We are seeking proposals for paper presentations (individual or special session) across all areas of film & media critical studies. Sessions will likely be organized topically and according to SCMLA's traditional Regular Sessions in 'English-language Film' and 'Global Film.' The topic is broadly conceived and open, and approaches may favor criticism, theory, history, or additional approaches.

One or more sessions in film and media studies will be held during the SCMLA annual meeting in New Orleans from 19-21 September 2024. Please see the general CFP for more information -- https://www.southcentralmla.org/conference/

With the advent of capitalism, always gendered and racialised, as a mode of production, profound changes have taken place in the ways in which various societies, human relations and ecosystems have evolved (Moore, 2016, Kaplan 2009). Technological development has always been integral to the directions and configurations of capitalism, as it has evolved over the last three centuries. Further, the globalisation of capitalism, with the imperialist phase of European expansionism, followed by US-American expansionism as well as later, in the emergence of Chinese state capitalism, has brought technology to the front and centre of social, economic and political relations at every level (Lewis, 2022).

The U.S. South is often a forgotten space within ecocritical discussions, yet it provides fruitful ground for thinking about environmental issues. In 2019, in the first edited collection of essays on the topic, Zachary Vernon notes that focusing attention on this bioregion might help “provide a way out of the limitations of thinking too locally or too globally,” and it might inspire a group of stakeholders to come to the table as well (7). One problem with ecocritical approaches is the long history of representing the U.S. South as an “internal other in the national imagination: colonized, subordinate, primitive, developmentally arrested, or even regressive” (Watson 254).

In 1971, when the Cuban government launched the Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution Crime Fiction award, local literary critics were acutely aware of the genre’s roots in a capitalist setting. Yet, José Antonio Portuondo considered that crime fiction could serve a purpose within a Communist framework of life, provided it underwent adaptation to suit the new context. Over the following years, Cuban journals published numerous programmatic texts aimed at guiding writers willing to produce what would be termed Revolutionary crime fiction. Similar adjustments took place in other Soviet bloc countries, albeit with varying degrees of success and popularity.

Special issue of American Studies in Scandinavia: Individuality and Community in Mid-Century American Culture (1945-1964)

https://www.sol.lu.se/engelska/innc

We are planning a peer-reviewed special issue of American Studies in Scandinavia focused on the topics of individuality and community in mid-century American culture (1945-1964), inviting explorations of the literature, film, art, and thought of the period. We seek 8,000-word articles that focus either on individual writers/artists/thinkers in the period or engage with the topic more broadly.

As part of the forthcoming Shakespeare and Race Festival at Shakespeare’s Globe, we are delighted to announce a two-day symposium to be held in London on 25-26 October 2024.  

Our festival theme is ‘Who Owns Shakespeare?’ and aims to examine the contested space that Shakespeare occupies in the world of theatre, academia and the public sphere.

We are inviting paper submissions for individual 45-minute sessions, which includes time for audience Q&A, engaging with the conference theme: ‘Who Owns Shakespeare?: Adaptation, Appropriation, Authority’.

Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following: 

Adaptation, appropriation, translation

Early modern and modern-day performance 

We are looking for a few more chapter proposals to expand our forthcoming edited collection, New perspectives on the legacy of Daphne du Maurier. The collection explores du Maurier’s work in adaptation, including her most famous work Rebecca and its many adaptations. It has already had some interest from a publisher.

Call for Papers

The International Margaret Cavendish Society biannual conference will be held on the 12th and 13th of December, 2024, at Universidad de Sevilla (Spain).

FAME: “Absence and Death are much alike”

Fame is a report that travells far, and Many times lives long, and The older it groweth, The more it florishes, and is The more particularly a mans own…

The Worlds Olio (1655)

[W]ho knows but after my honourable burial, I might have a glorious resurrection in following ages, since time brings strange and unusual things to passe.

We are seeking papers for a panel at RSA 2025 in Boston that address laboring writers--not so much writing as labor, but writers whose primary identity is as a laborer, peasant, artisan, or craftsperson from any geographic region. Such writers are often neglected in favor of courtiers and their clients. Indeed, some of how we conceive of “the literary” today is informed by the tastes of the ruling elite of the early modern period. This panel thus aims to recover non-elite voices of the past.

The Handbook of Body Horror

Special Issue on “Aemila Lanyer and the Body”

Explorations in Renaissance Culture (Fall 2025)

Guest editor: Brice Peterson

The editor invites 300-word abstracts for a special issue of a journal dedicated to exploring the topics of body and embodiment in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum.

Dibur, Stanford University’s Comparative Literature Journal, is calling for contributions for its December 2024 - January 2025 double issue.  You will find below a description of the issue’s theme as well as submission instructions. We will receive 250-word abstracts and a short bio until June 15. The deadline for submitting the accepted article for peer review is September 1st, 2024.

Issue Editors :

Olga Nedvyga (Assistant Professor, Hispanic Studies, University of Montreal)

Victoria Zurita (Visiting Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature, University of Montreal) 

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The Locations of Value 

Since the Modern age, democracy stands as the characteristic Western form of government. We cannot consider such a political regime as just one among other possible ways of understanding the organization of power. Rather, it is the accomplishment of a certain culture and a certain anthropological vision. As a matter of fact, in its multifaceted variants, democracy is the most evident outcome of modern political thought, rooted in the theoretical bedrock of the natural law doctrine.

Not being seen for who one is has always been a problem in society; conversely, having difficulty seeing what is hidden beneath surface appearance is a constant challenge. This traditional session will explore how characters’ identities are both concealed and revealed in literature, television, and film. A variety of approaches are possible, including (but not limited to) the questions that follow: When/why do characters find it difficult to let themselves be seen for who they are? When do plots rely on a character’s mysterious identity, and how do both characters in the story and the audience discover (some) of the hidden truths?