sven Frankowsky (Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster) –
Fruchtbar vergiftete Un-Orte bei David
Foster Wallace

9:30 - 10:00 Kerstin Steitz (University of Virginia)–
Memory Space: The Courtroom and the
Concentration Camp in Peter Weiss’s Die
Ermittlung. Ein Oratorium in 11 Gesängen

10:00 - 10:30 Lea Rekow (Center for Art and
Environment at the Nevada Museum of
Art)–
Extract: A Cultural Ecology of the
Colorado Plateau

10:30 - 10:45 Coffee Break

Panel 2: The Normative Undone
Moderator: Solvejg Nitzke

10:45 - 11:15 Sebastian Wilde (Universität Leipzig) –
Zur Störung der Wahrnehmung
normalisierter Räume durch
Naturkatastrophen

11:15 - 11:45 Danielle Pisechko (University of
Virginia) –
Homelessness and Home-loss:
Vergangenheitsbewältigung in deutscher
Gegenwartsliteratur

11:45 - 12:15 Bogumil Terminski (University of
Geneva)–
Development Induced Displacement and
Indigenous People’s Rights

12:15 - 13:45 Lunch

Panel 3: Unhallowed Spaces
Moderator: Gabriel Cooper

13:45 - 14:15 Kevin Boix (University of Virginia) –
The Berlin Sex Exchange: Homosociality
and Berlin Alexanderplatz

14:15 - 14:45 Michael Bryant (Indiana University) –
The Sacred and the Profane in Heinrich
Mann’s Professor Unrat

14:45 - 15:00 Coffee Break

Panel 4: A Sense of Space: Space and the Senses
Moderator: Danielle Verena Kollig

15:00 - 15:30 Jacob Denz (New York University) –
‘The Most Beautiful Manifoldness’:
Landscape and Kantian
Aesthetics in Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers and Die Wahlverwandtschaften

15:30 - 16:00 Geraldine Suter (University of
Virginia)–
Impersonal Use of Personal Space: The
Human Voice Box in Marcel Beyer’s
Flughunde

16:00 Closing Remarks: Rebekah Slodounik and
Charles Taggart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Send proposals and queries to uccompconf@gmail.com.

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

LGBTQI Graduate Students and Academia

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

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

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

"Theory Mad Beyond Redemption": The Post-Kantian Poe (Abstracts Due: April 30)

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:36:37 -0500

A call for papers for a special issue of _The Edgar Allan Poe Review_, forthcoming in Fall 2012, and guest-edited by Sean Moreland, Devin Zane Shaw, and Jonathan Murphy.

The editors invite original essays that address the influence of German Idealist and Romantic thought upon Edgar Allan Poe. While it has become a critical commonplace that Poe both makes use of and mocks many elements of German Idealism, there has been scant discussion of the specificities of Poe’s complex, and often vexed, treatments of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Poe studies enjoyed a brief revival of the “French Poe” following the psychoanalytic and deconstructive interventions of Lacan and Derrida, but the anti-theoretical backlash of the past two decades has tended to extradite Poe back to his country of origin, restoring his “American Face” at the cost of recognizing the transatlantic influences that indelibly shaped his writing. This collection will focus on Poe’s indebtedness to, as well as his critical distance from, German Idealist and Romantic writers, but its intent is not to delineate, as Hansen and Pollin (1995) have done, the “German Face” of Poe, so much as it is to reintroduce the theoretical aspect of Poe’s artistry back into the critical conversation.

We especially welcome papers that consider the relationship between Poe’s reception of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy (including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, and the Schlegels) and that of his American literary contemporaries (including Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, and Melville); articles that examine the role of Coleridge and Carlyle, Cousin and de Stael in disseminating German Idealism upon American shores; and essays that interrogate more recent peregrinations of German philosophy in Continental theory, especially as they pertain to a reconsideration of Poe’s literary legacy.

We require a 250 word abstract and a brief bio by no later than April 30, 2012, and the finished paper (Chicago-style, no more than 9000 words including endnotes) by July 15, 2012. Abstracts, papers,and questions should be directed to: theorymad@gmail.com.

Somaesthetics Essay Prize 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment, Volume 4 (annual)

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:45:42 -0500

Religion in the Age of Enlightenment (RAE), an annual published by AMS Press, is accepting articles for volume 5, due out the spring of 2014. Articles received by Nov. 15, 2012 will be considered for this volume; articles received after this date will likely be considered for a later volume. Please visit the following link for a description of RAE's scope and focus, and for detailed submission guidelines:

http://www.amspressinc.com/rae.html

Volumes 1 and 2 of RAE are now available at www.amspressinc.com.

Send quiries and questions to Brett McInelly (brett_mcinelly@byu.edu).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suggested List of Topics
-Citizenship/Exile
-Immigration
-Fantasy/Desire/Pleasure
-Porn/Anti-Porn
-Erotica
-Kinks
-Censorship
-Genres of Smut
-Porn and Race
-Histories of Sexuality
-Sex and Madness/Pathology
-Punishment/Violence/Gore
-Unwritten/Unspeakable
-X as a variable
-Slippage
-Feminist approaches
-Queer approaches
-The problem of academic “sexiness”
-Eco-porn
-Pornographic gaze in science
-GPS tracking of bodies for surveillance, for pleasure, etc.
cfp categories:
african-american
american
bibliography_and_history_of_the_book
cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches
eighteenth_century
film_and_television
gender_studies_and_sexuality
graduate_conferences
humanities_computing_and_the_internet
interdisciplinary
medieval
modernist studies
popular_culture
postcolonial
professional_topics
religion
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CFP: First Annual Ray Browne Conference on Popular Culture, March 31-April 1 2012 [DEADLINE EXTENDED]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1st Global Conference Making Sense of: Play

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

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

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

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

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

Possible Themes:

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

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

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

Who to:

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

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

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

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

Deadline: February 15, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Power of the digital humanities and/or its limits

Cultural representations of sexual bondage, erotica, and sadomasochism

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

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

Performances of power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science and Literature 1800-Present: Two Cultures or Co-evolution? Postgraduate conference, Keele University, 12th May 2012

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:36:17 -0500

Science and Literature 1800-Present: Two Cultures or Co-evolution?
Postgraduate conference, Keele University, 12th May 2012

15 minute papers are sought for a one-day postgraduate conference on the intersections between literature and science from 1800 to the present day.

The long nineteenth century saw the cultural foundation for a dialogue between the Sciences and the Arts that continues to this day. Despite the lacuna that is traditionally posited between these two subjects, from the Romantic beginning of the nineteenth century and throughout the Victorian period, artists, writers and scientists alike were conscious of the confluences between their disciplines. The Victorian fashion for reading cutting-edge scientific articles alongside, for example, philosophical poetry or serialized novels in magazines and journals was preceded by / inherited from the Romantic tendency to blur the boundaries between scientific and artistic study, and set a precedent for the mutual evaluation of these two fields.
In addition, scientists often employed literary tropes and epigraphs to reiterate their messages; indeed scientific theories could frequently trace their origins back to literature (. The advancement of science throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lead to an increased concern with social anxieties about science. This manifested itself as a penchant for science fiction novels that purported to explore the possibilities that science was yet to realize.
This legacy can be traced well into the twentieth century. The exploitation of science and technology in the world wars revived a literary preoccupation with science represented in post-war fiction. Today it emerges in phrases like the portmanteau ‘Franken-foods’, which borrows Mary Shelley’s eponymous 19th century protagonist to highlight the fears of contemporary scientific applications. This conference will explore those intimate relationships between the two cultures of science and literature, and will examine the ways in which anxieties of the long nineteenth century have continued to express themselves in the present day.

Call for papers – applicants might consider, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- Darwinism and social anxiety
- Medical pandemics in literature
- The dissemination of science (including the impact of technological innovation on the material text)
- Representations of physical and mental illness
- Access to science for women and children
- Fears of technological advancement (e.g. Ludditism)
- Reflections on the science of warfare
- Apocalyptic visions
- Critical approaches to the two cultures (including modern opposition between arts and sciences)
- Popular Science – the third culture

We welcome proposals of 200-300 words for 15 minute presentations. Please send proposals and any queries to Emilie Taylor-Brown, Jo Taylor and Katie McGettigan at: litscikeele@gmail.com. The CFP and further information can be found at our website: http://litscikeele.blogspot.com/

The deadline for proposals is 31st March 2012.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Topics:

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

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

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

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

CALL FOR PAPERS

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

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

Important Date
Paper Submission (Full Paper) Before February 29, 2012
Notification of Acceptance On March 15, 2012
Authors' Registration Before March 25, 2012
Final Paper Submission Before March 25, 2012
ICCNCE 2012 Conference Dates May 19-20, 2012
SUBMISSION METHODS:
Email: icfmes@163.com ( .pdf and .doc)

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

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

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

[UPDATE] The Irish Short Story - Leuven, Belgium - 15-17 November 2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:38:33 -0500

Often hailed as a 'national genre', the short story has known a long, diversified and distinguished tradition in Ireland, with such famous representatives as Sheridan LeFanu, James Joyce, George Moore, Somerville & Ross, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Liam O'Flaherty, Mary Lavin, John McGahern, Anne Enright, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Claire Keegan and many others. Irish writers have not only played a crucial role in the development of the modern short story at the end of the nineteenth century and in its consolidation as a major literary form in the course of the twentieth century, they have also been at the forefront of attempts to define the short story as a genre particularly suited to capture modern life: the theoretical essays of Elizabeth Bowen, Seán Ó'Faoláin and Frank O'Connor are still considered authoritative texts in international short story theory.
Somewhat at odds with its status as the Irish prose form 'par excellence', is the rather more marginal status of the genre in literary criticism. The stories of individual writers are often considered as but an aside to their novelistic output, and studies of the formal and thematic development of the Irish short story have been few and far between. Yet, there are signs that this is changing. The study of the Irish short story has received a new impetus with such books as Heather Ingman's highly acclaimed A History of the Irish Short Story (2009) or the Blackwell Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (2008). Public awareness of the short story, on the other hand, has been raised through initiatives such as the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and recent anthologies such as Anne Enright's The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story and Joseph O'Connor's New Irish Short Stories.
This conference hopes to both capture and further strengthen this new critical interest in the Irish short story by bringing together scholars working on the various forms, concerns and contexts of the short story in Ireland, as written both in English and in Irish. The conference specifically seeks to address the development of the short story as a literary genre in its own right - from its early forerunners in the tale tradition, through its paradigmatic modern(ist) embodiments to its contemporary transformations. It invites papers which address the output of individual writers as well as those that trace more general developments from a comparative, theoretical or contextual perspective. We also explicitly invite papers on the short story in Irish, although we would prefer these papers to be delivered in English. Since 2012 also marks the centenary of the birth of Mary Lavin, papers on her short fiction are also particularly welcome.

The conference is hosted by the K.U.Leuven department of Literary Studies and the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies (LCIS). It will take place in the newly refurbished Irish college in Leuven (the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe). Confirmed plenary speakers are Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Heather Ingman (Trinity College Dublin), Éibhear Walshe (University College Cork) and Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin).

Papers should not exceed 2500-3000 words (20 minutes’ delivery). Proposals for papers (250 words) should be sent by e-mail to Elke D’hoker (elke.dhoker@arts.kuleuven.be) by February 29th 2012. More information about the conference will be posted on www.irishstudies.kuleuven.be/

BritGrad Call for Papers 14 - 16 June 2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:33:13 -0500

We invite graduate students with interests in both Shakespearean and Renaissance studies to join us in June for the Fourteenth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference.

The interdisciplinary conference provides a friendly but stimulating academic forum in which graduate students from all over the world can present their research and meet together in an active centre of Shakespearean research and theatre: Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Undergraduate students in their final two years of study are also invited to attend the conference as auditors.

The conference will feature talks by Peter Holland (Notre Dame), Tiffany Stern (Oxford), Paul Menzer (Mary Baldwin), and Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford). Delegates have the opportunity to attend the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Richard III, part of the World Shakespeare Festival, at a group-booking price. Lunch will be provided each day, and delgates are invited to a dance and drinks reception one night.

We invite abstracts of approximately 200 words for papers twenty minutes in length (3,000 words or less). Delegates wishing to give papers must register by Friday 4 May 2012. We strongly encourage early registration to ensure a place on the conference programme.

2nd Global Conference: Images of Whiteness

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:37:07 -0500

2nd Global Conference
Images of Whiteness

Saturday 7th July 2012 – Monday 9th July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:
Since the publication of Richard Dyer’s seminal study 'White' in 1997, academics have increasingly turned critical attention to the subject of racial whiteness. Publications include historical accounts detailing the emergence of whiteness as a racial category, cultural studies exploring the representation and construction of white identities in popular culture, film and television scholars examining narratives about white people, reflecting white themes, white obsessions, and white anxieties. Consistent with the shift in critical studies from minority identity formations to consider ‘central’ identities – masculinity, heterosexuality – the study of whiteness is increasingly understood as central to understanding the operation of ‘race’ as a form of social categorisation. Inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives are sought from those engaged in any field relevant to the study of whiteness including media and film studies, performance and creative writing, cultural theory, sociology, psychology and medical approaches including cosmetic surgery, and other cognate areas

Inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives are sought from those engaged in any field relevant to the study of whiteness including media and film studies, performance and creative writing, cultural theory, sociology, psychology and medical.

Papers, presentations, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

* Appropriation of racial ‘otherness’ within white culture
* Whiteness and Anti-Whiteness, post arpatheid otherness
* Images of whiteness in serial television
* Nationally-specific formations of white identity
* Whiteness and multiculturalism
* Constructions of whiteness in painting, photography and the visual arts
* Performances of/performing ‘whiteness’
* Writing whiteness in fiction/non-fiction
* The politics and ethics of White Studies
* Racial whiteness, fashion and cosmetics industries
* Whiteness and absence, emptiness and death
* Teaching whiteness
* Intersections between whiteness, gender and sexuality
* Conceptions of whiteness in non-white cultures
* Music and music videos and whiteness

Papers will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 17th February 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 11th May 2012. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Whiteness2 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the end of the year. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs
Ewan Kirkland
University of Brighton
Senior Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies
United Kingdom
Email: ekirklanduk@yahoo.co.uk

Colette Balmain
Independent Scholar
United Kingdom
E-mail: cb@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
E-mail: white2@inter-disciplinary.net

For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/whiteness/

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/whiteness/call-f...

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Survival, Friday, October 26, 2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:31:09 -0500

Call for Papers: MCEA Conference, Friday, October 26, 2012
Theme: Survival
Luncheon Speaker: Patricia Clark, Poet-in-Residence at GVSU

Location: Eberhard Center of Grand Valley State University
301 W. Fulton St., Grand Rapids MI 49504

Survival is a primary concern for many of us, not just economically or physically but in our relationships, at our work places, and in our political causes. Literature is full of desperate struggles for survival, sometimes with successful results, sometimes not. To survive, our students strive to pass classes, meet deadlines, fund their education, and make good career choices. As teachers, we worry about the elimination of programs, our health benefits, and even our jobs. What efforts to survive do we/others recognize and how are these efforts seen in all areas of English studies?

fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction prose professional expectations/evaluation
classroom management teaching composition, literature, linguistics, gender studies the creative process
preparing students for the work world English departments
research the lives of our students
curriculum development computer or on-line instruction union/administration differences

The Michigan College English Association invites proposals for individual papers and for complete or open panels for our Fall 2012 conference. We welcome proposals from experienced academics as well as from young scholars and graduate students. We encourage a variety of papers including pedagogical and scholarly essays as well as poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction from creative writers. Graduate students with the best scholarly paper and the best creative writing will receive awards. To qualify for graduate student awards, the completed paper must be submitted to Joyce Meier by October 1, 2012.

Although we are calling for papers and panels that reflect the conference theme, we also welcome proposals in the variety of areas that English and Writing departments encompass: composition and rhetoric; computers and writing; creative writing; critical pedagogy; critical studies in the teaching of English; cultural studies; film studies; developmental education; English as a second language; linguistics; literary studies; multicultural literature; on-line English courses and the virtual university; popular culture; race, class, and gender studies; progressive education; reading and writing across the curriculum; student demographics; student/instructor accountability and assessment; student placement; study skills; technical writing.
Proposals are due by Friday, October 5, 2012. Early submissions are welcome. Submit proposals to Joyce Meier, Program Chair, via email at meierjo@msu.edu Please specify your needs for audio-visual equipment and the best time of day for your presentation.

English 19th-Century Literature, October 11-13, Boulder, Colorado

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:12:47 -0500

Proposals are being accepted until March 1, 2012 for papers that deal with any aspect of the texts and contexts of 19th-century British Literature. Cultural studies, gender studies, and historical approaches are especially encouraged. Further information on the conference is available on the RMMLA website. Direct questions regarding this session to Dr. Gloria Eastman, Metropolitan State College of Denver, geastman@mscd.edu.

CEA Critic Call for Articles: "The Idea of the West" (4/1/12)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:32:49 -0500

The CEA Critic solicits articles on "The Idea of the West." Deadline 4/1/12.

The University of Northern Colorado is the new home of The CEA Critic, the journal of the College English Association. The University is located in Greeley, Colorado, a city named for famed journalist Horace Greeley, who popularized (although was not the first to utter) the injunction, "Go West, young man!" For Greeley, and for so many others before and after him, the West has been a location both literal and figurative. For our inaugural issue of The Critic, the new editors solicit essays that investigate, reflect on, seek to define, or look to challenge the notion of the West as it is addressed in any mode or genre of text.

Submissions, in WORD format, should be sent to CEA.Critic@unco.edu. Please submit two copies, one with the author's name and affiliation and one without any author identification. In addition, please include, in your correspondence, a statement that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere.

Additional guidelines for submission are available on our website.

Please note: The CEA Critic will publish only articles by members of the College English Association. Non-members are welcome to submit but must join the CEA in order for accepted submissions to be published.

Address submissions and inquiries about The CEA Critic to the editor at: CEA.Critic@unco.edu.

"FOUR-FOOTED ACTORS: LIVE ANIMALS ON THE STAGE” University of Valencia (Spain) Dec. 12-14, 2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:27:08 -0500

Writing in 1899, Frederick Dolman argued in an article titled “Four-Footed Actors: About Some Well-Known Animals that Appear in the London and Provincial Stage” that the “growth of variety theatres and the decay of comic songs” had developed in “several kinds of diversion, not the least of which is furnished by the art of the animal-trainer” (The English Illustrated Magazine, Sep. 1899, 192, p. 521). Dolman was describing the large-scale entertainments starring animals that had taken over traditional spectator recreations for the last century in a manner not unlike the success of music-halls and professional sport. In this sense, Lord George Sanger’s zoological pantomimes best reflected the spirit of the new age and the advent of the commercialisation of leisure. As recalled by himself, the cast in the production of Gulliver’s Travels included “three hundred girls, two hundred men, two hundred children, thirteen elephants, nine camels, and fifty-two horses, in addition to ostriches, emus, pelicans, deer of all kinds, kangaroos, Indian buffaloes, Brahmin bulls, and (…) two living lions led by the collar and chain into the centre of the group”.
Indeed, popular amusements have featured animals since antiquity, as shown by wild animal fights (venationes and bestiarii) and ritual slaughters (hecatombs) in Greek and Roman amphitheatres. Similarly, trained animal performances peppered medieval Europe. A newspaper article published in The Saturday Magazine in 1839 described a 12th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript portraying a joculator with his pipe and tabor, accompanied by a dancing bear and dogs and even a cock on stilts. The author sadly deplored the spread of such activities amongst civilized societies and regretted the audience’s infatuation with them. “What is the feeling that prompts men to run after exhibitions of this kind? It is an admiration of the skill displayed by the animal, or that displayed by the owner in teaching the animal, or merely a love for the grotesque and marvellous let it be shown in what way it may?” (The Saturday Magazine, April 27, 1839). Dogs, horses, pigs, goats, cocks, bears, monkeys and “quadrupeds of all sorts and sizes” frequently performed in Europe. Memorable shows include Astley’s equestrian drama or the antics of Nicolet’s monkey Turco in Paris, who was capable of imitating the Comédie-Française actor Molé. Further extravagances like tightrope dancing canaries, horse-riding oxen, card-playing deer, soldier-marching little birds, pigs solving mathematical puzzles, boxing kangaroos, and dogs setting-off cannons, amongst many other animaux savants shows, delighted every kind of audience. As early as 1572, Thomas Cartwright mockingly declared in his admonition to Parliament against the use of the Common Prayer that “if there be a bull or a bear to be baited in the afternoon, or a jackanapes to ride on horseback, the minister hurries the service over in a shameful manner, in order to be present at the show” (The Saturday Magazine, April 27, 1839).
The industrialisation of public spectacle turned classic animal performances into monumental, exotic shows, ranging from grand opera played on horseback to the vivid representation of a city siege with dogs. Not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did the drama witness such an eclosion of hybrid theatrical forms in which live animals acquired an essential part in the syntactic, thematic and dynamic development of the play.

The aim of this conference is to explore the role of live animals on the stage, from the early modern era to the present time. Papers dealing with visual or textual representations of performing animals, typologies of animals in the theatre, the hybridisation of the drama with the circus, the zoo and the cinema, as well as the semiotic transfer of animal roles from the text to the stage are particularly welcome. Corollary topics may also include, but are not limited to:

-Animals and the birth of the mass-entertainment industry
-Animals and melodrama
-Animals and pantomime
-Educability and animal training for the stage
-Sentience and animals as moral beings
-Anthropocentrism over non-human others
-Animal cruelty and speciesism on the stage
-Acting animals and spirituality
-Animal impersonators
-Hygiene and public safety measures and regulations in playhouses
-Stage mimicry
-Animal welfare and national identity
-Animal acting and stage scenery
-Performing animals and music
-Animals on the stage and Darwinism
-Domestic vs wild animals on the stage
-Animals on the stage and the animal rights movement (19th-20th centuries)
-Animal and gender roles on the stage

Contributions:

Contributions are sought from researchers at any stage of their careers. Abstracts (300 words) in English or Spanish for 25-minute papers should be sent along with a short biographical note by 1 June 2012 to Ignacio.Ramos@uv.es
Acceptance will be notified no later than July 2012.

Conference fees and registration:

Speakers: 60 euros
Attendees: 20 euros

Organising committee:

Dr. Ignacio Ramos Gay
Dr. Miguel Teruel
Dr. Juan-Vicente Martínez Luciano
Prof. Claude Benoit

Department of French & Italian Philology
Department of English & German Philology