This collection of critical essays explores how contemporary British authors engage with the theme of crisis in their fiction (as apparent in novels and short stories by Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, A S Byatt, Graham Swift, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, Pat Barker, Martin Amis, among others.)

‘Crisis’ can be investigated not only as informing any aspect of fiction involving sociopolitical and cultural systems, but also as a mode of challenge to established power structures and modes of representationacross narrative traditions.

Submissions should focus on one or more of the aforementioned major contemporary British authors (though you are welcome to propose additional British authors who explore the theme of crisis).

This panel holds space for depictions of embodied practices/practices of agency in bodies of women of color, queer, nonbinary, trans, and other subjectivities in postcolonial literature and literatures of the Global South. What is the relation between the body and exercising agency? How might we think of these practices as embodied and embodying: as practices done in/through/by the body, as well as practices that reify the body? What are the limitations of these projects, and to what degree are they successful? How might these practices be adopted by readers outside of the text?

CALL FOR PAPERS

Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan

Palazzo Arese-Borromeo (Cesano Maderno), September 23th - 24th 2021 

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

The conference will take place physically at Palazzo Arese-Borromeo in Cesano Maderno (25 minutes from the city center of Milan), but will also be streamed on Microsoft Teams.

To attend online, click on the following links:

Laverne Cox’s debut role in Orange Is The New Black seemed to usher in a new era for trans representation. In 2014, TIME decreed that the “Trans Tipping Point” had arrived and heralded a path to trans acceptance through visibility on the screen. Yet this increase in visibility has not formed an antidote to rampant transphobia. In 2021, thirty-three states have introduced 117 bills to limit and curtail the rights of trans people across the United States. Public incidents of transphobia are on the rise. In this panel, we consider the effects of hypervisibility in a time of public transphobia across media, and critically consider what the task of representation entails.

**DEADLINE EXTENDED! Proposals Welcome Until Sessions Are Filled**

Please note: This cfp updates and expands the parameters of the session previously titled "Nnedi Okorafor: Destruction and Wholeness." We now welcome papers encompassing other authors of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism, and Afrofuturist authors dealing with similar themes. The deadline has also been extended.

118th Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas: "CITY OF GOD, CITY OF DESTRUCTION" (Thursday, November 11 - Sunday, November 14, 2021 at Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, hosted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Call For Submissions

The editors and editorial board of MLQ: A Journal of Literary History invite submissions of topical, short-form essays on literary history and the crises, clarities, and opportunities of the present moment for an ongoing special series, “Present Tense: Literary History in Our Time.” 

Panel Description: While the foundations of positive psychology can be traced back deeply into the twentieth century (Maslow; Fromm; Ryff; Diener), the trend really took off in 1998 with Martin Seligman’s presidential address to the APA. Since then, a wealth of research has explored the salutary effects of positivity, with emphasis on the independent skills one can cultivate to flourish (Duckworth; Seligman; Compton & Hoffman). Over decades of use, this thinking has seeped into our daily lives, with common phrases telling us to “look on the bright side,” “put a smile on,” and “live, laugh, love.”

Call for Papers: Between Worlds: Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Women Writers and Religious Identity

Edited by LuElla D’Amico and Lindsay Katzir

We are delighted to announce that the research group Staging National Abjection: Theatre and Politics in Turkey and its Diasporas is resuming its webinar series in Fall 2021.

This year, part of our webinar series will highlight the work of emerging scholars in the broader field of theatre and performance studies, particularly the scholarship on performance and politics.

We invite papers and works-in-progress by MA and PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars. The duration of the webinars will be approximately one hour. Participants can submit proposals for:

• a 30-minute presentation for individual papers

Call for Abstracts for 53rd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (March 10-13, 2021 Baltimore, MD)

Dear Colleagues, 

*Please submit your 250-300 word abstract at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/login*

Queer(ing) Survival during the Sixth Extinction

Chair: Bradley Harmon (Johns Hopkins University)

Call for Papers: 

The University of East Anglia, UK, is proud to announce an international symposium dedicated to the writing of Lee Child, a key figure in contemporary crime fiction, and creator of the world-renowned Jack Reacher series. Hosted by the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing and by the British Archive for Contemporary Writing (BACW), this symposium celebrates the official opening of the archive of Child’s papers held at UEA. It also marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Killing Floor (1997), which introduced the inimitable Jack Reacher, whose fight for justice, on behalf of the vulnerable and oppressed, has become a series hallmark.