While fantasy fiction has become incredibly popular and prolific in these last few decades, the appeal of fantastical literature dates back to antiquity, as mythologies, legends, and encounters with the supernatural have formed a large part of narrative traditions in every culture and language. This companion seeks to update and address underexamined areas of fantasy fiction, with the chief aim to provide a global introduction to English-language and English-translation fantasy fiction. This collection will focus on the contemporary written word (narrative prose) produced in late 20th and early 21st century.

American Literature Association

May 26-29, 2022

Palmer House, Chicago, Illinois

In an effort to organize a new Richard Wright Society, this call announces two sessions on Wright, along with an organizing meeting, to take place at the 33rd Annual American Literature Association Conference.

Roundtable: Richard Wright’s Place in the Canon

There Can Be Only One.  This phrase was made popular 35 years ago with the release of Highlander, a fantasy action-adventure film directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Christophe Lambert, Sean Connery, and Clancy Brown.  While it did not turn a profit during its theatrical release, it did become a cult film inspiring several sequels, three television series, original novels, comic books, audio books, video games, a web series, collectibles, musical scores, and a loyal fandom who have successfully organized a number of Highlander fan conventions.  

ASMCF-SSFH Postgraduate Study Day 2022

Call for papers - Images: Past & Present 

A virtual study day to be held on 23 April 2022

Keynote: To Be Confirmed

What happens when the images come into the world? With or without its consent, civil society has been constantly imaged, recorded, documented, archived and exhibited. This omnipresence of images created, circulated, and displayed merits an analysis of the multiplicity of its forms and its roots.

Often drawing from religious mythology, fantastic literature has been intricately linked to religious themes since before the mid-twentieth century, when Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, a religious allegory (although he insisted that it was not), and Tolkien formulated his understanding of fantasy as a sub-creation. In His Dark Materials (1995-2000), Philip Pullman creates a New Eve and imagines a frail deity no longer in control. A myriad of fantastic fiction — such as Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (1996) and Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) — also looks at the displacement or immigration of old gods as well as the creation of new ones.

There have been several recent studies of literary writing as something that crosses between secular artistry and religious practice, for example Kyle Garton-Gundling’s Enlightened Individualism: Buddhism and Hinduism in American Literature from the Beats to the Present and Avram Alpert’s  A Partial Enlightenment: What Modern Literature and Buddhism Can Teach Us About Living Well Without Perfection. The writers who are discussed in relation to Buddhism and other religions spreading from Asia to the West has increased since the Beats were the “usual suspects,” but it was surprising that Buddhism was rarely mentioned in the recent obituaries of bell hooks.

Please consider applying to the forthcoming National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on continuity and change in the production, dissemination, and reading of Western European books during the 200 years following the advent of printing with movable type. The seminar will pose the governing question of whether the advent of printing was a necessary precondition for the Protestant Reformation. Participants will consider ways in which elements such as book layout, typography, illustration, and paratext (e.g., prefaces, glosses, and commentaries) shaped the responses of readers.

CFP: Paneled Scaffolding: Reflecting on Building and Sustaining Comics Studies Programs, Library Collections, and Journals.

When, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), William Wordsworth insisted that an “overbalance of pleasure” entails the “circumstance of meter,” he confirmed a philosophical assumption far older than Kant's theory of the sublime. The pervasive assumption—which, today, can be tracked in an on-going 

“affective turn” (necessarily entangled in matters of form and style)—is that the artificial makes possible an understanding of the natural. 

The 2nd International Conference on Medical Humanities in the Middle East (online)
April 9-10, 2022

In collaboration with the Open Access journals of Frontiers (www.frontiersin.org) we are bringing together a selected group of international experts to contribute to an article collection:

"Towards 2030: Sustainable Development Goal 1: No Poverty. A Sociological Perspective"

Submission Deadlines:

31 March 2022 - Abstract

15 June 2022 - Manuscript

Visit the collection homepage for the full description of the project:

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/30648/

Call for Papers

Conjugal Relationships: An Assessment of Sino / West Discourse and Aesthetics

“The Politics of Sound” - Intersections | Cross-sections (IS|CS) Annual Graduate Conference 2022

Presented by the joint graduate program in Communication & Culture , at X* University & York University

March 18th - 19th, 2022 - Virtual and in-person programming.

Call for presentations: “The Politics of Sound”

Deadline for submissions: Monday January 10th, 11:59pm EST.

The Ernest Hemingway Society

American Literature Association Conference

May 26-29, 2022

Chicago, IL

Documenting the Author: Examining the Role of and Impact of Author-Based Documentaries

This past April, the highly anticipated documentary, Hemingway (2021), premiered on PBS, coupled with watch parties and much discussion of reactions to the film.  The reception of the documentary spurred debate, provided new perspectives of Hemingway through visual footage and images, and perhaps most importantly, presented the author’s life and work to a public audience, inviting both casual and dedicated readers to watch and learn.