international conferences

This panel will consider the cases of writers who have used their platforms to create fictions of self—to misrepresent, self-justify, even blatantly lie about their own lives and realities. The panel is open to considering any act of writing sociopathy, from memoir (e.g., M.E. Thomas’s 2013 Confessions of a Sociopath or Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal) to fictional works that inhabit the minds of sociopaths (e.g., A Clockwork Orange, Gone Girl) to literary fakers (e.g., James Frey, Danny Santiago, JT LeRoy, Caroline Calloway). Is writing in itself an act of misrepresentation bordering on psychopathy?

In the 1930s and ‘40s, crime fiction was often published on cheap paper made of wood pulp, and this reputation as faintly disreputable has stayed with it, pursuing it into creative writing classes in which “genre-writing” has traditionally been discouraged. This panel invites creative writers as well as literary scholars to consider crime writing—true crime, mystery and detective fiction, suspense fiction, and film or television drama—in the context of creative writing pedagogy. Is crime writing inherently disreputable? Does this genre have a place in the creative writing classroom?

While it is too soon to fully assess the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will stand as a watershed in global human life, creative writers as canaries in the cultural coalmine will be among the first to try to render it comprehensible and are already responding to the seismic shifts. The unexpected changes the pandemic has created have altered all of the processes that sustain human life, the social practices and interactions that are the mainstay of poetry, fiction, and drama, perhaps permanently. Enforced social isolation has caused people from all strata of society to contemplate what it means to be engaged in human culture while at the same time facing the possibility of sudden and random mortality, even mass extinction.

What makes us happy and content in our life? Some people may point to fabulous fame, fortune, or money. Some may say that the key to happiness are interpersonal relationships. But what if someone is alone? Is loneliness really disastrous? Are there any benefits of loneliness? Can loneliness become an epidemic? In order to answer such questions, during our conference we will have to concentrate on many particular issues. Thus, we are interested in all aspects of loneliness in the past and in the present-day world.

**Deadline Extended to 14 June 2019**

The People of Print: Printers, Stationers, and Booksellers, c. 1500-1830

Thursday 12th September - Saturday 14th September 2019

Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

Plenary speakers: Dr Lisa Maruca (Wayne State University); Professor James Raven (Cambridge University)

CFP 20 Years Later: Looking Back at 9/11

International Conference October, 7-8, 2021

University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, France

The Poetry and Poetics standing session at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) seeks abstract submissions exploring any aspect of poetry and poetics. We are open to paper topics that encompass a wide range of subgenres, time periods, and critical approaches; in particular, we are interested in papers that engage with the PAMLA special conference theme of "City of God, City of Destruction."

Society for the Study of Early Modern Women & Gender

Call for Panel Proposals 

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting

Dublin, Ireland, 7-10 April 2021

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference 2020

Thursday, November 12, 2020 to Sunday, November 15, 2020

Sahara Las Vegas Hotel

Hosted by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Conference Theme: 

CITY OF GOD, CITY OF DESTRUCTION

Special Session:

Of City Spaces and Graveyards: A Pictorial Reading (Workshop)

Abstract:

118th Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas (Thursday, November 12 to Sunday, November 15, 2020) 

15th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) | 8 to 10 October 2020 | Online

ComFor’s 15th annual conference aims to intensify a dialogue between the various disciplinary approaches to the medium of comics and related popular narrative images (including manga, graphic novels or cartoons) by focusing on the concept of medial, mediated, and mediating agency. Building on perspectives from actor-network theory and subsequent approaches to a possible actor-media theory, the conference aims to reconstruct the complexities of distributed agency within historical and contemporary cultures of comics.

Decolonization is a growing niche in German Studies [e.g. works of Kien Nghi Ha, Dirk Göttsche, Jürgen Zimmerer] – but a niche, nonetheless. Yet Germany has been and is changing. Aladin El-Mafaalani writes: “Die Integration von Teilen in ein Ganzes verändert dieses Ganze” (83, 2018). A (more) diverse Germany necessitates comprehensive contention with its complicated past, laying bare the various structures of oppression that consciously and unconsciously impede or prohibit integration and cohabitation. Furthermore, Decolonial theory necessitates such a discussion, positing that modernity and coloniality are co-constituent: colonialism is not an effect of modernization but an element of its foundation.

Calls for Papers and Creative Presentations

John R. Milton Writers’ Conference

Prospecting: Uncovering New Veins and Voices in Identity, Genre, and Place

October 8-10, 2020

The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD

Dear Colleagues,

We must sadly confirm the rescheduling of the 9th International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture and Crossroads III Conference due to the ongoing COVID-19 developments. While this decision comes at a time of universal uncertainty, we take the safety and health of our guests and community very seriously.

Having spent the past few months preparing for the conference we are genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host you at this time. We want to thank you for your interest in our event and we fully intend to host it in June 2021. Your registration will automatically be applied to the rescheduled event. We will get back to you with more information on specific dates in the nearest future.