We would like to draw colleagues' attention to our seminar at the American Comparative Literature Association's (ACLA’s) 2023 conference, "Narratives of Post-Viral Syndromes: Thinking the Past, Present, and Future". Anyone interested in presenting a paper at this seminar is requested to formally apply through the ACLA’s website between October 1 and October 31 (https://www.acla.org/narratives-post-viral-syndromes-thinking-past-present-and-future)

In fantasy and science fiction, death, immortality and rebirth are topics that feature frequently, elucidating that the loss of life and the questions of how it might be prevented or reversed are at the centre of human concern. These questions also constitute an essential focal point of the works of the Oxford Inklings, particularly Tolkien and Lewis.

Children’s literature and material cultures of childhood have always enjoyed a long-standing relationship. In Anglocentric contexts, it is well studied how toymakers and children’s book editors worked hand-in-hand during the “Golden age of children’s literature” to construct a joint children’s market for books and toys (Masaki 2016; Field 2019). However, even though playing, with its various aesthetic, pedagogic, material and cultural meanings, constitutes an important element of South Asian children’s book cultures as well, this phenomenon has remained rather understudied in the academy. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

FOR PUBLICATION IN MEJO (MELOW Journal) 2022

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF T.S. ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND

Writers, filmmakers, musicians, and other arts performers have taken a leading role in protesting governmental failure and corporate responsibility for environmental destruction and disaster across the Caribbean. In the 2000s, Caribbean writers, filmmakers, visual and other artists have spoken truth to power in Puerto Rico and Dominica after the tragedy of Hurricane Maria, in the struggle to preserve Jamaica’s Cockpit country from bauxite mining, and against extractive industries, tourism, and other environmentally destructive forms of development. In fact, writers and artists have been documenting, illuminating, and protesting environmental destruction since Caribbean cultural traditions emerged.

The Comparative Drama Conference will be hosting Lucas Hnath as our keynote speaker on March 31st, 2023.

We welcome abstracts that address the plays and theatre of Lucas Hnath.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Revisiting the classics: Ibsen vs. Hnath's Nora and Helmer.

Staging real people: From the Clintons to the Disneys to Dana H. (his mother)

Hnath's disruption of the theatrical space

Hnath's use of language

Hnath's use of violence

Hnath's place amidst and comparison to his contemporaries  

This seminar explores conceptions of empathy in various philosophical, cultural, and linguistic traditions across the world. The English word “empathy,” adapted from the German einfühlung and closely associated with the older term sympathy, is notoriously slippery. Scholars have identified various affective-cognitive processes that empathy connotes, including imagining oneself in others’ situations, comprehending others’ perspectives, feeling what others feels, feeling affected by others’ experiences, and caring for others. Investigating the premises and implications of these empathic processes, scholars have shown that attending to nuanced differences between notions of empathy enhances our understanding of its possibilities and limitations.

Since the cultural turn of the 1970s that placed culture at the centre of scholarly debates, the field of cultural studies has expanded to explore the presence of meaning, affect, society, and thought in academia. Etymologically drawing upon the Latin “colere”, culture implies growth and cultivation, also accumulation and acquisition. Raymond Williams defined it pluralistically, calling culture a way of life at once material, intellectual and spiritual.

It is common for studies in the Energy Humanities to identify the “late eighteenth century” as a backstory to the cultures, industries, and sciences of coal that emerged in the nineteenth century. This panel is interested in questioning that periodization with more complex genealogies or alternate imaginaries of energy throughout the eighteenth century.

This panel welcomes submissions on any aspect of drama during the long eighteenth century. Submissions can address the conference theme--the quixotic eighteenth century--but do not have to. Please send abstracts of 250 words to Ashley Bender at abender@twu.edu by November 15, 2022.

The 45th Comparative Drama Conference welcomes Lucas Hnath as its Keynote Speaker.

Abstract Submission Deadline:  15 October 2022

54th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

March 23-26, 2023

University of Buffalo

Niagara Falls, NY

Environmental Justice Pedagogies: Performance and Activism in the Humanities; ASLE Session

Sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)

The creative work of historical fiction brings a prior time and place, one known but unfamiliar, into the present. Jerome de Groot considers one purpose of historical fiction is to “challenge the orthodoxy and potential for dissent [which will] challenge mainstream and repressive narratives.” Its characters and settings represent the cultural issues and struggles of their own time while also asking readers to recognize that many of the same situations still exist and need attention. The social and racial marginalization of women in the United States has been gaining that attention in popular culture outlets, including a recent Saturday Night Live cold open.

Edited Collection: Cancer in Young Adult Literature

Deadline for Submission:

December 31, 2022

Full Name/Name of Organization:

Stephen M. Zimmerly, University of Indianapolis

Contact Email:

zimmerlys@uindy.edu

Narrative: