“Where does literature intersect with life - with lives - how can we contribute to an increment of justice in the world?” – Dame Marina Warner, 2001

Literature and art can prompt us to care for one another across space, time, and culture. They can challenge social structures that underpin injustices. Yet they can also represent trauma and injustice in ways that undermine care by spectacularizing, universalizing, or appropriating lived experiences. Conventions of writing, reading, and marketing can limit what stories are heard and read as worthy of care.

In the aftermath of mass atrocities, where the humanity is both the subject and object of a destructive process, the historical truth is almost impossible to access. On the one hand, perpetrators have tendency to deny their responsibility in committing atrocities, and on the other hand, victims’ experience remains unspeakable due to the impact of trauma. After the Holocaust, researchers from different disciplines focused on the possibility of transmission of the traumatic events related to the atrocities, as well as the obstacles that are faced during this process. One of the interesting areas of research in this regard is the victim-perpetrator encounter and the dynamics of witnessing in relation to the historical truth.

From the Socratic dialogues to post-modern cyberchats, it is only in and through communicative interaction that we can understand the world, people, and how things are working around us (Bohm, 2004/1996, Rockwell 2003). By means of dialogue people are able to argue for their viewpoints, to come to terms with each other, to jointly solve problems, and to resolve conflicts (Pickering and Garrod 2021). Dialogue brings together women and men, young and old, people from the east and the west, from the north and the south. Through the creative synergy of shared thoughts, ideas, and experiences, we can travel anywhere in space and time.

New Developments in 20th- and 21st-century Life Writing (Panel for NEMLA conference, March 10-13, 2022, Baltimore MD)

Co-chairs:
Sara Giguère, Université de Montréal
Anne Brancky, Vassar College

The 53rd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association will take place on March 10-13, 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sex (biology) and gender (culture) were teased apart and are currently being collapsed, an interesting rhetorical history in itself. Often under-explored out of concern for the rights of transsexual/transgendered people, these shifts in logic and rhetoric potentially reveal new relationships between biology and culture, oppression and late capitalism, and vulnerability and privilege. The relationships potentially reveal cultural assumptions and expose the forces of normalization. 

Special Issue of CR: The New Centennial Review vol. 22, no. 2: “(In)finite Ecologies” 

Guest editors: Christine Bennett, Katherine Greulich, and Garth Sabo (Michigan State University)

Digital Humanities has the potential to add to the traditional study of Spanish Literature and Culture. By moving beyond the traditional theoretical frameworks of literary theory and criticism, Digital Humanities processes provide the opportunity to re-examine cultural production. Digital Humanities also provides an outlet to examine the intersectionality of Linguistics and Literature and Culture, combining two fields which have traditionally remained exclusive. Therefore, this panel provides the opportunity to showcase Digital Humanities projects and/or methods that incorporate digital tools in the interrogation of Spanish Literature and Culture, and/or those which combine Linguistics and Literature and Culture.

Call for Papers

Campus Nostalgia: An International Seminar on Campus Fiction

15 – 16 October 2021, online

School of Letters and Arts, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Romania

CONCEPT NOTE:

The Canadian Parliament passed the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA) late in 1940 to preserve its currency for the war effort by limiting the importation of nonessential goods. Periodicals, including popular American comic books, were one casualty. Within a few months, Canadian artists and entrepreneurs responded by launching a domestic comic book industry often regarded as Canada’s golden age of comics. This industry produced four publishing companies and six years of original Canadian comics production, including Robin Hood Comics and Triumph-Adventure Comics, which featured Adrian Dingle’s Nelvana of the Northern Lights, one of the earliest female superheroes in comics.

As media texts show us superheroes from around the world(s), demonstrating extraordinary abilities and living a life shaped by a moral code, how we define their iconic features and cultural impact has been the focus of much scholarly debate.

Superheroes have proliferated and multiplied in the 21st Century, coming to prominence in film, television, and video game industries the same way that their popular narratives had begun to flourish in the comic book industry some eighty years before. Yet, while all of these stories and characters are tethered to these early years of the genre, through iterative retellings, reboots, and cultural readjustments, superheroes have consistently found renewed life in modern and contemporary re-imaginings.

SEASECS will hold its 48th annual meeting, February 17-19, 2022, at the Luminary & Co Hotel and Caloosa Sound Convention Center in Ft. Myers, Florida. The theme for this year's meeting is "Oceans Rise, Empires Fall: Tidal Shifts in the Eighteenth Century.”

We invite individual paper proposals and fully-formed session proposals on this theme or any aspect of the long eighteenth century: