Saving the Day at Kalamazoo: Finding Comics for Medievalist Research and Teaching (A Workshop) (virtual)

Call for Presenters - Please Submit Proposals by 15 September 2023

59th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan)

Hybrid event: Thursday, 9 May, through Saturday, 11 May, 2024

Saving the Day at Kalamazoo: Finding Comics for Medievalist Research and Teaching (A Workshop) (virtual)

Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Comics Project

Organizers: Michael A. Torregrossa, Richard Scott Nokes, and Carl Sell

This panel will discuss how the conception and operation of “crisis” intersect with issues of gender and the cultural codes of society. Assuming a broad temporal scope for the Middle Ages (c.500 CE–c.1500 CE), the panel is interested in examining how societal constructions of gender triggered and were, in turn, shaped and reshaped by disruptions and upheavals in religious life, literary culture, economic structure, and political organization. With its capacity to span the distance between private and public realms, can gender mediate the conceptualization of internal and subjective crises as well as large-scale social tensions and changes?

This panel seeks papers that explore the relationship between gender and nature in medieval and early modern literature. Papers might explore, for example, how forests, ruins, or waterways are used to mediate queer expression, how bestiaries transgressed or engaged in gender formation, and the role of maternity and the transformation of the natural world. Also welcome are global approaches that discuss gender transformation in ecological contact zones. What role does nature play in the formation of individual gender identity and/or communal gender hierarchies? How has the relationship between gender and nature changed or maintained across medieval and early modern time?

Shakespeare in Asian Currents

Special issue guest-edited by Bi-qi Beatrice Lei and Judy Celine Ick

Title: Faith, Morality, and the Man without Fear: Theology and Religion in Daredevil

Editors: Taylor Thomas and Regan Hardeman

Abstract, CV, and Proposal due: September 30, 2023

Initial Final Paper due: February 28, 2024

Shirley Jackson Studies, Vol. 2, Issue #1: Queer(ing) Jackson

In his now canonical work Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry M. Benshoff describes queerness as that which “opposes the binary definitions and proscriptions of a patriarchal heterosexism." For Benshoff, “Queer can be a narrative moment, or a performance or stance which negates the oppressive binarisms of the dominant hegemony.” Queer, then, has the capacity to embody a multitude of challenging or oppositional stances, playing with or subverting gender binaries, heteropatriarchal orders, political hegemonies, and ingrained systems of meaning. Queer can be playful, daring, and defiant.

The intersection of the digital and environmental humanities speaks to our current moment: we live amid ecological changes that we seek to understand, mitigate, and publicize through new technologies. Medieval studies has long been at the forefront of the digital humanities, while ecocriticism and environmental history have advanced our understanding of how medieval people conceived of the nonhuman world. Recently, these threads have come together in adapting modern digital tools to study premodern experiences of local and evolving environments. Our panel centers this exciting area of study in anticipation of a forthcoming issue of Digital Philology on the same topic.

Greater Aliveness: Women’s Bodies in Literature

The Emily Dickinson International Society panel at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference (November 9–11, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia) seeks submissions on any aspect of Dickinson studies. Abstracts related to the conference theme of (In)Security are particularly welcome. Creative as well as critical work will be considered, and submissions from graduate students are encouraged. By September 1, please submit an abstract, CV, and any A/V requirements to Trisha Kannan at trisha@concisionmatters.com.

Seeking chapter submissions for a co-edited anthology on "Robot Theater" for consideration with Routledge for Fall 2024.

Abstracts (of approx 300 words) and a short author's bio are to be submitted to Eric Mullis (mullise@queens.edu) or Hilary Bergen (hilary.bergen@gmail.com) by Aug. 15, 2023. 

CFP:

This panel examines the continuum of intersectional crime fiction writing in a U.S. context, illuminating the methods, exemplary texts, and narrative strategies that embrace inclusive tenets and movements, from Black Lives Matter to LGBTQ+ rights to #ownvoices and neurodivergence. The panel aims to investigate the possibilities and challenges presented by the incorporation of diverse social identities and critique of power structures within narrative cartography. This inquiry entails an exploration of how marginalized identities, including racial, gender, health status, veteran status, and class, are represented and interrogated within the broad range of crime fiction writing.

Call for Papers

2024 EALA Annual Conference

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Conference Organizers: ROC English and American Literature Association (EALA, Taiwan) and National Tsing Hua University

Date: October 19, 2024

Venue: National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Bob Dylan –   Questions on Masculinity

Bob Dylan turned 80 in 2021, still active and still the subject of controversy. People love both to hate and to love the old songwriter, musician, artist, and Nobel Prize winner. Dylan is one of the world's biggest celebrities, a riddle who prefers to surprise rather than to live up to the expectations of the audience or the media. His songs have since long become classics in the songbooks of world literature, and questions on masculinity have been raised in relation to Dylan as a star and as an artist.

This seminar is inspired by the germinating discussions on gender and masculinity in Dylan’s songs, performance, artwork, and stardom.

Two conceptual territories bracket Europe’s imaginary geography: Greco-Roman Antiquity and the modern Balkans. According to Artemis Leontis, an “abstract principle of territorial identification” ties the political and cultural life of both modern Hellas and Western Europe to ancient Greek civilization. Rome has similarly been at the center of “a long and ongoing tradition of appropriating classical history and literature” to foster imperialist “narrative[s] of the exceptional progress” (Barnard). In comparison, the space of the Balkans seems peripheral to the project of European identity.