CALL FOR PAPERS
2020 MMLA Conference’s MVSA-Affiliated Panel

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

November 5-8, 2020

“Cultures of Collectivity”

In keeping with the MMLA conference theme, “Cultures of Collectivity,” the Midwest Victorian Studies Association panel welcomes proposals that explore myriad examples of cultural collectivity in 19th century Britain.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Human/Kind Press seeks submissions of craft essays for an anthology exploring connections between identity and narrative craft. How can a marginalized identity bring a new perspective to how writing works? How can a marginalized identity challenge and/or complicate an old idea about how writing works? Essays should explore the connection between at least one marginalized identity and one craft element of fiction (such as characterization, interiority, or verisimilitude). This anthology seeks to give a platform to writers of diverse backgrounds and identities, including but not limited to queer writers, writers of color, and disabled/chronically ill writers. 1,500-4,500 word craft essays accepted. No submission fee. Contributors will be paid $20.

Political Demonologies: Race, Gender, and Coloniality in a Postsecular Age

May 15–16, 2020, University College Dublin, Ireland

EXTENDED ABSTRACT DEADLINE: March 22.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: 

C. Heike Schotten (University of Massachusetts, Boston)

Selamawit D. Terrefe (Tulane University)

Conservative Counter-Revolutions: Papers on Nineteenth-century conservatism(s) that emerged in reaction to the century's revolutions and reforms, and on the consequent radicalization of conservatism that still informs it today. 300-word abstracts by March 15th to dwhite@emory.edu 

The LLC 16th-Century English Forum invites submissions for "Inventing Time in the Sixteenth Century" at MLA 2021 in Toronto:

How does sixteenth-century writing challenge current critical approaches to time and/or the future? What unique investigations might it prompt or support? What kinds of time has it invented? Have such temporal experiments and inventions persisted? Send 300-word abstract and two-page CV to J.K. Barret (jkbarret@austin.utexas.edu) no later than March 15, 2020. 

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2021/webprogrampreliminary/Paper13156.html

The Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference (SW/SW) is an interdisciplinary graduate student event hosted by the University of Mississippi from July 16-18, 2020. 

The Politics of Escapism

Panel at the 2021 MLA Convention

TOronto, DC, January 7-10, 2021

Co-Organizers:

Greg Sharzer, University of Toronto (gsharzer@gmail.com); Keith O'Regan, York
University (keith.oregan@gmail.com)

Escapism, the desire to abandon a difficult present for an ideal alternative,

What is the place of unwilling travel(er)s in travel studies? What are the costs of travel? This roundtable considers travels that are not undertaken strictly by choice. We welcome proposals from any field or period on topics such as: climate-related relocations, internal/political migrants, self-liberation from slavery or captivity, literal/figurative boundaries, eco/animal movements, borderlands/crossings, economic exigencies that require travel, narratives of new beginnings.

The First Annual Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, April 25 and 26, 2020

Performing Labor: (Re)Evaluations within the Humanities

This panel considers the legacy of anti-fascist culture. How can we articulate a persistent anti-fascism that outlasts the forces of capital and ethno-nationalism in the present?

Send 250-word abstracts to sgotzler@andrew.cmu.edu by March 16.

Midway through New Grub Street (1891), Reardon reunites with his wife Amy. In preparation, he leaves behind his overcoat. This attire, once “fairly good,” is now long past its prime, “the edges of the sleeves were frayed, two buttons were missing, and the original hue of the cloth was indeterminable.” Reardon knows Amy well, but not well enough: her attention at the meeting is quickly directed to “his muddy and shapeless boots,” and her desire for “a renewal of amity” conflicts with her shock over her husband’s appearance: “[S]uch attire degraded him in her eyes; it symbolised the melancholy decline which he had suffered intellectually.

Eat/Play/Tweet:

An Interdisciplinary Conference

on Storytelling and Identity in Popular Culture

Popular Culture Research Centre,

Auckland University of Technology

7-9 July 2020

The Popular Culture Research Centre (Auckland University of Technology) welcomes papers for its upcoming interdisciplinary conference on the theme of ‘storytelling and identity’ in popular culture. The conference will be held in Auckland on 7-9 July 2020.

Keynote Speakers:

Justin Edwards (University of Stirling)

Lorna Piatti-Farnell (Auckland University of Technology)

Constantine Verevis (Monash University)

Extended Deadline - Ghost Stories Call for Submissions

Tell me a story. A simple request made by children across the world every night and one we seek to fulfil even as adults. But… it is the stories that excite, that make our hearts beat faster, and the hairs on our necks stand on end that bewitch us most. It is these stories we want to hear. Spectral Visions Press (University of Sunderland) are now accepting submissions for a short story collection, Spectral Visions: Ghost Stories. Due to the fantastic response, we've extended the deadline in hopes of a bumper collection or even a separate poetry collection.

This panel, sponsored by the College English Association, explores how the concept of alienation can be applied to a field in which it has not received very much attention: composition pedagogy. Generally meaning an undesirable separation between self and world (i.e., other human beings, nature, and social roles, norms, and institutions), alienation has been analyzed in various contexts by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, theologians, and critical theorists. While it came to be viewed as problematic and outmoded with the rise of postmodernism, the concept is far from obsolete today. On the contrary, alienation remains both a widely experienced psychosocial issue and a vital theoretical and diagnostic tool.