Time and again, Shakespeare demonstrates the frailty and contingency of the many historical and “imagined” communities (Anderson) that feature in his works. Many of his plays revolve around the conflict between individuals and society, depicting the bonds between friends, lovers, family members or even whole nations being put to the test by desire, jealousy, and ambition. If Shakespeare’s communities are unstable to begin with, then discussions of diversity bring to light that very instability even further. His works have been both hailed for showcasing the universality of human nature and critiqued for implicitly reinforcing a Western, Eurocentric world view.

CALL FOR PAPERS

FLUID ENCOUNTERS | RENCONTRES FLUIDES

April 19-20, 2024

Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island

In Sylvie Germain's 1985 novel, Le Livre des Nuits, bodily fluids serve as potent metaphors for the transmission of trauma from parent to child. Tears, milk, and blood become powerful symbols of familial relations. The exchange of bodily fluids has long represented human relationships, where substances like breastmilk, saliva, and sexual fluids metonymically represent the bodies they originate from and the relationships they form and sustain.

Call for Papers, CEA 2024: Atlanta

March 21–23, 2024

Westin Buckhead Atlanta

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on BRITISH LITERATURE OF THE 20th AND 21st CENTURY for our 53rd annual conference.

"Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease." –Virginia Woolf

We are especially interested in presentations that incorporate topics related to the conference theme of TRANSFORMATIONS, but we will consider all proposals.

From vampires to zombies, uncanny doubles to the demonically possessed, gothic tropes have played a significant role in shaping narratives of addiction in American culture. More recently, news stories have framed the opioid crisis and its impact on homeless populations in cities like Boston and Philadelphia as a “zombie apocalypse.” Such tropes can dehumanize already stigmatized populations, yet the gothic remains a mode uniquely suited for exploring concepts of addiction and the lived experiences of individuals, families, and communities affected by the condition.

MAPPING MEMORY: HISTORY, TEXTS AND CULTURES

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEMORY STUDIES

 (22 & 23 February, 2024)

DEPARTMENTS OF ENGLISH AND HISTORY

LORETO COLLEGE, KOLKATA

CONCEPT NOTE:

Civil Rights Act of 1964: Historical Significance, Impact, and Legacy

International Hybrid Conference
24-25 February 2024
University of Delft, The Netherlands

(In-Person/Physical Presence and Online Presentation sessions: 2 days)
(Virtual platform for pre-recorded presentations: 5 days)

 (More info: https://www.gires.org/activities/conferences/civil-rights-act-of-1964-historical-significance-impact-and-legacy/ )

Thematic Approach

Subtitled “Surplus Data,” the Winter 2022 issue of Critical Inquiry began by proclaiming that, “It is no longer enough to say that data is big. Data is now in a state of surplus” (Halprin et al. 197). As private and state actors rush to generate ever more surplus surveillance data about consumer-citizens and workers across domains of life, literary scholars are compelled to question how this data is made meaningful and by whom. After all, data never speaks for itself; it must be assigned value and transformed into narratives. These surveillance stories often reify “identities of suspicion” (Monahan), marking marginalized people as themselves surplus subjects.

The city images reveal the stratification of shared cultural meanings of the urban space over time. This space is an expression and reflection of local identity formation and dynamics. The intricate network of the actions of cities’ inhabitants is constantly conditioned by the cultural and spatial constraints of urban limits. However, in the contemporary world, the concept of “urban limit” should be seriously questioned. The boundaries of cities today have faded, and the urban frontiers are areas of opacity, constantly mobile, and undefined. The very notion of the city, as a completed organism, is continually questioned, to the extent that it can be argued that cities do not exist: there are only different forms of urban life.

CFP: Words Across Worlds: Multilingual Writers and Online Writing Instruction

Abstract Submission Deadline:  October 15, 2023

Description 

We invite proposals for research chapters for a new edited book, Muslim Women’s Popular Fiction, for Manchester University Press. This page outlines the book and how to submit a chapter proposal.

Description of book

In the twenty-first century, readers, publishers, and booksellers have noted a surge in popularity of genre works written by Muslim women, particularly in the Anglosphere. From the detective novels of Ausma Zehanat Khan to S. A. Chakraborty’s fantasy fiction, Ayisha Malik’s romantic fiction to graphic novels by Deena Mohamed – Muslim women authors are embracing popular fiction forms and genres.

This panel aims to explore the possibilities presented in immanent, paralinguistic expressions which evade or function parallel to and beyond the realm of structured grammar and logics of exchange. Edouard Glissant, in Caribbean Discourse, teaches us that in the beginning was not the word, but sound. He writes, “the spoken imposes on the slave its particular syntax. For Caribbean man, the word is First and foremost sound. Noise is essential to speech . . .

2024 CONFERENCE THEME: BUILDING ALLIANCES
 

(A)rchival endeavors should not be about documenting the past, nor even about imagining the future…but about building a liberatory now. 

-Michelle Caswell, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (2021, 13)

CFP: JEWISH STUDIES UNIT
Jewish Interfaith, Intercultural, and Intersectional Engagements
Unit Chairs: Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada
                     Alexander Marcus, University of Pennsylvania

Call for Papers

Contemporary Pagans in Public Interaction:

Constructing Religion in Central and Eastern Europe

We are seeking papers for a peer-reviewed edited volume, to be published by Bloomsbury Press with the editor Eglė Aleknaitė, Vytautas Magnus University (egle.aleknaite@vdu.lt).