CONFERENCE CALL

MELOW 2021

THE 21st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF

MELOW (THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE MULTI-ETHNIC LITERATURES OF THE WORLD)

to be organized by

SHOOLINI UNIVERSITY, SOLAN, HP, INDIA, https://shooliniuniversity.com/ 

FROM 12 TO 14 NOVEMBER 2021

CONFERENCE THEME: ILLNESS, HEALING, AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION

Dark academia is a recently emerging term of phrase describing not only an aesthetic within popular culture but also a type of genre involving an academic background, elements of the gothic, and the spectacular. Like the speculative supergenre, dark academia often borrows freely from other literary and cultural categorizations, in the way of crime fiction, classical Greek & British mythologies, artistic aesthetics, paranormalcy, romance, villainy, stoicism, and posthumanism. Oftentimes within dark academia, the Other represents a romanticized villain and/or monster with whom the reader and reviewer empathizes with. Through this romanticization, we often find that nostalgia for a colonial history takes centerstage.

This panel will explore the many existing and potential connections between video games and the literary world. Many leading games have explicitly referred to works of literature, either within their storyworlds or in their marketing (for instance, Bioshock’s interactive rebuttal of Ayn Rand’s ideas). More broadly, emerging video game theory has often defined itself either by analogy or by opposition to existing concepts from literary theory. Book genres such as the choose-your-own adventure format (eg. Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series) have also anticipated video gaming, and in turn been remastered as games using the same text and narrative structure.

In his 1962 essay, “The Creative Process,” James Baldwin writes, “A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven. . .The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.” The link between artist and activist illustrates the import of black public voices that challenge institutions of white supremacy, gender oppression, and systemic dehumanization. Historically, artists have critiqued, documented, and contextualized racial violence to ensure that the past is not forgotten and to reshape the nation’s consciousness.

As Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff argue in Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, genres are not mere “text types,” buckets that writers fill with familiar conventions, but dynamic “social actions” that exist in activity systems (3, 78). And as suggested by contemporary texts across modes and media, for instance Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (which blends features of comics, autobiography, comedy, and tragedy) or Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (which merges conventions of horror movies and westerns), contemporary authors and artists appear to be increasingly invested in the work of challenging genre conventions and meshing genres.

Call for Papers

Title: Peer Review and the Pandemic
Deadline: 1 September 2021

Heroes, Rebels and Outlaws: Escapism and 19thC Literature

International Seminar
1st & 4th Sunday (July,August,September 2021)

Course Facilitator: Olga Akroyd , Ph.D 

Contact|Touch

Plenary Speakers:

Hussein Fancy, Department of History, Yale University

Elina Gertsman, Department of Art and Art History, Case Western Reserve University

CFP: Modern Drama special issue -- 'Teaching Modern Drama'Abstracts due June 15 Send abstracts of ~ 300 words to guest editor Jennifer Buckley (jennifer-buckley@uiowa.edu)Since its founding in 1958, Modern Drama has offered innovative scholarship on dramatic literature to higher education professionals in theatre, literature, language, and adjacent disciplines.

South Atlantic Modern Language Association, November 4-6, 2021, Atlanta, GAAtlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel and Conference Center
https://samla.memberclicks.net/

NeMLA's 53rd Convention will be held in Baltimore, MD between March 10-13, 2022. More information here: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html

Call for Papers

Essays and Studies, the journal of the Department of English, Jadavpur University invites scholarly essays for its non-themed issue to be published in 2022. Faculty members and researchers (specializing in Literature/English Literature) in India and abroad are requested to send us by 31 July 2021 a 500 word abstract indicating the subject/focus of their essays. The authors of the selected abstracts will receive a confirmation email by 21 August 2021. They will then be expected to mail in their essays by 30 November 2021.

CALL FOR PAPERS

OMNES: The Journal of Multicultural Society, 11(2)

ISSN: 2093-5498 (Print) / 2671-969X (Online)

We are currently accepting manuscripts for OMNES: The Journal of Multicultural Society Vol.11 No.2 that will be published on July 31, 2021. To be considered for the upcoming issue, OMNES 11(2), please submit your manuscript by May 30, 2021.

About the Journal

Extended Call for Papers: Erasure and the Environment Conference
Loughborough University, 16-17th September 2021
Keynote Address: Prof. David Herd (University of Kent)