Guest Editors: Dr. Eric Fure-Slocum, St. Olaf College, furesloc@stolaf.edu, Dr. Cristina Băniceru, West University of Timisoara, cristina.baniceru@e-uvt.ro, Dr. Loredana Bercuci, West University of Timisoara, loredana.bercuci@e-uvt.ro

Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence  (2001) was not a blockbuster in the sense of Jaws, E.T or Jurassic Park (the other films covered in this book series) – it did however make a heavy return on its near $100 million budget and received critical praise in the media. The film is the product of several authors: science fiction writer Brian Aldiss on whose short story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ (1969) the film was based; Stanley Kubrick, whose project it had been initially before passing it over to Spielberg in the wake of Jurassic park, Spielberg made and released the film two years after Kubrick’s death.

We are looking to round out our collected volume of critical essays in American popular culture from 1865-1940,  that examine how women vigilantes, anti-heroines and outlaws of this era were represented in movie serials, radio dramas, films, comics, theater, and pulp fiction.  We are seeking at least one additional chapter. The majority of the book is set, and we are in contract with a peer-review publisher.  We are on a tight deadline, so preference will be given to papers that are already in progress that are a good fit for this collection. 

CFP: Medievalism in Popular Culture

PCA/ACA 2024 National Conference

March 27-30, Chicago, IL (In-Person)

The Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (including Early to Later Middle Ages, Robin Hood, Arthurian Legend, Chaucer, Norse, and other materials connected to medieval studies) accepts papers on all topics that explore either popular culture during the Middle Ages or transcribe some aspect of the Middle Ages into the popular culture of later periods. These representations can occur in any genre, including film, television, novels, graphic novels, gaming, advertising, art, etc. For this year’s conference, I would like to encourage submissions on some of the following topics:

Call for Papers, CEA 2024: Atlanta

53rd Annual Conference | March 21–23, 2024

Westin Buckhead Atlanta

TRANSFORMATIONS

ABSTRACTS DUE: NOVEMBER 1, 2023

JOIN CEA IN ATLANTA!

Ninth Annual Post45 Graduate Symposium

Concordia University and McGill University

March 22nd-23rd, 2024

Submission deadline: December 1st, 2023

Keynote Faculty: Mary Esteve (Concordia) and Alexander Manshel (McGill)

Violence surrounds us, sometimes visibly (in times of conflict and wars, directly or mediated through images), and sometimes invisibly, as part of a statistic. With the increasingly extremist rhetoric on parts of the US political spectrum, the so-called “culture wars,” violent hate crimes against LBTQ+ people have surged in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pacific-Asians and Asian-Americans were targeted because of xenophobia and conspiracy theories. Similarly, the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were met with violent responses from authorities. Additionally, mass and school shootings hit an all-time high for two years in a row between 2021 and 2022.

Authorship in a Global and Transnational Context30-31 May 2024, KU Leuven (Belgium)

Spiritual Responses to American Literary Modernism~ Call for Chapter Proposals

At the end of 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, explored the crises of a new generation who had “grown up to find all Gods dead… all faiths in man shaken.” Scholars and theologians concur that American literature, like the culture at large, was undergoing a passage from a spiritual to a secular outlook throughout the 1920s and 30s. This transition was so dramatic and widespread that that the years between 1925-1935 have been termed “the American Religious Depression.” Indeed, many texts from these two decades present their own version of the larger cultural secularization thesis.

Conference online: 26-27 October 2023

CFP:

We invite submissions for an online conference that focuses on queerness in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction or other mythopoeic work. This can be queer representation within the work or engaging with mythopoeia through queer theory. “Queerness” is an intentionally ambiguous term, demonstrating the diversity of queer experiences, and the necessity of situating queerness as a liminal, complex paradigm. Queer theory is wider than the study of gender identity or sexuality, extending to taking positions against normativity and dominant modes of thought, and engaging with the indefinite. 

Aspects of this topic might include but are certainly not limited to any of the following:

Tolkien at UVM 2024!

The Psychologies of Middle-earth

Saturday, April 13, 2024 (8:30-5:30)

University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05401

(Hybrid Conference: In-person and virtual/ TEAMS)

This is our 20th annual conference. The theme is The Psychologies of Middle-earth. We are excited to have Dr Sara Brown as our keynote!

Abstracts can cover various applications of psychology including myth, religion, art, sexuality, world building, race and ethnicity, feminism,

queer theory, class consciousness, ideology, PTSD, trauma, desire, disability, and much more.  

Time and again, Shakespeare demonstrates the frailty and contingency of the many historical and “imagined” communities (Anderson) that feature in his works. Many of his plays revolve around the conflict between individuals and society, depicting the bonds between friends, lovers, family members or even whole nations being put to the test by desire, jealousy, and ambition. If Shakespeare’s communities are unstable to begin with, then discussions of diversity bring to light that very instability even further. His works have been both hailed for showcasing the universality of human nature and critiqued for implicitly reinforcing a Western, Eurocentric world view.

CALL FOR PAPERS

FLUID ENCOUNTERS | RENCONTRES FLUIDES

April 19-20, 2024

Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island

In Sylvie Germain's 1985 novel, Le Livre des Nuits, bodily fluids serve as potent metaphors for the transmission of trauma from parent to child. Tears, milk, and blood become powerful symbols of familial relations. The exchange of bodily fluids has long represented human relationships, where substances like breastmilk, saliva, and sexual fluids metonymically represent the bodies they originate from and the relationships they form and sustain.