In her 2014 text, All Joking Aside, Rebecca Krefting argued that “Jokesters unmask inequality by identifying the legal arrangements and cultural attitudes and beliefs contributing to their subordinated status—joking about it, challenging that which has become normalized and compulsory, and offering new solutions and strategies” (2). Humor has long been a tool for upsetting the status quo, for questioning the social institutions that exalt some, while leaving so many others behind. But does this comedic approach succeed in effecting change? What are the tangible results of challenging the existing situation?

PAMLA 2021 LAS VEGAS: "CITY OF GOD, CITY OF DESTRUCTION" (Thursday, November 11 - Sunday, November 14, 2021 at Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, hosted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Session: American Literature 1945 to the Present

Contacts: Marc Malandra, Biola University (marc.malandra@biola.edu)

The Message Is? is an edited volume dedicated to exploring the expressed and sometimes hidden gems of black spirituality found in the creativity of the award-winning artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa. Nathanael J. Homewood and Isis Pickens are co-editing this volume.

We are inviting chapter proposals. Please consider submitting a 250-word abstract briefly outlining your potential chapter contribution.  We kindly ask that these be submitted by March 15, 2021, and be emailed to nathanaelhomewood@depauw.edu.

The concept of “Othering/ Otherisation” refers to the classification of individuals or groups as outsiders. This cognitive classification divides any sociocultural and political formation into potential two generally monolithic and mutually exclusive blocks: the in-group community versus the out-group community. The inclusion or exclusion of each block is contingent on different criteria like religion, ethnicity, culture, race, politics, class, etc. When these differences are used descriptively, they become somewhat acceptable and harmless. However, when they are normative, they are often couched in the discourses of superiority or inferiority, goodness or badness, civilized-ness or uncivilized-ness, etc.

This roundtable invites perspectives across the academy, including graduate students and contingent faculty, to explore the impact of virtual teaching on discussions of academic freedom and intellectual property. This is a guaranteed session through the Higher Education in the Profession forum.

The Modern Language Association will take place January 6-9 2022 in Washington D.C., and should include some hybrid components.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Drawing Memory in Jewish Women’s Graphic Novels

A Collection of Essays to be Published with Wayne State UP

Edited by Victoria Aarons

Chapter proposals are invited for a collection of essays under contract with Wayne State University Press on Jewish women’s graphic novels.

Satire is dead: long live satire. How can political comedy retain its critical edge when reality is more absurd than even its burlesque depiction? What media and literary satire emerge in the interregnum between old and new worlds?

Papers may engage with a range of the following topics/fields:

--Satire and its relation to fake news, truthiness, and viral conspiracy theories

--Satire and media form-- film, TV, social media, video games, podcasts, stand-up, improv, media platforms, etc. (focusing on the dynamic or dialectic between media form & satirical content)

The E. E. Cummings Society will sponsor two sessions at the 2021 American Literature Association conference in Boston (http://americanliteratureassociation.org). We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of Cummings’ life or work. Proposals that touch upon the following topics will be especially welcome:

• Cummings in 1918-1921 (Camp Devens, the flu pandemic, and afterwards)
• Cummings, the child, and the actual and real worlds
• Cummings’ early experiments in modernism
• Readings of little-studied Cummings poems
• Re-readings of much-studied Cummings poems
• Cummings among the modernists and post-modernists

Middle English Forum Roundtable CFP for MLA National Convention 2022, to be held in Washington, D.C., January 6-9, 2022

This roundtable session invites papers that analyze perceptions, representations, and implications of the remote in the Middle English period and its immediate premodern afterworlds, whether geographic, linguistic, literary, cultural, political, emotional, or other, c.1200-1700. What does Middle English remoteness signify? How does such remoteness signify?

Call for Book Chapter Proposals / The Invisible Professor: A Blueprint for Adjunct Faculty

Let’s be honest for a moment.  Right now, higher education is a giant !@#$ show. 

1.  Enterprising graduate students are in limbo because of departmental cuts and new caps on M.A. and Ph.D. programs.   

2.  Adjuncts are being forced back into the classrooms, many lacking adequate insurance, while COVID-19 spreads like wildfire. 

3.  Chairs and deans are running around with their heads cut off due to projected enrollment and budget woes.  Some smaller institutions may be forced to close their iron gates forever.

It is said that sometimes words get in the way of a good story.

If that is the case, let’s write a story with as few words as possible. In fact, tell us a story in 12 words exactly.

The ABC’s of our Keep It Short and Simple 12-word contest can be explained in, well, 12-words: 

Articulate a story or concept with

Brevity in an interesting

Creative way.

Even small words count (we believe in the power of the little guys) and contractions count as one word (because working together makes us better).

This is a chance to challenge yourself to try something a little different and have some fun doing it!

Prize Details: 

In today's culture, it's almost impossible to avoid "monsters."  Straight from mythology and legend, these fantastic creatures traipse across our television screens and the pages of our books.  Over centuries and across cultures, the inhuman have represented numerous cultural fears and, in more recent times, desires. They are Other. They are Us. This panel will explore the literal monsters--whether they be mythological, extraterrestrial, or man-made--that populate fiction and film, delving into the cultural, psychological and/or theoretical implications.

The Riverside Quarterly is accepting submissions for its inaugural Summer 2021 issue.

A multidisciplinary, open access, advertisement-free journal, The Riverside Quarterly is dedicated to serving the growing global creative class. We are accepting original articles, research digests, interviews, reviews, and opinion pieces [between 750 & 2500 words in length] that explore the art and practice of creativity.

Focusing primarily on the arts, education, and business, we seek to present our readers with the most compelling scholarship available in these areas. Our goal is to enlarge and amplify the global dialogue on creativity by providing our readership with a source for quality, usable, information.

Proposals are invited on any aspect of The Waste Land and/or its reception in the last 100 years. Please submit a 300-word proposal and brief biographical sketch to Dr. Frances Dickey, Department of English, University of Missouri, dickeyf@missouri.edu.

https://www.mla.org/Convention/MLA-2022

https://www.tseliot.sites.luc.edu/