With its massive world, open-ended quests, and near-limitless options for customization, Elden Ring––the most critically acclaimed video game of 2022––is designed to be replayed. But it is also a text that demands to be reread. Whether we study its environmental storytelling or the lore in item descriptions, the game’s fragmented narrative fuels exegeses that resemble the long history of Biblical interpretation, midcentury criticism of modernist enigmas like Ulysses, and hermeneutic fandoms surrounding popular culture like Twin Peaks. Its spatiotemporally disjunctive universe frustrates efforts to interpret its world “realistically” and prompts one to place it in dialogue with theories of unconventional space and time.

Dear Conradians/Colleagues/ Scholars/Academics

Call for Papers: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy and Policies in the English Department
Extended Deadline: 27 March 2023

Call for Papers - Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture
Extended Deadline: April 21st, 2021 (4/21/23)

Animals are the quotidian absolute Other. They are not inherently horrifying, dangerous, or invasive; nor do they have designs to usurp or subjugate humanity. In his lecture-turned-book The Animal That Therefore I Am, Derrida critiques the use of the word “animal” to describe an almost limitless array of creatures. “Animal” becomes a catch-all term for everything that is otherwise than human–and not the biological entity, but a specific, constructed hegemonic entity. 

CFP for Peace, Literature, and Pedagogy Panel

MMLA 2023, November 2-5, Cincinnati, OH

Abstract Deadline: May 10, 2023

General Conference Topic: "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy"

The Midwest Modern Language Association welcomes, especially but not exclusively, proposals dealing with any aspect of the theme "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy" for the 2023 conference. Please find a general description of this theme here: 

https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/callforpapers/

Special dossier | edited by Marica Orrù and Igor Juricevic

A fundamental element of the American imaginary, superhero and heroic narratives have seen a new apogee since the turn of the century. New and old heroes and heroines have populated popular culture, giving rise to a variety of texts that tackle diversity, nostalgia, and the need for imaginaries and narratives that help us deal with the struggles inherent to our current times.

This two-part dossier, co-edited by Marica Orrù and Igor Juricevic, will collect essays on (super)hero figures in twenty-first century US popular culture, with a specific focus on diversity, cross-genre texts, and transmedia representations. 

Online Conference Date: TBA

Registration is free to attend.

Call for papers

A one-day, inter-, multi-, trans-, and cross-disciplinary event that explores the theme of “connections, interconnections and disconnections” in festive and celebratory culture.

CALL FOR PAPERS, ABSTRACTS, AND PANEL PROPOSALS

Midwest Popular Culture Association/

Midwest American Culture Association

2023 Annual Conference

Race & Ethnicity Studies

Deadline: April 30, 2023

Event Dates: Friday-Sunday, 6-8, October 2023 

Location: DePaul University, Chicago, IL (in-person)

While we sometimes feel like life is moving around us rather than with us, it is essential to take a moment and consider how we got where we are. Over time, attitudes, opinions, and feelings have shifted along with what we choose to carry with us. To avoid leaving important things behind or risk forgetting them altogether, it is time to ask ourselves why we leave certain things behind and what it means when we do.

We invite papers for an MLA 2024 session exploring figures of the griot—as chroniclers, poets, songmakers, and Memories—in Doris Lessing’s later works and in the works of writers from Africa and throughout the postcolonial diaspora. This topic has been designed to fit in with the MLA's 2024 Presidential Theme, "Celebration: Joy and Sorrow." For more details on the theme, see: <https://www.mla.org/Events/2024-MLA-Convention/Presidential-Theme-for-th....
250-word abstracts and brief bio requested.

Editors: Josefine Smith, Shippensburg University, jmsmith@ship.edu; and Kathleen Kollman, Miami University, kollmak@miamioh.edu 

For Refractions: A Journal of Postcolonial Cultural Criticism’s second issue, we invite reflections on “care work” in relation to postcolonial studies, cultural media and practice, and institutions

International Journal of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education (IJAHE)

https://vingcs.com/journals/ahe/index.html

Submission System

Scope

CFP: Nobody Cares but Everybody Should: Toward a Smarter History of the Novel

Special Issue of Studies in the Novel, Winter 2024