As an aesthetic and cultural movement, Afrofuturism began with Mark Derry’s 1993 essay, “Black to the Future.” Derry poses a difficult question: “Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures?” The clear answer is a resounding, “YES!” Not only can Black folk imagine possible futures, but they can also write, paint, and sculpt them into being. In this special issue we invite contributors to explore what these possible futures look like. How do Afrofuturist artists reimagine a world where Black folks can be/are free? What is the cost of such freedom? 

Call for Papers

Contested & Erased Energy Knowledges  

A Trans-Disciplinary Conference 

31 Oct – 2 Nov 2024

University of Dundee & University of Edinburgh 

Edinburgh, Scotland 

Animals and Culture (Northeast Popular Culture Association - NEPCA)

Current Chair: Kimberly Poppiti, St. Joseph’s University, kpoppiti@sjny.edu

GROWING UP, SEX ED

A Boyhood Studies special issue
berghahnjournals.com/boyhood-studies

Interim Editors:
Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University
Chris Haywood, Newcastle University

When we call something a cliché, we’re typically calling it tired, banal, repetitive, or boring. Whether it’s an art object, a turn of speech, or a pattern of behavior, we’re identifying what it lacks: distinctiveness, originality, creativity, thrill. But in pointing to a cliché, we’re also pointing to a response. Noticing cliché creates a fissure. It elicits a reflexive movement, by which we’re forced to reckon with the repetitiousness of language; the ideological and economic structures that shape the creation of art; the social patterns that guide how we relate and self-present. Pointing to cliché, in other words, opens up the possibility for subversion.

Seeking session proposals for the American and Diaspora Studies area of the Northeast Modern Language Association. 

March 6-9, 2025
Philadelphia, PA
Hotel & Convention Site: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown

Our Thursday opening address will be given by Benjamin Fraser.
Our Friday keynote event will be given by Julia Alvarez.

ENSEIGNER LA LANGUE À TRAVERS LA TRADUCTION

Perspectives franco-italiennes comparées entre Renaissance et Ère numérique 

Ferrare, 21-22 novembre 2024   

Axes de recherche

These edited collections are part of the upcoming series Equine Creations: Imagining Horses in Literature and Film.

The scope of the present call is broad. All topics regarding the themes and impact of horses in film will be considered. 

1) Horses in Film Through the 1950s

2) Horses in Film in the 1960s and 1970s

3) Horses in Film in the 1980s and 1990s

4) Horses in Film since 2000

5) Horses in Television: since television shows can span multiple decades, all years will be combined in this volume.

Deadline for proposals: August 29, 2024

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