Climate change and impending ecological crises make clear, we are running short of time. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argues that we have until 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5C. Assuming that the status quo endures, at the start of this conference, we will have fewer than six years remaining on that deadline to make significant changes. Much of the damage we now need to recover from is a direct result of a myopic view of time:the greed for quarterly profits and how much wealth an individual can accumulate during their own lifetime. But what if we could think of the future not as a scarcity of time, but an abundance?

In Animal Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Process (1892), Henry Salt argues that “Oppression and cruelty are invariably founded on a lack of imaginative sympathy,” which purports the notion of the “tyrant or tormentor” from ever having a “true sense of kinship with the victim” (16). In a similar way, Donna Haraway states in When Species Meet (2007), that “we are a knot of species coshaping [sic] one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down” (42). Taking cues from Salt and Haraway, our panel will take up key features of human and animal relations and their intersection with the queerness of imaginative sympathy.

Call for Panel Proposals

Renaissance Conference of Southern California (RCSC)-Sponsored Panels for RSA Chicago

Renaissance Society of America Conference

Chicago, IL, USA March 21-23, 2024

CFP Deadline: August 1, 2023

Novels, Then and Now, an area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association, is currently accepting proposals for the 2023 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) conference in Philadelphia, PA to be held November 9-11, 2023.

Call for Abstracts/Proposals for Essays for an Edited Collection 
SCREEN STORYTELLERS: The Works of Jon Favreau
Edited by Guy Nicolucci

deadline for submissions: 

August 15, 2023

full name / name of organization: 

Guy Nicolucci/Montclair State University

contact email: 

guynicolucci@gmail.com

Ted Lasso (2020-) is (ostensibly) a half-hour comedy that follows a basic fish-out-of-water plot: its titular American football coach coming to manage fictional English Premier League team A.F.C. Richmond – despite knowing nothing of the sport. But over its (so far) three-season run, the show morphed into a dramedy and eventually, an hour-long ensemble piece rivalling many other “prestige TV” productions. A pandemic sleeper hit, it put streaming service Apple TV+ on the map, winning it many loyal subscribers and countless awards; a curious feat for a show based on a series of humorous ads to promote football (soccer) on NBC Sports.

On love being analogous to a battlefield, Roland Barthes writes: “From what language, one wonders, did these lovesick, melancholy grenadiers draw their passion (scarcely in accord with the image of their class and profession)? What books had they read–or what stories been told?” Following Barthes’ indicative questions, this panel inquires into the connection between love–as an idea, experience, or emotion–and the stories we have been telling about it over the long course of history. Can one imagine love without stories? What is the relationship between different forms of desire and the literary forms that bear their weight? How do changes in global storytelling practices transform our ideas of love?

Throughout his legendary career, Cormac McCarthy has dealt with existential insecurities at all levels of human experience.  This panel proposes to foster dialogue about this theme in McCarthy’s work.  Abstracts dealing with any of McCarthy's works are welcome for consideration, but we do seek a special focus on McCarthy’s last two published novels: The Passenger and Stella Maris.  Please send a 250-word abstract, a brief bio or CV, and any A/V or scheduling requests to Jay Ingrao (jingrao@utdallas.edu) and Justin Brumit (justin.brumit@tccd.edu) by July 24th.

To welcome the Gothic to NeMLA 2024 (March 7-10), this panel asks scholars to present work that introduces unlikely kinship systems in the Gothic and claims these relationships as unique to this genre.

CFP:

This panel seeks to explore various ways fans have influenced the shows they watch through various online platforms, including online communities and social media. Please submit 150-250 word abstracts that clearly show how your proposed topic fits with this session via this link: Submit to NeMLA by September 30. 

This panel seeks papers that investigate the theme of surplus as it relates to African and African Diasporic literature, particularly in terms of representations of multivocality in oral and written traditions, multicultural and intersectional identities, economic excess and competition, and multimodality and hybridity. All genres of literature are of interest.

Please submit proposals via the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20628

Submissions deadline is September 30, 2023.

Narrative Surplus, Literary Specificity, and the Modernist Novel at NeMLA, March 7-10, 2024 Boston, MA Host: Tufts University, School of Arts and Sciences.

What would it mean to think of a novel’s depiction of thoughts, ideas, or emotions as surplus to its plot? What details—historical, social, political—are lost if we think of narrative information as mere details and therefore surplus to literary meaning? Once we extract all essential facts, what is left for the critic to make sense of?

Surplus Invisibility: Concentrated Spaces of the Displaced and Expelled
NeMLA 2024--Boston, MA March 7-10th, 2024

Abstract deadline: September 30th, 2023

Response deadline: October 15th, 2023

The concept of surplus is largely understood in economics as “the amount of resources that exceed the portion actually utilized”. Gramsci, when touching on this idea, focuses on the rise of capitalism. However, “surplus” can refer to a host of different fields. What happens when the “surplus” is used to define the lives of human beings?