British ‘Fictions of Class’ since 1945 – Revitalising Class in the Twenty-First Century

Workshop – University of Siegen, Germany – 18-19 June 2021

From arborescence to the rhizome, plants have long served as models for thinking in philosophy, biology, and the arts. In recent years, scholars including Michael Marder, Catriona Sandilands, and Jeffrey Nealon have brought renewed attention to the agency and dynamism of the vegetal, at the same time that the future of plant life has come to be at risk in the wake of climate change and the impending collapse of ecosystems. This panel invites papers that explore ways of thinking about and with plants in the shadow of the Anthropocene. How do writers and visual artists, past and present, help us renegotiate our relationship to the vegetal today?

While it is considered dubious to anthropomorphize animals to learn about them, learning with animals asks scholars to consider both animal and human ways of being and knowing, as well as where those epistemologies might overlap or diverge. Attempting to learn with animals requires consideration of the value of anthropomorphization. Drawing on the burgeoning field of animal studies, we invite literary scholars to consider how literature imagines animals and their ways of being and knowing—whether alternate or familiar.

Whether we consider the high fantasy of Lewis and Tolkien or the contemporary rise in historical fiction set during the Middle Ages, it must be acknowledged that medievalists (and scholars more generally) have long been linked with creative writing. In an era of academia where the traditional university job is far from assured and where representations of the Middle Ages are co-opted by white nationalists, we must acknowledge the wider benefits and contributions of the humanities, while promoting a diverse picture of the Middle Ages. It is more important than ever that the scholastic community embrace its creative side.

Reading into Murder: interpretative essays on select cult texts. 

 The 64th annual American Studies Association of Texas (ASAT) Conference will be held February 12th through 13th at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. This year’s conference is delayed until the spring because of COVID-19. The following is a list of suggested areas of scholarship you may consider when exploring our conference theme:

The Arab notion of identity, defined by traditional gender roles, categorizes the binary subsets of the patriarchal understanding of performative “male” and “female” facades. Gender remains vaguely defined in the Arab world due to layers of taboo and stigma; untraditional gender roles and practices result in a halt of the fragile cyclical reality within the Arab realm. In recent years, the academic world began to decode expressions of gender within the Arab world; however, the gendered Arab identity has been fundamentally stereotyped. In this edited volume, we venture into various subsets of the 21st century Arab identity that pertain to deciphering the gendered Arab.

A trio of anniversaries in 2021, the tenth of Terrence Malick’s film, The Tree of Life, and Tom Perrotta’s novel, The Leftovers, and the twentieth of Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods, is a provocative occasion for a critical reexamination of these and related parables at the intersection of the secular and the supernatural, in their original formulations and as they have developed subsequently. 

Roundtable “participants give brief, informal presentations (5-10 minutes) and the session is open to conversation and debate between participants and the audience” (http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/sessions.html).

All approaches are welcome.

Call for Papers

Edited volume

Title

 The Detectives: critical essays on select English and Bengali detective fiction

To be edited by Dr Debayan Deb Barman, Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English,  THLH Mahavidyalay, (University of Burdwan),

Mallarpur, Dist- Birbhum,

 West Bengal, India.

Email:. debayanvodabarman@gmail.com

Concept note

“Desexualization”—a special issue of Women's Studies: an interdisciplinary journal

Guest Editor: Helena Feder (ECU), federh@ecu.edu

This special issue of Women's Studies: an interdisciplinary journal invites submissions to address the global phenomenon I am calling “desexualization.” Long before the pandemic and social distancing, scientists had been reporting that people are having far less sex than ever before, in the United States, Japan, Britain, Europe, and elsewhere.

The Department of Theatre Studies and the Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic are pleased to announce a series of international symposia on English Theatre Culture 1660–1737. The overarching theme of the first symposium is Forms, Genres and Conventions.

CFP: special issue of Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature on the Chinese-Australian author Brian Castro

We invite essay submissions for a special issue of Antipodes, journal of the American Association for Australasian Studies (AAALS) examining the work of the Chinese-Australian author Brian Castro. This special section will be guest edited by Peter D. Mathews (Hanyang University).

The College English Association welcomes proposals for presentations on the general conference theme: Justice. The College English Association’s 52nd national conference will be held in Birmingham, Alabama, where the freedom ensured by civil rights has been contested by the government in both the past and present. Birmingham’s notoriety as a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Birmingham Campaign, the imprisonment of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the writing of his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is matched by the city’s renown for forging steel, founding Veteran’s Day, and hosting the USA’s second-oldest drag queen pageant.

Call for Chapters:  House of the Devil: Satanic Cultures (and Panics) from the 60s to Today (Proposals due October 15, 2020)

            From the Satanic and occult counter-cultures of the late 60s, as seen in the films of Kenneth Anger, to the Satanic Panic of the 80s, to the progressive-style Satanism of music groups like Twin Temple and organizations like The Satanic Temple, Satanism in the U.S. (both real and imagined) has long reflected the anxieties, hopes, and concerns of the culture at large.