cfp.english.upenn.edu

The academic journal Meridian critic (The Annals of Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Literature Series) invites submissions for its first issue in 2010, dedicated to Utopia and Dystopia. Man's perennial concern with bettering the world, as well as the anxieties at the potentially regressive nature of the utopian ideal – always attended by an indelible ambiguity –, has generated a wealth of creative manifestations, claimed variously by literature and the arts, by history, philosophy, sociology, etc. We are interested in new possibilities of research and interpretation offered by the rich field of the utopian imagination, with its shifting, indeterminate boundaries, and we welcome particularly approaches that explore the utopian impulse and the relevance of its representations in the contemporary context of the postmodern sensibility and of cultural globalisation.

Topics that might be taken into consideration:

Utopia and ideology;
From utopia to dystopia: continuity or break?
The legacy of Thomas More: paradigms of utopian/dystopian literature;
Utopia and children's literature;
Utopian/dystopian visions in film and the arts;
Utopia/dystopia as de/re/construction of a world: education, art, science, communication, power, etc.;
Utopia, dystopia, and science-fiction;
Utopia and the post-apocalyptic imagination;
Utopia, dystopia, and the panoptic society;
The “post-humanous future” – utopia, dystopia, and technology;
Post-utopia;
Ecotopia;
Feminism and the separatist utopia;
Consumerist paradises as escapist utopias.

Deadline for submission: 15 March 2010.
Maximum length of paper: 30,000 characters.
We welcome papers in English, French, German, and Romanian.
Please send your papers, accompanied by a 5-7 line abstract, 5-7 keywords, and a short bio-note (all in English) to the following addresses:
corneliamacsiniuc@yahoo.com, otiliai@usv.ro

Contact:
Dr. Cornelia Macsiniuc
University of Suceava, Department of English
Str. Universitatii nr. 13
720229 Suceava, Romania
Phone: +40 740 142 883
http://www.litere.usv.ro