The publication of Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism in 1957, in some ways, marked the end of New Criticism. The two approaches—structuralism and New Criticism—represent two ways of seeing texts as unities, yet produce entirely different views on key issues, such as how texts might be grouped together, the importance of historical context to the literary text, and the role of broader cultural systems in shaping a text’s meaning. We might wonder now whether or not these issues and ideas from New Criticism and structuralism, rooted in mid-20th century literary theory, continue to offer valuable insights and methodologies.

With the changing social realities alongside rapid innovation in science and technology, there is a sharp paradigm shift in academia in terms of research, especially in humanities. This shift can be considered a radical change in the core concepts. It is imperative to absorb the very meaning of paradigm shift. The term paradigm shift was coined by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in the context of revolutions in natural science. What is remarkable about Khun’s thought process is that in his book, Kuhn propounded the idea that theories have a social character and approaches them as social constructions that contain historical traces of the time and place in which they were generated.

Steve Tomasula: The Art of Representation

June 12 and 13 2025, The University of Chicago in Paris, in the presence of the author

Keynote speakers: David Banash (Western Illinois University), Mary K. Holland (State University of New York, New Paltz)

Organized jointly by several institutions (Université Paris Cité, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Sorbonne Université, Université de Rennes, Université de Rouen, Université de Strasbourg), this is the first international conference devoted to the work of Steve Tomasula.

I'm writing to share the CFPs for the two Eudora Welty Society sessions that will be featured at the 2025 American Literature Association Conference in Boston at the Westin Copley Place (May 21-24, 2025). ******************** 1. Welty’s Sheltered Daring and Furtive FeminismEudora Welty concludes her literary autobiography One Writer’s Beginnings with the self-summation, “[a]s you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring comes from within” (104).

This is a Call for Papers for a special issue of the online open-access double-blind peer-reviewed journal [Inter]sections, titled Laughing in the Face of Evil: Humorous Perspectives on Perpetrators in Contemporary American Literature and Popular Culture. We invite papers that ask what humor can contribute to our understanding of perpetrators by examining a selection of works from contemporary American literature and popular culture. Does humor help demythologize certain perpetrators whose international fame turned them into quasi-mythical figures? Can the ownership of humorous content about a traumatic situation or process endured by a specific marginalized community be transferred to other communities?

The way we imagine, represent, and signify the relations between empire and environment significantly shapes contemporary discourses on climate change, development, and globalization. Colonial and neoliberal legacies produce a “combined and uneven development” of the world system, resulting in hierarchies of metropolitan and peripheral relations. The elemental composition of environments (such as air, water, soil, and fire) in literary and cultural forms maps the intensification of these uneven relations under the capitalist mode of production. Jason Moore argues that the economy and environment are not independent of each other and posits that capitalism is a way of organizing nature (2015).

Conference online: 17-18 October 2024

Scientific Committee:

Professor Wojciech Owczarski – University of Gdańsk, Poland

Dr. Ricardo Rato Rodrigues –  Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland

CFP:

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Since coalescing into a formal discipline in the 1970s, Translation Studies has both hinged upon and facilitated conversations about power. For better or for worse, the movement of a text from one form into another necessitates reflection upon hierarchy, periphery, and justice. From Spivak's native informant, to Chamberlain's feminist critiques of canonical translation theory, to Venuti's identification of translation as a seeking of utopia, analyses of the connection between (dis)empowerment and translation abound. However, what happens to and with translation when disempowered actors seek agency? How can translation be examined, utilized, and conceptualized when disempowerment demands revolution?

HENRY MILLER'S PLACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

From 16-19 October of 2025, Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal and the

Henry Miller MemorialLibrary will host aconference at Asilomar in Pacific Grove,

California, with an excursion to the Henry MillerMemorial Library in Big Sur. We will

examine Miller in light of contemporary thinking, asking the question: Is Henry

Miller relevant today?

Although presentations on any aspect of Miller's writing, artwork, and life are

welcomed, the conference organizers particularlyencourage consideration of the

theme of Miller's place in the 21st Century.

Topics for presentations might include, but are not limited to:

Speculative fiction creators regularly interrogate the question of who/what is entitled to human rights. As the created, grown, augmented, and manufactured beings of imagination become more sentient, is it ethical to maintain them as labor-saving devices or will they start to become entitled to, or even demand, rights? Is there a Posthuman Rights Movement in our future or a post “human rights” movement? How will this movement accommodate already-existing arguments for the rights of non-human beings, such as the rights of animals, corporations, and even fetuses, while accounting for humans who are not entitled to human rights? Does one need a human-ish form to deserve rights including around one’s labor?

Weeks after the death of Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro this year, her daughter Andrea Skinner disclosed the longstanding sexual abuse she'd suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather, Munro’s husband, Gerald Fremlin—abuse about which Munro had known and stayed silent. The disclosure is but the latest revelation to throw into question the legacy of a revered cultural icon. Neil Gaiman, Louis CK, Jean Vanier, and Avital Ronell are only a few public figures to be reassessed in recent years in the wake of accounts of sexual abuse.

Call for Papers: Journal of Contemporary Painting

Special Issue: ‘The Curatorial and Painting’, Issue 12.1

Journal of Contemporary Painting invites submissions for issue 12.1 (to be published in April 2026) on the theme ‘The Curatorial and Painting’.

For the issue of JCP ‘The Curatorial and Painting’, we want to explore the contexts made for painting to be shown and painting’s impact on those contexts. We are interested in two ways of understanding an exchange between painting and the curatorial: through spatial/durational dimensions and through social practices.

Potential themes include:

The roundtable addresses the field of 18th-century-centered digital humanities and digitization projects through the lens of labor, service, and alt-ac career prospects. Extending out of previous ASECS panels on Transkribus-a-thons, challenges in digitization, and collaborative work in DH, this roundtable proposes to focus more closely on these issues in specifically graduate and early career contexts, to ask questions such as “What are the skills required for digitization projects?” and “Do networking/alt-ac skills building opportunities in digitization outweigh the labor demands?

Firebrand Burns On!

Conference to Celebrate Firebrand Books

Ithaca College

April 18-19, 2025

From 1984 to 2000 editor Nancy Bereano working out of a tiny office in Ithaca, New York published 104 books, including some of the most influential LGBTQIA+ titles ever produced.  This two-day conference celebrates the achievements and legacy of Firebrand Books.  For a complete overview of Firebrand publications see https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07670.html. We invite papers on a variety of topics:

Discussions of the work of Firebrand authors, including: