Paradoxa: Call for Papers: "The Futures Industry"

More than thirty years ago, Fredric Jameson suggested in "Progress versus Utopia" (1982) that, far from providing us with blueprints of the future, the function of science fiction was to dramatize our inability to imagine a future distinct from the capitalist present. Much of his work since, including his "genealogy of the future" in Valences of the Dialectic has focused on the importance of speculative fiction for working through the difficulties of utopian thinking in a context thoroughly saturated by capitalist thinking.

CALL FOR PAPERS

"HORROR"

36th Annual Conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) at the Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center on February 11-14, 2015 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

The area chair for Horror at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association invites all interested scholars to submit papers on any aspect of horror in literature, film, television, digital and online as well as general culture. Given the strong showing of work on horror cinema in recent years, we hope to continue this tradition, but also to diversify into new and unconventional areas, especially with the addition in the last two years of roundtable sessions on a variety of popular topics.

46th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association
April 30 - May 3, 2015
Toronto, Ontario

Alice Munro and the Body

This panel seeks papers on representations of the body in fiction by Nobel laureate Alice Munro. How do Munro's depictions of the body—and especially the body of the 'other'—work within and against social conventions? What is the relationship between bodies and the language used to represent them? How do Munro's treatments of the body engage with generic conventions including those associated with the Gothic and with regional literatures?

Deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2014

From the major urban parks of the 19th Century—like Central Park in New York and City Park in New Orleans—to today's plethora of urban gardens, American city planners and residents have attempted to introduce "nature" into the "artificial" space of major cities. But what about those living creatures often ignored in such idyllic visions: rats, bugs, pigeons, and others "pests"? What about the weeds growing from cracks in the sidewalk and in vacant lots? Why privilege the former kind of nature and not the latter? Furthermore, how has this distinction between two kinds of nature been used to justify the pollution of animal, plant, and human communities in urban settings with dangerous chemicals?

DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 1, 2014 (For Abstracts)
Urban Outcasts in South Asian Literature

(Proposed Collection of Essays)

Essays are invited for an edited collection on pedagogical strategies to promote active reading.

Extended deadline for 500-700 word abstracts: Sep. 15th, 2014