category: twentieth century and beyond

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.

The Films of Robert Rodriguez

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

Call For Papers: The Films of Robert Rodriguez

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013 SAMLA CONFERENCE, NOV 8-10, ATLANTA

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

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

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

Some possible topics include:

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

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

Women Writing War Trauma (NeMLA 2014)

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:24:08 -0400

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,” Theodor Adorno famously pronounced in 1949, indicating, among other things, that the Holocaust presents a radical problem of representation. Indeed, the paradox at the heart of Trauma Theory is that traumatic experience both demands a story and defies communicability; it is the unspeakable that nevertheless has to be told. And in the past decade or so, scholars have begun to investigate how gender factors into this problem, a problem that extends to trauma literature in general. Thus the testimonials by female survivors of the Holocaust are gaining considerable attention, while memoirs by female soldiers of Iraq and Afghanistan bear witness to the trauma of a combat experience made all the more catastrophic by institutionalized sexual persecution.

This panel seeks to investigate how gender affects not only the traumatic experience itself, but also the narration of traumatic experience, by women writing about war. The “writing” may take the form of memoir, fiction, poetry, film, or other, more experimental modes of narration, such as blogging. The goal of this panel is to bring together a diverse range of material and perspectives that will move the discussion of gender and trauma beyond a simple comparison of men’s and women’s trauma, and into the gendered politics of writing itself.

Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Jenny Kijowski, profkijowski@gmail.com

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)

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

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.

[UPDATE] Irish Gothic Conference 5-6 December, 2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:35:56 -0400

Confirmed Speakers:

• Professor W. J. McCormack (Former Professor of Literary History at Goldsmiths College, University of London)
• Dr Laura Pelaschiar (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Università di Trieste)
• Dr Derek Hand (Senior Lecturer in English, Saint' Patrick's College, Dublin City University)

Gothic studies have recently been expanding previous limits of what was once thought to be an historically well defined genre. The extent of continual change in Gothic denotation is such that it is now approaching the status of an inter-genre inter-semiotic category. This is even more the case with Irish literature. Not only because a remarkable number of Gothic writers are Irish, but also, and more significantly, because Ireland has provided an extremely fruitful cultural background for the particular narrative forms and devices that are usually associated with the Gothic. Moreover, Irish literature presents a “gothicness” of its own, whereby it seems to simultaneously adhere to and reject the ideological and aesthetic models implied by the very notion of Gothic.

At this conference we will explore the ways in which Irish Gothic can/cannot be considered part of the mainstream Gothic tradition, as well as investigating the origins and evolution of the genre in an Irish context.

We welcome submissions addressing any topic relevant to Irish studies, and encourage papers, which explore any aspect of the Irish Gothic in literature, film, and other media.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Irish Gothic vs English Gothic
• The Birth of Irish Gothic
• Theorising Irish Gothic
• Irish Gothic Modernisms
• The Uncanny in Irish Fiction
• Victorian Irish Gothic
• Irish Gothic Geography
• Irish Gothic in the Media
• Irish Gothic Art
• Irish Gothic and Psychology
• Irish Gothic and Imperialism
• Irish Gothic and Science
• Irish Gothic and Technology
• Irish Gothic and Popular “Goth” Culture
• Irish Gothic and History

Abstracts (250 words max) for 20 minute papers and a short bio-sketch may be submitted to Enrico Terrinoni (Università per Stranieri di Perugia) and Annalisa Volpone (Università degli Studi di Perugia): perugiairishgothic@gmail.com.
Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2013.
Accepted speakers will be notified by September 20.
Conference fee: Euro 25; Euro 15 for students and the unwaged

CFP: Aloha at Risk: Education in Hawaii (Edited Collection)

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:51:27 -0400

Since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983, public education has been subjected to increased scrutiny from political officials, parents, and concerned citizens. In recent years, such scrutiny has given way to calls for comprehensive education reform. Both the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top program, respectively inaugurated under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focus on increasing standards for public schools throughout the United States, while more local initiatives like private school voucher systems and parent “trigger” laws attempt to increase learning opportunities for children by maximizing parental choice and administrative participation.

Yet, these reforms—or 'deforms' as they're called by opponents—have been condemned for being undemocratic, corporatist, and overly punitive. NCLB, for example, has been said to subsume diverse groups of children under reductionist statistical metrics, failing to account for demographic and developmental variances. RTTT continued this trend, according to critics, and added pressure for local school districts to implement costly teacher evaluation protocols based largely on standardized achievement tests, rather than holistic measures of learning growth and professional practice. In an ironic display of political harmony, small-government 'conservatives' and labor-minded 'liberals' alike have attacked national education reforms, the former for impugning states' rights and the latter for undermining collective bargaining.

Hawaii, considered by some political pundits to be the most labor-friendly state in the nation, has been on the frontlines of the battle over public education. One year after receiving an RTTT grant award in 2010, the state was placed on “high risk” status by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to implement reforms quickly enough and prolonging a regressive contract dispute with the Hawaii State Teachers Association. Education reforms are further complicated by events from Hawaii's historical trajectory, including settler colonialism, imperial overthrow of native governance, suppression of indigenous culture, and plantation economics, each of which inform the state's current sociopolitical structure and discursive condition.

This interdisciplinary essay collection seeks to engage the theme of “education in Hawaii” from a critical vantage point. Submissions will be accepted for each of the book's four sections: “Pedagogy of Aloha” (critical pedagogical studies); “Decolonizing Aloha” (colonialism in/and the classroom); “Re/Deforming Aloha” (general education theory, including social, political, and philosophical analysis); and “Teaching Aloha” (classroom stories). Potential topics might include:

- How do socioeconomic and ethnic inequality affect Hawaii's classrooms and education politics?

- To what extent does money drive education reform in Hawaii? Do reforms (re)produce corporate infrastructure and economic division, rather than quality learning experiences?

- How does Hawaii's history, including settler colonialism and plantation development, impact the present state and future direction of the state's education system?

- In what ways are native or marginalized knowledge(s) suppressed by standards-based education reforms? What pedagogical techniques might be used to advance such knowledge(s)?

- What progressive teaching modalities (i.e. feminist composition, queer- and eco-pedagogy, or ethnomathematics) might be employed to address Hawaii's diverse student populations?

Educator and author Doug Robertson will serve as editor for this collection. Essays should be approximately 4,000 to 8,000 words in length and employ Chicago Manual of Style formatting (using endnotes). Submissions should be sent to editors@interstitialjournal.com. Initial inquiries are welcome. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2013.

Genre Films & Money; 2013 Film & History Conference; Nov. 20-24, 2013 (Madison)

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:57:29 -0400

Money & the Genre Film

An area of multiple panels for the 2013 Film & History Conference on Making Movie$: The Figure of Money On and Off the Screen

November 20-24, 2013
Madison Concourse Hotel (Madison, WI)
www.filmandhistory.org/The2013FilmHistoryConference.php

DEADLINE for abstracts: July 1, 2013

AREA: Money & the Genre Film

Genre films—romance, comedy, horror, science fiction, melodrama, noir, and others—are categorized by their use of readily identifiable narrative elements. That use, however, evolves over time, reflecting the cultural, economic, and technological evolution of Hollywood as an institution. What, then, is the impact of money, from budget to box office, on the various forms of genre film? Science fiction – transformed multiple times, since the 1930s, by revolutions in special effects – is the most obvious example. Computer generated imagery allows science-fiction filmmakers to tell stories that would have been impossible in the era of stuntmen dressed in rubber suits and spaceship models hung from fishing line. But what of genres other than science fiction, and the impact of money on genre outside of special effects?

This area, comprising multiple panels, will examine the diverse ways in which money has shaped, and continues to shape, genre. It welcomes papers on genres created or transformed by money – or the things money can buy – but also on genres (or sub-genres) that have remained impervious to money’s effects. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Being there: Globe-trotting and location-driven films (To Catch a Thief, Around the World in 80 Days, Topkapi, The Italian Job)
• The rise and fall of the big-budget musical
• The star-driven “action film” from Stallone to Schwarzenegger to Statham
• The short, strange life of the mega-comedy (It’s a Mad, Mad World, The Great Race, 1941, etc.)
• Don’t show the monster: Low-budget horror from Cat People (1942) to The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• Using what’s already there: B Movies and the reification of genre tropes
• The genre that money forgot: domestic melodrama from the “weepies” to the Women’s Entertainment Network
• Money & the Science Fiction, Western, War Film, or Gangster genres, or any other genre/sub-genre.

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.filmandhistory.org).

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the Area Chair by July 1, 2013:

Andrew Howe
ahowe@lasierra.edu

Special Issue on Contemporary Drama [July 15, 2013]

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:41:09 -0400

Special Issue on Contemporary Drama

In the past twenty years Irish society has experienced a range of cultural, political and, centrally, financial upheaval. To what extent has Irish theatre responded to these tumultuous events? How far have traditional forms and subjects maintained their position? Or have experiment and innovation become the new distinguishing features? The guest editors of this special issue of Breac, Lindsay Haney and Shaun Richards, invite submissions addressing any aspect of recent Irish drama. In keeping with Breac’s interdisciplinary goals and digital form, we encourage submissions informed by any approach to drama and theatre and rendered as conventional essays or works in any audio or visual medium.

The issue will include essays from Brian Singleton on ANU productions, Emilie Pine on theatre’s response to abuse revelations, Niamh Malone on theatre and urban regeneration, and Susan Cannon Harris on Conor McPherson’s supernaturalism; an interview with Colm Tóibín, conducted by Paige Reynolds; and a video feature from Róise Goan, director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, on incubators and space in New Theatrical Dublin.

Breac is a peer-reviewed, open-access, paperless journal that publishes critical and creative work relating to Ireland and Irish Studies. Among its many features is a forum section that seeks to cultivate a global conversation around the published articles among its readers, students, and scholars. It also periodically streams live events through the website’s BreaCam. Subscribing to the journal is entirely free, and we encourage you to visit the website at breac.nd.edu.

We suggest a length of 4000-5000 words, but will happily consider longer articles. Deadline is July 15, 2013.

Full submission instructions are available at http://breac.nd.edu/submissions/. Questions to breac.djis@gmail.com.

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