interdisciplinary

Summer 2010 Introductory Issue of Diesis: Footnotes on Literary Identities.

Article Submission Deadline: July 19th

Open Call for Articles

The editorial board of Diesis: Footnotes Literary Identities welcomes submissions for our introductory issue. A diesis (or double dagger) is a typographical symbol that indicates a footnote or point of reference within a written work. Diesis seeks to act as a point of reference in the study of the maturation and diversity of socially and biologically constructed performances of identity through a variety of critical lenses. Essays that explore authorial, literary, and socio-political identities across time, space, and genre are particularly encouraged.

Intention and Intentionality (NEMLA, April 7-11, 2011)

Ecocriticism informs ecological activisms, and vice versa. What kind of change can the intersections and tensions between ecocriticism and activism bring about? While ecocriticism has become an increasingly popular field of inquiry, its positionality remains an issue for negotiation. From Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), which continues to influence mass eco-activisms, to the anti-GMO groups that shape discussions of bioethics, ecocriticism remains in dialogue with practical approaches in what Lawrence Buell has termed a "spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis" (The Environmental Imagination, 1995). Moreover, current ecocritical scholarship underscores a general distrust of the romanticizing rhetoric of early ecocriticism.

Changing Lives Through Literature is a nationally recognized alternative sentencing program for criminal offenders founded in 1991 on the power of literature to transform lives. CLTL sentences criminal offenders to a series of literature seminars instead of traditional probation. Studies have confirmed that program graduates are half as likely to commit additional crimes than their counterparts in the justice system.

Sixty years after the publication of Wimsatt and Beardsley's 'The Intentional Fallacy,' the problem of intention continues to haunt literary criticism. Authorial intention exists--but as literary critics, we don't generally talk about it. Looking to recent work in the history of criticism, literary theory, philosophy, and the history of ideas, this panel asks why this is the case. The theoretical justifications for discounting authorial intention--whether from Wimsatt and Beardsley, Barthes, Foucault, or de Man--have slowly faded into history. But as a practice of criticism and as a practice of teaching literature, that attitude towards intention remains

"Carnival is the place for working out, in a concretely sensuous, half-real and half-play-acted form, a new mode of interrelationship between individuals, counterposed to the all-powerful social-hierarchical relationships of everyday life" (Mikhail Bakhtin in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics).

The comedic and socially transgressive mode that Mikhail Bakhtin defines as "carnivalesque" primarily concerns literary forms of representation. This panel poses the question: what would it mean for the cinematic medium to be carnivalesque?

The Lincoln School of Performing Arts, University of Lincoln, UK, is pleased to host the Fourth International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature, and the Arts. The conference will be held in Lincoln, UK, from Saturday 28 to Monday 30 May 2011. Abstracts (up to 1 page) are invited for papers relating any aspect of consciousness (as defined in a range of disciplines involved with consciousness studies) to any aspect of theatre, performance, literature, music, fine arts, media arts and any sub-genre of those. We also welcome creative work! Please send the abstract to Professor Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, dmeyerdinkgrafe@lincoln.ac.uk Deadline for receipt of abstracts is 1 March 2011

Call for Papers:

Women and Travel
A Special Issue of Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Deadline: February 15, 2011
Contact: meanes@sage.edu

In 1913, at a moment of personal and professional crisis, Jung began recording a series of visions and fantasies in what would become an extended "confrontation with the unconscious." The Red Book, newly published last year after decades kept under a shroud of family secrecy, is rife with all the chaos and horror one might expect an honest accounting of the unplumbed depths of the human psyche to contain. The book has another striking feature as well, however: it is visually stunning. Comprised of flowing calligraphic text illuminated by richly colored and densely symbolic images, it is on its own terms an aesthetic object of great precision and beauty.

Call for Papers: Literary Ecology, Ecocriticism, Place Studies

Title: Toward a Literary Ecology of Place: Studies in American Literature

Editors: 
Dr. Karen Waldron, College of the Atlantic, USA
Dr. Rob Friedman, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA



Call for Chapters: 

Proposals Submission Deadline: June 30, 2010

Full Chapters Due: September 30, 2010



Uncovering the Tradition of Vitalism in 20th Century Literature

42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-10, 2011
New Brunswick, NY – Hyatt New Brunswick
Host Institution: Rutgers University

Uncovering the Tradition of Vitalism in 20th Century Literature

Sven Birkerts identifies language erosion as one of the morbid symptoms of the electronic age: "Syntactical masonry is already a dying art; simple linguistic pre-fab is the norm. Ambiguity, paradox, irony, subtlety, and wit -- fast disappearing. In their place, the simple 'vision thing.'" The popularity of James Cameron's Avatar may prove the worldwide spread of this morbid symptom.

This session seeks submissions that examine the relationships and intersections of rhetoric and religion. Topics include, but are not limited to: investigating the rhetorical elements of homiletics; theology and logology; historical analysis of religious rhetoric development; methodology; religion, rhetoric and space; intersections of race, class and gender; language and practice; and controversies within the field. We are particularly interested in proposals that skirt or problematize traditional interpretations of religious oratory rhetoric. By May 1, 2010, please send an abstract of no longer than one page to Amanda Mills, Georgia State University, amills8@student.gsu.edu.

The peer-reviewed NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture invites submissions for its 2011 issues. NINE seeks to promote the study of all historical aspects of baseball and centers on the cultural implications of the game wherever in the world baseball is played. The journal reflects an eclectic approach and does not foster a particular ideological bias.

Submissions can be emailed to tstrecker@bsu.edu. Electronic submissions are preferred. Hard-copy submissions can be addressed to

Trey Strecker, Editor
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture
Department of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306-0460