The centenary of Proust’s death next year is neither the only, nor the first event in honour of the author of In Search of Lost Time. This year, for instance, we celebrate the 150th birthday of his birth while, in 2013, the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way was marked by a number of festivities. In its celebratory dimension, this upcoming centenary may seem more apt for initiatives conducted under the ambit of French Studies than under that of semiotics or narratology. However, we believe that it offers an opportunity for a broader, trans-disciplinary reflection.

Asian American immigrants’ heterogeneity in their countries of departure, race, ethnicity, and class characterizes different immigrant experiences -- ranging from “voluntary” immigration to dislocation directly caused by wars and imperialism. What is the role of literature in preserving the history of their movements? How does literature reimagine the history of these marginalized subjects? What is the significance of narrating Asian American immigration history through literary forms? What do the stories of these subjects -- immigrants, refugees, undocumented immigrants, elite cosmopolitan, and many more -- suggest the meaning of belonging in the Americas? 

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Defining the Human in Environmental Humanities

Venice International University

Following the various calls for a more global perspective on the eighteenth century at ASECS 2021, this panel seeks papers on the work of Japanese author Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693). In her 2016 book, The Age of Silver, Ning Ma discusses Saikaku as the most significant representative figure of the “stories of the floating world” that, she argues, should be seen as an emergence of realist fiction. A bestseller in 17th and 18th century Japan, Saikaku’s work fell into obscurity until a revival of interest in the late 19th century, when he became known as “Japan’s realist”.

***Extended Deadline***

The editors have received several requests for extra time: balancing teaching, designing, and researching during the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge with which we fully empathize. It is also an opportunity to invite others to participate, and we welcome additional proposals.  Updated proposal deadline, November 1, 2021.

* * *

Call for Proposals
Tabletop Teaching: Board Games and Social Justice

In the wake of COVID, some workers have been deemed essential, forced to put their lives at risk to keep the market moving or care for those with the means to stay off the frontlines. While these jobs may be crucial, those who perform them are frequently treated as exchangeable.Yet as workers have become interchangeable, a fantastical contrast has emerged in the form of the non-fungible token (NFT): at the same time that stable employment and livable wages have been cut in the interest of profit, digital creations become irreplaceable tokens of payment. The catastrophic impact of the pandemic shows which systems of exchange are malleable or fluid and which remain brittle or stagnant.

Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan

Palazzo Arese-Borromeo, Cesano Maderno

September 23rd- 24th 2021

Organizing Institution: Centro ICONE / Facoltà di Filosofia

Organizers: Raffaele Ariano (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan),
Paolo Babbiotti (University of Turin).

Website: https://cavellretrospective.wixsite.com/september2021

Call for Papers: American Journal of Play Special Issue on Vygotsky and Play 

Guest Editors: Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, Tools of the Mind 

Deadlines: 

Abstracts (300 words): December 15, 2021 

Full papers (5,000 to 10,000 words), if accepted: April 15, 2022 

British Women Writers Conference 2022
May 19-21, 2022 | Baylor University

The organizers of the 2022 BWWC invite papers and panel proposals interpreting the theme of “Borders” in 18th- and 19th-century British women’s writing. In response to the 2021 BWWC “Reorientations,” panels and papers on topics related to race and ethnicity are especially welcome.

Coercion in work is a universal human experience that can be found in manifold forms of labour relations, both contemporary and historical. The analysis of coercive mechanisms in labour relations draws on various disciplinary approaches, mediums and tools.

Conference on the Sympathetic Imagination: Literature, Film, and Writing of Sympathy and Empathy

Call for Presentation Proposals

Auburn University at Montgomery

February 24-25, 2022

Sponsored by the Association of College English Teachers of Alabama and Auburn University at Montgomery

In this seminar, we wish to examine how people of different positionalities vis a vis the ‘center’ and ‘peripheries’ of modern research universities, practice comparative literary studies within institutions which, from the start, were built upon the logic of exclusion and exclusionary tactics.  The “modern university” stands in a long tradition of colonial and racialized traditions of knowledge-making which purported to be secular and universalizable.

A Critical Companion to Wes Craven

edited by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and John Darowski

Part of the Critical Companion to Popular Directors series edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna

Latinx Visions

Speculative Worlds in

Latinx Literature, Art, Performance, and Protest 

The University of New Mexico

March 9-11, 2023

Keynote Speaker:

Lysa Rivera

Associate Professor

Western Washington University

Conference Organizers:

Cathryn Merla-Watson

Matthew David Goodwin 

Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez

Call for Papers: “Latinx Visions”