Yale Africa-China Symposium: Cultural Dimensions           Date: 14-15 March 2024 

Venue: School of Arts and Communication, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo Mozambique 

Call for Papers: Panel, "Naturalizing the Normative in the Eighteenth Century," ASECS 54th Annual Meeting (Toronto, April 4-6)

Deadline: September 15th, 2023

Villainous Science: Cloning, Experimentation, and Hybridization in Transmedia Cultures and Storytelling

Conference Information

The 2023 Northeast Popular Culture Association (a.k,a. NEPCA) will host its annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 12-Saturday, October 14. Thursday’s session will be held in the late afternoon-evening (EST), Friday’s session will be held mid-afternoon into the evening (EST), and Saturday’s session will be from morning until midday (EST).

Call For Expressions of Interest

Transcribe-a-thon: Towards a Collaborative Transcription of a Medieval Ovidian Commentary

(A virtual workshop at Kalamazoo ICMS 2024)

The Societas Ovidiana invites participants to a Medieval Ovidian Transcribe-a-thon.

In this workshop, we will collaboratively develop a transcription of a previously-unstudied medieval manuscript of Ovid. We invite those with an interest in any area of textual scholarship to collaborate.

Go Slow Now, or A Dream Deferred: William Faulkner and Civil Rights

Call for Panel Papers at the 2024 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference “Faulknerian Anniversaries” 

July 21-25, 2024

 University of Mississippi

 Organised by the Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network

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.