Vernon Press invites book chapters for a forthcoming edited volume on the subject of "Queer Representation in Literature and Popular Culture."

This book explores queer representations through varied narratives from literature, media, and popular culture in an attempt to explore queer sexuality, the portrayal of queer bodies, and the socio-political construction of sexuality. The objective is to critically analyze queer representations in the form of narratives and popular imagination, shedding light on the current debates and queer politics. The book employs frameworks of gender, identity, nationalism, history, culture, citizenship, and censorship to understand queer subjectivities in contemporary narratives. 

Toxic Ecologies of the Global South: Panel, NeMLA 2024

Boston, MA, March 7-10, 2024, https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

Shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (less developed countries)? … I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that… I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted. (Lawrence Summers, chief economic advisor to the IMF, 1991).

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies

Vol. 50 No. 1 | March 2024

Call for Papers

Transcultural Thought and the Planetary Emergency

Guest Editors

Hannes Bergthaller (National Taiwan Normal University)

Yen-Ling Tsai (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

Deadline for Submissions: July 31, 2023

This panel will focus on cultural representations of social reproduction. Social reproduction theory developed from a Marxist-feminist concern for typically-unwaged labor performed outside the traditional workplace, demonstrating how this “invisible” work is necessary for the reproduction of a capitalist workforce and social relations as well as the maintenance of life itself.

Guest Editors:

Charlotte Beyer, University of Gloucestershire

Christine Berberich, University of Portsmouth

Sean Matthews, University of Nottingham                     

Special Issue Consultants:

David Brian Howard, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University

Merritt Moseley, University of North Carolina, Asheville

Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay

Home Editor: Adriana Neagu, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies (published online by the Open Library of Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London) seeks reviews of recent publications, including autobiographies, memoirs, letters, and so on. Word length: 1000-1500 words. Citation style: Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (author/date). Once accepted, you will be asked to register on our website, which will also give you access to our house style sheet. Expected online publication of volume 6 is December 2023. Please get in touch with short proposals and questions. Robert_P_Ward@brown.edu.

Call for Organisers:

BSLS Winter Symposium 2023
An Online Event
Proposals due by 31 July

https://www.bsls.ac.uk/2023/06/call-for-organisers-bsls-winter-symposium-2023/

The British Society for Literature and Science seeks organisers for its annual Winter Symposium, a one-day PGR/ECR-led event on a specific theme proposed by the organisers. This year, the BSLS members at the annual conference expressed particular interest in themes of Scale, and Alternate Histories, but we encourage potential organisers to move forward with any theme associated with literature and science.

A Critical Companion to Clint Eastwood

Deadline for submission of abstracts:

November 1, 2023

Prof. Ian Bekker & Dr. Philip van der Merwe

North-West University, South Africa

Contact e-mail: ian.bekker@nwu.ac.za & Philip.vandermerwe@nwu.ac.za

Edited by Ian Bekker and Philip van der Merwe

2023 saw a surge of wildflower blooms in an historic superbloom in California following an unusually wet winter after years of extreme drought in the state. On the other end of the spectrum, years of drought, excessive heat, and denser vegetation have made wildfires not only more likely to occur, but to rapidly spread out of control, which led to almost $12 billion in damage across the United States in 2022. In the anthropocene, nature lends itself to narratives of both excess and surplus, but also of extreme deficit, and the language which is used in policy documents, news stories, and fictional narratives provide a space in which both extremes come under a microscope.

ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM

19th of January, 2024 – Université Paris Cité

‘Fantasies of France : Exploring Transatlantic Misunderstandings from the 18th Century to the Present Days’

‘Correct understanding is a particular instance of misunderstanding.’ – A. Culioli

Keywords: transatlantic circulation, cosmopolitanism, reception, translation, expatriation 

Fungus is everywhere. From the parasitical infection at the core of HBO’s The Last of Us, which has sprung a viral interest in cordyceps and other killer fungi, to Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris and Southern Reach trilogies, and even Michael Sarnoski’s 2021 truffle-centered drama Pig, mushrooms, spores, superbugs populate discourse, real and fictional.

The convergence of critical masculinity studies with postcolonial theory aims to interrogate discourses that created hegemonic and binary categories that in turn became eventual grounds for the historical racialization of gender and sexuality, as well as the gendering and sexualization of race. Following palimpsestic models of narrativization, this session seeks to problematize the layerings and shifting stratigraphies of power that obscure, erase, or overwrite the specific experiences that underpin notions of Asian masculinity and male identity as represented in various forms of literature and media.

Syndemic Motherhood: Exploring American Epidemics through Engaged and Applied Arts, a case study anthology, explores how various artistic practices and processes have been instrumental in processing, sharing, and learning about the intersectional epidemics unique to US-Americans and their experiences in motherhood. Issues related to social inequity such as gun violence, healthcare access, the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, and childcare converge to create challenging circumstances for women and mothers in the United States. The arts provide a malleable yet rigorous framework to unpack these issues publicly.

EXTENDED DEADLINE

The climate crisis posits a major threat to the anthropocene regardless of geopolitical boundaries. However, Eurocentric discourses seldom acknowledge the resource exploitation that fuels climate change. This panel seeks to explore works of literature that highlight such instances of resource exploitation in the postcolony vis-à-vis the ideas of security and insecurity in the times of an emergent climate crisis. With a special focus on the specters of neocolonialism that threaten the security of postcolonial ecospheres, this panel seeks to decolonize the discourses of climate change that refuse to address the role played by Western ideology and capital in the rendering insecure of ecologies in the postcolony.