Under the auspices of the project ‘Orientation’: A Dynamic Perspective of Contemporary Fiction and Culture (1990-onwards) (Ref. FFI2017-86417-P), this Conference explores how the concept of ‘orientation’ can offer a renewed perspective on literary texts and cultural products alike. By positioning ‘orientation’ in close relation to (multiple) temporalities (or “polytemporality”, following Victoria Browne), space, and recognition of the ‘other’, this Conference (and the project) addresses the dynamic and fluid nature of today’s fiction and culture in English. As Sara Ahmed points out, “[o]rientations are about the direction we take that puts some things and not others in our reach” (56).

Silence (tacere or Schweigen) has been considered by Franz Rosenzweig among others as a subversive act or defiant stance of the tragic hero against overwhelming power mechanisms of necessity, i.e., totalization and universality. It has also, however, been regarded as an epiphenomenon (or a result) of marginalization and oppression by postcolonial theorists. The latters’ understanding marks silence as an end, a potential violent effect of the logics of exclusion and marginalization by “signifying machines”. The former understanding marks silence as a means of rendering mechanisms of powers inoperative.

119th PAMLA Conference

Los Angeles, CA | November 11-13, 2022 (entirely in-person)
PAMLA 2022: UCLA Luskin Conference Center and Hotel

Sponsored by UCLA Department of English

Special Session: Gazing Through a Pandemic Lens: Absurdist Literature, Theatre & Film

Presiding Officer:  Dr. Kimberly Jew, University of Utah

This panel seeks papers that explore the connections between our experiences of the recent (and ongoing) global pandemic and Absurdist literature, theatre & film. 

A burgeoning professional literature attests to the rewards and challenges of teaching comics and teaching with comics (for recent examples, see Wallner, Framing Education, 2019; Parker, Teaching Artfully, 2021; the forthcoming Smyth, Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels, 2022; and the authoritative anthology With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy, eds. Kirtley, Garcia, and Carlson, 2020).

In response to that literature, as well as the challenges of remote learning under COVID, this panel invites succinct 15-minute presentations that address the questions, What is it like to relearn the teaching of comics? and How can comics teachers reframe crisis as opportunity?

GCRR Press is inviting papers for a themed article collection relating to the New Testament Gospel of John for inclusion in a proposed scholarly anthology in the field of Jewish Studies. Topics should explore the Fourth Gospel in regard to its representation, depiction, and treatment of "the Jews" in the Fourth Gospel. By exploring this topic across time and place, this collection aims to provide an historical context for understanding not only the Jewish Jesus but the specific framework in which Johannine Christianity was tied intrinsically to ancient Judaism, while simultaneously distancing itself of Jewish thought and culture.

The Department of German, the Program in Comparative Literary Studies, and the Critical Theory Program at Northwestern University invite graduate students and early career researchers to participate in a colloquium in response to the publication of the new translation and critical edition of Walter Benjamin’s 1921 essay, “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” (Toward the Critique of Violence) recently published by Stanford University Press.  The colloquium welcomes explorations on any topic related to Benjamin’s essay or the additional writings gathered in the volume—those by Benjamin and as well as those by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, Georges Sorel, and Emil Lederer.  In addition to giving brief accounts of how the new edition of “Toward the Critique of Vi

The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies is a fully open access peer-reviewed publication edited by graduate students at The University of Iowa that mixes traditional approaches and contemporary interventions in the interdisciplinary humanities and interpretive social sciences. This year’s issue will explore the boundaries that can challenge and facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship through an inquiry into margins, marginalia, and the marginalized. 

Katherine Mansfield:

Germany and Beyond

Bad Wörishofen, Germany

16-17 July 2022

(readings, tour 18 July)

NEW DATE

An international conference organised by the

Katherine Mansfield Society

Hosted by the Bad Wörishofen Mayorality

and Tourist and Spa Bureau

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Graduate Student Subcommittee of the ATHE Professional Development Committee invites submissions for the Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Forum at ATHE 2022. This session offers the opportunity for graduate students at any stage of their degree program to present their current research. These presentations are designed to crystallize the key questions of a research project, not necessarily to describe a completed one. This session will be an opportunity for graduate students to encounter each other’s research and promote possible collaborations and feedback. Presenting graduate students will receive feedback from respondents, notable scholars in the field.

PAMLA 2022: Open Educational Resources (OER) in the French and Francophone Classroom (roundtable)

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) has grown steadily due to the rising cost of textbooks and the unstable financial situations of students, further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the relevance and authenticity of conventionally published materials is often called into question. As a result, instructors increasingly turn to OER to meet these needs.

The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies is a fully open access peer-reviewed publication edited by graduate students at The University of Iowa that mixes traditional approaches and contemporary interventions in the interdisciplinary humanities and interpretive social sciences. This year’s issue will explore the boundaries that can challenge and facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship through an inquiry into margins, marginalia, and the marginalized. 

The global pandemic and long periods of self-quarantine shifted everything from work habits, to school, to media consumption, and more.

For example, the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons brought families together and even provided a supportive space for on-line memorial services.

Zoom parties became a new way of coming together, as did streaming watch parties.

2022 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference

November 16-21, 2022

Minneapolis, MN

Permanent Section Call for Papers: Irish Studies

Ulysses: 1922-2022

“We are not essential. We are sacrificial.” With this statement, Sujatha Gidla, a subway conductor in New York City compelled back to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, observes that service workers who have been defined by their disposability constitute a bedrock for racial capitalism in an era of proliferating crises. We invite submissions to a special issue of Post45 that will turn to aesthetic and cultural mediations of service in the late 20th and early 21st century in order to theorize and historicize the relations between death, labor, and racial capitalism.