Call for Papers - Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture
Extended Deadline: April 21st, 2021 (4/21/23)

Animals are the quotidian absolute Other. They are not inherently horrifying, dangerous, or invasive; nor do they have designs to usurp or subjugate humanity. In his lecture-turned-book The Animal That Therefore I Am, Derrida critiques the use of the word “animal” to describe an almost limitless array of creatures. “Animal” becomes a catch-all term for everything that is otherwise than human–and not the biological entity, but a specific, constructed hegemonic entity. 

CFP for Peace, Literature, and Pedagogy Panel

MMLA 2023, November 2-5, Cincinnati, OH

Abstract Deadline: May 10, 2023

General Conference Topic: "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy"

The Midwest Modern Language Association welcomes, especially but not exclusively, proposals dealing with any aspect of the theme "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy" for the 2023 conference. Please find a general description of this theme here: 

https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/callforpapers/

How does modern poetry enact a paradox of emotion? This MLA 2024 special session invites proposals exploring ambivalence, co-existence or contradiction of emotive states in modern/late modern/postmodern poetics. Broader interpretations of the theme are certainly welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Joy/Sorrow
• Emotional valences
• Mood
• Somatic/Carnal
• Intimacy
• Hope/Loss
• Pride/Shame
• Emotion/Logic
• Trauma
• Embodied knowledge
• Perception
• Temporality
• Phenomenology of emotions

Kindly submit your abstract (250-350 words) as well as a short bio by Monday, March 20th to:

We invite papers for our 2024 MLA Convention session examining Lessing’s critiques of colonialism and/or neocolonialism, especially in conversation with post-colonial African women writers from Aidoo, Gordimer, Dangarembga, and Vera to Gappah, Bulawayo, and Mbue. 250-word abstracts and brief bio requested.

Constructions of Identity 11 - Transmission

Department of English Language and Literature

Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania)

Conference dates: 18-20 May 2023

Conference venue: Faculty of Letters, 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca

Conference website: Transmission: Constructions of Identity XI – Event Landing Page (ubbcluj.ro)

Extended deadline for proposals: 10 April 2023

Adaptation

Saint Louis University—Madrid April 21-22

Adaptation is a term that bridges the divide between literature and evolution. Texts are adapted to speak to new circumstances as time advances and younger writers, directors, actors, artists, and audiences seek connections to a mutable culture. Likewise, organisms adapt over generations to better suit their circumstance.

Transgender Embodiment: 1400-1700 (June 2nd): DEADLINE EXTENDED

University of York, UK (Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies)

Keynote: Prof Melissa Sanchez (University of Pennsylvania)

The Center for American Studies at the University of Bucharest 

and the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

invite proposals for their annual student conference on the topic

America in the Global World 

to be held online and in person

The climate crisis posits a major threat to the anthropocene regardless of geopolitical boundaries. However, Eurocentric discourses seldom acknowledge the resource exploitation that fuels climate change. This panel seeks to explore works of literature that highlight such instances of resource exploitation in the postcolony vis-à-vis the ideas of security and insecurity in the times of an emergent climate crisis. With a special focus on the specters of neocolonialism that threaten the security of postcolonial ecospheres, this panel seeks to decolonize the discourses of climate change that refuse to address the role played by Western ideology and capital in the rendering insecure of ecologies in the postcolony.  

Histories of Earth Sciences:

visual and interdisciplinary approaches amid an environmental crisis

For decades now, the history of Earth sciences has been a ground for the development of interdisciplinary research. Historians and scientists from different disciplines have been contributing with methodologies coming from the history of institutions, art history, visual studies, material studies, geoscientific fields (such as integrating geoscientific iconography or retreating historical fieldwork), philosophy, gender studies, the history of literature, political and colonial histories, disciplinary histories, and history of fieldwork.

Please send in your abstracts for a special panel proposed by me for MLA 2024: "Speculative Fiction and Work: Histories, Futures and Resilience" This panel examines speculative/sci-fi re-imaginings of the exploitation of laboring, vulnerable bodies to serve an extractive society and their resistances. How to envision a socially just future shaped for and by precarious labor? Please submit 250-word abstracts by 25 March, 2023 to schanda32@gatech.edu  Full description: This panel traces the interconnected histories and future of labor, vulnerable populations, and their resilience. In a post-pandemic era the definition of work has undergone a sea change with the constant threat of automation.

Abstract/Panel submission deadline: May 21, 2023.

Conference dates: September 22-23, 2023.

Venue: Film and media space “Planeta“, A. Goštauto str. 2, Vilnius

Mode of participation: In person only

Conference language: English

Organizers:

Vilnius Academy of Arts

Lithuanian Cultural Research Institute

Vilnius International Documentary Film Festival

Partner: International Network for Small Cinemas

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr. Laura Rascaroli, Professor, University College Cork

"I've struggled a long time with survivin', but no matter what you have to find something to fight for."- Joel, The Last of Us