modernist studies

The Review of English and American Literature

Call for Papers

This book project aims to examine the existence of dogma in literature and some cult texts, and how dogmas in literature are conveyed to various audiences as a mission by some literary readers, experts and academics. The questions leading up to the volume are varied and their answers require lengthy examination and interpretation. So, this project investigates; Is literature dogmatic? What about literary theories? Can they be dogmatic, too? The answers to these questions are open to clarification, but the responses can also initiate an extensive discussion and manifestation. However, above all, literature does have an aspect that drags the readers, habitually burying them in its pages, and blindly attaching them to itself.

Eliot Now or Never

For the International T. S. Eliot Society panel at MLA 2023, abstracts of 200 words are invited on how the dozen new volumes of T. S. Eliot's poetry, prose, and letters show us Eliot's continued relevance--or not--in 2023, integrating contemporary critical approaches and the newly published materials. Include brief CV.

The editors of the Elizabeth Bowen Review are seeking scholarly and innovative essays for publication in the fifth volume of the journal in October 2022.

For this issue, the editors are particularly interested in essays on Bowen’s later fiction (The Little Girls and Eva Trout).  However, we are also keen to see work on any aspect of Bowen’s writing, essays which situate her work in national and global perspectives. Themes may include:

T.S. Eliot called Ulysses ‘the most important expression which the present age has found; … a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.’’ Indeed, after a century it is a book which is still read, discussed, translated, researched and which influences not only writers, but painters, musicians, philosophers, photographers, film directors.

We invite scholars and students from various fields to send proposals for a 15-minute paper with a creative approach towards any aspect of Joyce’s works.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Two-day symposium of the American Studies division at Leibniz University of Hannover, 22 & 23 September, 2022

Online Conference: Women and Comedy 1890 - 1950

(Sponsored by the International Conference of The Elizabeth von Arnim Society)

17th- 18th September 2022

Having accepted papers on a range of fascinating writers and topics, we have responded to feedback from international participants and have decided to convert this conference from a face-to-face event in Cambridge to a fully-online event.

As a result, we’re delighted to open the conference to those who were unable to join us in person but are interested in participating online, via this supplementary call for papers.

We are seeking additional participants for a panel examining the question of love in Joyce’s works for XXVIII International James Joyce symposium Dublin (“JAMES JOYCE: ULYSSES 1922–2022”), this year.

The conference focuses on Ulysses. But papers do not have to focus on Ulysses and reflections on love in Joyce's other works are more than welcome too.

Please submit a 250-word abstract that includes the speaker’s name and academic affiliation (if applicable) alongside the paper title to both Gaurav Majumdar (majumdg@whitman.edu) and Benjamin Boysen (benjamin.boysen@outlook.dk) before March 15, 2022.

MFS is currently looking for potential book reviewers. Below is a list of some of our current books received. If you are interested in writing a review for us, please send an email containing the title of the book you would like to review and a short CV to mfs@purdue.edu. We will consider requests from doctoral students who are ABD. Also, please explain any personal or professional relationship you have with the author of the book. 

Current List of Books Received

Lindsay Thomas, Training for Catastrophe: Fictions of National Security after 9/11 (Minnesota 2021)

Al Filreis, 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern (Columbia 2021)

Modernity is a cracked looking-glass, a double-edged sword. Michel Foucault describes modernity as a period acutely aware of itself as modern, determinedly engaged in reflecting on what it means to be of the moment, and self-consciously focused on presenting itself as new. But as Kirby Brown (Cherokee Nation) reminds us, formulations of the modern are equally formulations of the non-modern, since there is ‘no civilization without the savage, no modernity without the primitive, no modernism without tradition (or convention), no modern subject without its cultural, racial, temporal, geographic, and historical Other.

Two years ago, soon after the first wave of pandemic-related closures, Laura Hartmann-Villalta and Emily C. Bloom organized a discussion on “Precarity, Caregiving, and Covid” at the MLA’s first virtual conference. It offered an opportunity for scholars from a range of academic positions to discuss the personal impact of Covid on their lives and careers.

The proposed anthology of critical writings on 20th-century war-literature and war-movies is likely to be published from an old university-press in the northern U.K. The last date of submission is 31 July 2022.

Prospective writers are being requested to submit critical approaches to the literatures and films of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War,  the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Bosnian War in not less than 6000 words,  with M.L.A.-style of citation to the editor at monkaaroy@gmail.com as soon as they are completed. Prior to that, abstracts of the proposals could be sent. This is a very old project, and is scheduled to be completed this year.

The Golden Age of Crime: A Reappraisal

22nd – 23rd of June 2022 at Bournemouth University

The Golden Age of crime fiction, roughly defined as puzzle-based mystery fiction produced between the First and Second World Wars, is enjoying a renaissance both in the literary marketplace and in scholarship. This conference intervenes in emerging academic debates to define and negotiate the boundaries of Golden Age scholarship. 

. HERA invites research, papers, panels, and presentations embracing inclusivity in all aspects of the human conditions––including, but not limited to, race, class, gender, sexuality, age, veteran status, ability, power, ecology, sustainability. We encourage a wide and extensive representation of disciplines and interdisciplinary projects. Every field in the humanities, liberal & creative arts, and social sciences is appropriate. Our goal is to foster the sharing and expressing of the humanities as an urgently important human enterprise––helping to clarify the crucial immediacy of the humanities and why they should be encouraged, supported, and sustained.