romantic

The melancholic poet, the neurasthenic female reader, the man of artistic temperament: these heavily typed figures, each coded in the medical and psychological discourse of its own time, together bespeak a longstanding cultural connection between anxiety and literature. Sianne Ngai, in Ugly Feelings, even tentatively identifies anxiety as "the distinctive 'feeling-tone' of intellectual inquiry itself" – a signifying trope of bookish existence. But what might this connection between literature and anxiety mean after the advent of psychopharmacology, of neurodiversity awareness, of classroom trigger warnings?

CALL FOR PAPERS: UPDATE

Words Unofficial: Gossip, Circulation, Mediation
University of Chicago English Graduate Conference
November 19-20, 2015

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Susan Phillips, Northwestern University
Associate Professor of English and Alumnae of Northwestern Teaching Professor

Faculty Roundtable:
-Prof. Natasha Barnes, University of Illinois at Chicago
Associate Professor of African American Studies and English

-Prof. Peter Coviello, University of Illinois at Chicago
Professor of English

-Prof. Patrick Jagoda, University of Chicago
Assistant Professor of English

-Prof. Lynn Spigel, Northwestern University
Frances Willard Professor of Screen Cultures

We would like to solicit abstracts, with a maximum of 300 words, for papers addressing any aspect of our theme of innovation and exchange. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2015. Please send your abstracts to conference.deml@northsouth.edu. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Selected papers will be published in our peer reviewed journal Panini. We will notify candidates of the status of their submission by November 30, 2015.

In contrast to the ongoing childhood studies, humanistic gerontology is still largely an unexplored research area, despite more and more attention being paid to old age by historians, sociologists and literary scholars. The latter have taken up the subject of aging and the elderly, trying to create something like an all-encompassing literary "meta-narrative old age" (Johnson and Thane, eds., Old age from antiquity to post-modernity, 17). Johnson and Thane suggest that this may be a fallacy and that one should rather focus on more contained historical and socio-cultural research areas when studying the processes and meaning of aging. This way, for instance, one can avoid interpretative mistakes attributed to Georges Minois.

In today's complex world religious discourse is especially crucial, considering that secularism is expanding around the globe. We seek contributions on the representation of the Virgin Mary in World Literature and Art. Comparative approaches are always welcome. Religious and cultural literacy is important for domestic and international politics, the practice of peace, harmony, justice, and social prosperity. Thus, this edited volume will help diminish religious illiteracy. Universitas Press has agreed to publish this edited volume. Contributions are welcome from scholars in various disciplines in the humanities.