“The Art of Losing”: Loss in Literature and Film

Panel Session, NeMLA’s 54th Annual Convention in Niagara Falls, March 23-26

In her iconic poem “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop writes of “the art of losing.” The poem’s speaker first recounts the loss of small things such as “lost door keys” and “an hour badly spent”; then, the losses grow in import: “my mother’s watch,” “three loved houses,” “two cities,” “two rivers, a continent,” and finally, “even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love).”

Fandom flourishes thanks greatly in part to the contributions made by members of marginalized communities. From fanfictions based on queer readings of the original material, to fan art depicting BIPOC character headcanons, fandom has given people the opportunity to engage with media in ways that are oftentimes more inclusive than the original text itself. 

Conference: 28-29 July 2022 (online - via Zoom)

CFP: 

​In our postmodern world there are a lot of questions that should be re-considered and re-defined. What does it mean to fight against colonialism and racism in the world of migration crisis and xenophobic attitudes towards minorities? What does it mean to be a postcommunist country in the face of the common nostalgia for order and rules? How is it possible to have a national identity being aware of the relative character of every national feature?

This roundtable engages what Dylan Rodríguez coins the “Carceral Dilemma of Asian American Studies,” wherein the discipline and the parallel social formation of the “model minority” figure have expanded anti-Black state violence under the guise of a multicultural civil society.

An interdisciplinary invitation and gathering, this roundtable is a space for diasporic academics to reflect on how abolitionist theory and practice informs their scholarship and pedagogy, and how this political orientation is conducted and constrained within the neoliberal university.

Over the past twenty years, refugee studies has turned toward a critical encounter with the legal studies framework that had previously dominated it. Scholars such as those in the Critical Refugee Studies Collective have emphasized the position of refugee as one that creates new forms of relationship across spaces and times unbound (but not unmarked) by the state.

The seminar is interested in looking at papers that deal with the life of Dalits from a phenomenological perspective. The Dalit identity is not frigid. The politics of othering, the notion of subjectivity, the internationalization of caste, caste and cinema, music, art, and other mediums are areas that researchers can explore. Papers that are rooted in the local understanding of caste as a Global/ Indian problem are welcome. Responses that deal with ways to adapt the young generation to the thought of Ambedkar and propose ethical ways to deal with the question of caste are expected. Scholars from literature, political science, media studies, cultural studies, and aesthetics are welcome to make submissions.

philosophia naturalis
Making Sense of Relations and Realities

What is certain is that change is a perennial feature of our human experiences.  Yet, both imposed changes (aging, catastrophes, geopolitical change) and changes initiated by the individual for personal reasons (career, educational, family-based, among others). Is there a generalization of the notion of change?  In which ways is it possible to address the diversity of changes taking place in the immediacy of transformation?  This panel invites participants to engage in the concept of change applicable to diverse situations.  

What are the benefits and risks of change?

For close to seven hundred years, Gawain has been a favorite hero in Arthurian myth, especially when it comes to his legendary accomplishments—and faults—in Gawain and the Green Knight. No matter how much readers may root for him in his quest with the Green Knight, many of us can’t help but wonder…what if? All of that changed with David Lowery’s 2021 film, The Green Knight, which presents viewers with an abundance of scenarios that many of us haven’t even anticipated. In doing so, Lowery has forever altered the way scholars approach the medieval poem.

Call for Papers

 Edited Volume on Disney and the Middle Ages

We invite proposals for an edited collection of essays on medievalism in Disney media for Brepols’ new series Reinterpreting the Middle Ages: From Medieval to Neo. The Walt Disney Company's films, theme parks, and merchandise are full of people, places, and things coded as “medieval,” and because Disney's medievalism is often coded as white and Christian, it is especially relevant to medieval studies' ongoing struggle with white supremacy within and outside the field.

Call for Papers

Taylor Sheridan's Wests

As a sport, basketball follows a certain set of rules and conventions which serve as a framework for players, coaches, and teams to play the sport. By their very nature, these rules are meritocratic which means that all participants are equal on the court, play by the same rules, and the only relevant (read as: game deciding) factors are effort, skill, and fortune. Such a perspective on basketball and sports leads certain fans and observers to statements such as “politics should be kept out of sports”.

PAMLA 2022 Los Angeles: “Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian”

November 11–13, 2022

Transcendentalist Geographies

Sponsored by the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society

Abstract

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society invites proposals for a panel on Transcendentalist ways of thinking and writing place and space. Contributions may address how figures such as Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller (among many others) conceptualized imaginary and concrete landscapes, interrogated the nature–culture divide, or explored new notions of dwelling. Papers on aesthetic, political, social, theological, or philosophical dimensions of the topic are all welcome.

Description

Trauma Informed Pedagogy for LGBQT+ Students in Higher Education

We are seeking an essay on trauma informed pedagogy in higher education specifically responsive to the traumas experienced by LGBTQ+ students.  The essay will become a chapter in a collection on trauma informed pedagogy for higher education. The book is currently under contract to be published by Routledge.  The collection is nearly complete, and a chapter addressing this topic will round out the book. The deadline for a draft of the completed essay is rather tight—August 1, 2022. If you are interested in submitting, please contact Ernest Stromberg at estromberg@csumb.edu.