popular culture

Transgression and its Limits

29-30th May 2010
University of Stirling

Plenary Speaker:
Professor Fred Botting
Reading followed by Q&A Session:
Iain Banks

To discover the complete horizon of a society's symbolic values, it is also necessary to map out its transgressions, its deviants ~ Marcel Détienne.

Texas A&M University-Commerce will hold the 18th Annual English Graduates for Academic Development (EGAD) Conference on February 26, 2010. We are pleased to welcome slam poet and educator Taylor Mali as our keynote speaker for the conference (more information at taylormali.com).

In addition to academic topics for this conference, we want to include open creative writing readings and sessions that address creative writing issues.

In many ways, Irish literary works and film are haunted, literally and figuratively. Additionally, it is home to many creatures and myths and even the most famous of the undead, Count Dracula. This panel encourages an open approach to any way in which the supernatural works within Irish literature or film and discussions of the ways in which the supernatural, from haunting to vampires to other creatures and forces, works in conjunction or juxtaposition with Irish culture.

Lucayos
A journal published by The College of The Bahamas
School of English Studies

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Lucayos is looking for submissions of papers 20-25 pages in length on art, film, literature and culture of the postcolonial world. The journal also invites submissions of creative pieces, specifically poetry, life writing, essays, and short stories. Submit works in full by March 30, 2010.

CALL FOR PAPERS
WORD / IMAGE / CULTURE
25th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference in the Humanities
Sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of West Georgia: November 11 – 13, 2010

Culture After Postmodern Culture

To celebrate 20 years of publication, the journal Postmodern Culture is holding a conference, "Culture After Postmodern Culture," at UC Irvine October 9, 2010. The conference asks what culture means today and examines ways it is challenged by new discourses on ecology, the animal, sexuality, materialism, anthropology, the trans-state, and new media, among others. It also asks how methods for investigating culture have changed over the last two decades. The conference is expected to lead to a special issue in the journal.

Keynotes: Alexander Garcia Düttmann and Manuel de Landa

We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.
Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf).
Please follow the 2009 updated MLA style.
Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright.
Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field.
Copyright for published articles remains with the author.
Submissions must be received no later than April 1, 2010, in order to be considered for the 2010 issue.

specs, a journal of arts and culture, invites submissions of critical and/or creative work for the 3rd volume on the theme of "Toys." We seek works of fiction, non-fiction, cultural criticism, artwork, poetry, and pieces that blur genre boundaries. The editorial board consists of writers and academics from various fields. We are excited by specialty, an excess of detail, fragments, narratives, meta-narratives, and more. We are particularly interested in works that examine contemporary culture and/or cross the critical/creative divide while riffing on the theme of "Toys" in multiple ways (philosophy, anthropology, mythology):

To some this title may seem paradoxical or too daunting as human cognition starts with the very opening of the eyes. If we have established that our approach to the phenomena that are other is always unavoidably a matter of semiosis, and that even in an attempt to naturalize phenomenology, like that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who points to the corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, it appears that our most negligible movements present our cultural being or habituality (Cf. Iris Young, Throwing Like a Girl, 1990, 2005). However, many authors have claimed (for example, the novelist D. H. Lawrence or philosopher Luce Iragary) that we know by touch and intuition.

Instrumental English: Interdisciplinary
Approaches to English Studies

UNCW Graduate English Association Conference
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Fisher Student Center

The field of English Studies grows increasingly complex as the 21st century progresses. With
rapid political, social, and technological advances occurring globally, our multifaceted discipline
is more relevant than ever. This conference seeks to celebrate the universality of English Studies
and emphasize its utility and congruence with other academic disciplines.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Peter Hutchings (University of Northumbria, UK)

The figure of the werewolf has haunted art, literature and culture for millennia. While not as common as their male counterparts, female werewolves appear in a variety of texts, of different genres and different cultures. From transcripts of witchcraft trials to Buffy, the female werewolf and her shapeshifting sisters continue to challenge, excite and entertain.

Conference Dates: 9 - 10 September 2010

This conference will explore representations and cultural meanings of female werewolves and other female shapeshifters, and the perennial fascination of these creatures. Papers are sought from researchers in all disciplines.

2nd Global Conference
Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners

Monday 20th September – Wednesday 22nd September 2010
Oriel College, Oxford

Barrack Obama's presidency, with its invocation of John F. Kennedy's legend, invites a wider discussion of how 1960s socio-political movements, philosophies, and art may be transformed, reinterpreted, and redeployed in the 21st century. We welcome papers engaging the legacy of 1960s American countercultural or revolutionary literature, visual arts, and/or music, and how they resonate in the collective consciousness, not simply as repositories for nostalgia but as viable, if problematic, strategies for inspiring "hope" and effecting "change."

Please visit PAMLA website for submission guidelines: www.pamla.org. Do not submit papers directly to contact emails from this site.

The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference session, Skin as Text, welcomes abstracts on any aspect of skin used or seen as text, from tattoos, scarring, piercing, to stigmata. Also possible: parchment and its uses, skin painting, legibilities of skin in literature/film/popular culture.
Please see the RMMLA site for details of the conference, to be held in Albuquerque, NM, Oct 14-16: http://rmmla.wsu.edu.