In the current moment, there is no paucity of catastrophe writing. From apocalyptic speculative fiction, cli-fi, and other textual forms of disaster writing, catastrophe is too often conceived of as environmental events or disasters that already have occurred (tsunami; forest fires; hurricanes and floods) or will reliably occur in the future. Part of the problem with this textualization is that catastrophe often is seen as an event rather than a process. More pointedly, our critical attention has been (understandably) trained on the effects and harms of climate change rather than on capitalism’s disastrous drive for surplus extraction that renders life unlivable for millions in the here and now.

Writing As ____ the 5th Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), is slated for February 2-3, 2023 in person and online at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Undergrads, grads, faculty of all ranks and roles, academic staff, and independent writers and scholars are welcome to apply. Proposals for workshops and flashtalks are due 10/28; proposals for posters, displays, and other creative work as well as applications for B/SM Fellows are due 12/9. Notifications will be made in early November, and registration will open in December, when conference modalities and health mandates will be confirmed. For more: visit our online CFP.

Journal of Contemporary PoeticsCall for Papers

Deadline for submissions: Submission permitted throughout the year.

Full name / name of organization: International Islamic University, Islamabad

Contact email: jcp@iiu.edu.pk

In Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 (2004), the hospital scene has been paid special attention for seeming “more at home in a horror movie than a superhero sequel,” according to Bloody Disgusting’s Meagan Navarro: it depicts Dr. Octopus’ mechanical tentacles as they slaughter the surgeons who are about to remove them from his body. The scene is rife with the imagery of gaping screams, fingernails clawing into the floor, and limbs going limp, evoking an atmosphere of terror which even Dr. Octopus recognizes once he awakens to the carnage before him.

Co-editors Michael Dango, Erin Spampinato, and Doreen Thierauf invite original chapter-length contributions for a volume on New Rape Studies: Humanistic Interventions, under contract with SUNY Press. Final chapters are due February 1, 2023, and should be no longer than 8,000 words, inclusive of Chicago-style footnotes. We strongly encourage interested contributors to be in touch with abstracts by December 1, 2002, to ensure a fit before submissions of full drafts. We are committed to boosting the voices of graduate student, early career, and contingently employed writers. All queries can be sent to Michael Dango at dangomt@beloit.edu. 

While fantasy fiction has become incredibly popular and prolific in these last few decades, the appeal of fantastical literature dates back to antiquity, as mythologies, legends, and encounters with the supernatural have formed a large part of narrative traditions in every culture and language. This companion seeks to update and address underexamined areas of fantasy fiction, with the chief aim to provide a global introduction to English-language and English-translation fantasy fiction. This collection will focus on the contemporary written word (narrative prose) produced in late 20th and early 21st century.

“Dramatic Fictions / Fictional Dramas”

Comparative Drama Conference

Orlando, FL, March 30 – April 1, 2023

Deadline: October 12, 2022

I am organizing a comparative panel that crosses and combines genres: works of fiction that contain plays, playwrights, actors, or dramatic performances; or plays that contain writers, fictional texts, or acts of literary composition. Alternately, presenters may set up intertextual conversations between the work of a playwright and an artist or character from another genre. For instance, I will be presenting a paper on Samuel Beckett and Bartleby the Scrivener. I am seeking two other papers to complete the panel. Only in-person presentations will be considered for this panel.

The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for its annual Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics, and Religion to be held from March 20-24, 2023.

The HCA Spring Academy provides 20 international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and thoroughly discuss their Ph.D. projects. Additionally, it offers workshops held by visiting scholars.

Disability Studies in Dramatic Texts and Performance 

Papers are sought for a special panel series on the subject of disability in dramatic texts and performance for the 45th Annual Comparative Drama Conference in Orlando, FL. We invite research on representation, image, symbolism, societal regulation or construction of disability as it pertains to casting and depictions of those with disabilities in playtexts and dramatic performance. The conference will allow hybrid attendance and presentations.

Radical Transcendentalisms

Transcendentalism is readily understood to have been an American—and even a transatlantic—social reform movement, having played a significant role in antislavery efforts, women’s rights, and labor and educational reform. But reform is markedly different than radicalism. For this edited collection, we are interested in what nineteenth-century radicalism looked like, and the ways in which the Transcendentalist movement was intertwined with radical social practice and thought. We are interested in, for example, the historiographic and philosophic connections between radical workers’ movements in Europe and the rise of Transcendental social critique in the United States.

Submission Deadline: November 4, 2022
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This project aims to provide the first global history of cultural studies as a field, with a particular focus on its institutional manifestations and the ways in which cultural studies has been taken up in different cultural and geographical settings to various ends. 

'The Social Hieroglyphic': Modernist Reading Practices and their Afterlives  

NeMLA 2023 Roundtable: The Mindful Intersection of Pedagogy and Scholarship

This roundtable session invites you to discuss practical strategies for implementing techniques of mindfulness in both the classroom and our scholarly work, considering especially their intersection.