popular culture

Recreating Oz

Annual Convention of the International Wizard of Oz Club

Manhattan, Kansas – October 2-4, 2009

Call for Papers
We invite submissions for presentations of 15 minutes in length on "Recreating Oz." Possible topics include:

* Adapting Oz for stage and screen

* Marketing and commemorating the Oz books

* Assembling the histories of Oz creators

* Teaching Oz

* Archiving Oz

* Re-reading the Oz books and earlier critical interpretations

* Re-imagining the world of Oz for contemporary audiences (Maguire's Wicked, Stauffacher's Harry Sue, the mini-series Tin Man, comics and graphic novels)

From the fin de siècle to the Second World War, the construction of alternative social and private spaces exerted a peculiar fascination for many British writers. The cataclysmic historical events of the period stimulated Utopian thinking and feeling even as they seemed to make them problematic or impossible. At the same time radical demands for new spaces, whether political, religious or aesthetic, also generated new ways of reading and writing the familiar urban and domestic spaces of everyday life.

SAMLA 2009
Reading Ethics in the 21 Century
Call for Papers
Since Aristotle the understanding of ethics as a branch of philosophy has been defined as a pragmatic rather than a theoretical field: ethics does not simply involve a discussion of virtues, but the practice of "virtual activities." It is concerned, as Sartre later insists, with living "in the world," where one has the individual moral responsibility for the other and for the political structure of society. The personal responsibility to act "ethically" in this case is made possible by the essential freedom of choice of each individual.

States of Crisis
Friday, 9 October 2009
Brandeis University
Department of English and American Literature
Seventh Annual Graduate Conference

Since its origin in the ancient Greek krisis, "decision," related to krites, a judge, the term crisis has referred to ideas of discernment, evaluation, criticism, and sifting of evidence. In literary studies, for example, one can see moments of crisis in shifting aesthetics and changing genres as well as in literary tradition(s), character representation, and ideas of narrative. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches and scholarship, this conference will explore different responses to the idea of crisis in the humanities and social sciences.

This is a critical and creative new journal. It is created to find, edit and publish superior works of fiction, non-fiction, art, multi-media and the like. It will be primarily an online journal. Until an independent website is developed the journal will be housed at www.myspace.com/pennsylvaniajournal.

WORKING SESSION: Reassessing Theatrical Paradigms and Imagining Global Rights (San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nov. 11-15, 2009)

Deadline for Abstracts: Friday, May 15, 2009

Conveners: Brenda Werth, American University; Paola Hernández,
University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kerry Bystrom, University of
Connecticut; Florian Becker, Bard College
(werth@american.edu; pshernandez@wisc.edu; kerry.bystrom@uconn.edu;
fnbecker@bard.edu)

CFP: Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Popular Culture Association
Theatre and Performance Studies
Boston, MA - November 5-7, 2009

Paper/Panel Proposals Due JUNE 15, 2009.

The study of theatre and performance often reveals unexpected insights into a culture's historical and ideological conditions. Papers in this area will address how the institutions and practices of the performance define concepts of taste, suggest causes and solutions for social conflict, and reflect the importance of race, gender, and religion in relation to national or regional identity. We seek presentations, panels, and papers which focus on the theatre as a reflection of popular and/or American culture. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Call for Papers—40th Anniversary of Easy Rider

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: BRACHA ETTINGER (EGS, Saas Fee) and ADRIANA CAVARERO (Verona)

The age of globalism that shapes the world today is both a cause and effect of postcolonial actualities: effect because of the cultural influences (imposed or transmitted) of colonial powers on colonized lands through the centuries; cause because the supposed end of the colonialist era started world events of migration, hybridity, multiculturalism and relocation in the urban centers of former colonial powers. Several critics have already shaped the postcolonial discourse—such as from Said to Bhabha, from Achebe to Rushdie, from the Subaltern Studies Group to Anzaldúa—and the reality of our world today continues to offer numerous possibilities for discussion on postcolonial issues.

CFP: Documenting LGBTQ Identity in Non Western Worlds (08/31/09; collection)Edited by Christopher Pullen Proposals are invited for essays forming part of a new reader focusing on LGBT and queer identity in the developing and non western world, apparent within varying documentary forms, such as film, television and new media.  A central concern is to explore the social agency of media producers and performers, who offer new narratives of potential and progression, challenging Western orientated and traditional worlds.  At the same time some chapters may explore the significance of Western constructions of LGBT and queer identity, which have offered archetypes of political engagement for world wide audiences.  As a consequence this reader intends to foregro

Although some scholarly work has investigated the ways in which various types of modernist ideas and aesthetic tendencies have found articulation and received exposure in the quotidian sphere via advertising, film, popular psychology, popular music, new (household and workplace) technologies, as well as in profound developments in travel and communication, this panel seeks to push such analysis further. Papers are sought that critically explore articulations of modernism as they occur and are experienced in the everyday lifeworld.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Sirens
Vail, CO
October 1-4, 2009
A conference on women in fantasy literature presented by Narrate
Conferences, Inc.

Sirens, a conference focused on literary contributions by women to the fantasy genre and on fantasy works with prominent female characters, will take place October 1-4, 2009, in Vail, CO. The conference seeks papers, panels, interactive workshops, roundtable discussions, and other presentations suitable for an audience of academics, professionals, educators, librarians, authors, and fantasy readers.

ManuScript is the peer-reviewed journal in English and American Studies from the University of Manchester. Since 1996, it has encouraged rigorous intellectual discussion and progressive research which reflects critical debates across a variety of disciplines. It aims especially to promote the work of postgraduates and early career academics, and to provide a forum for intellectual and cultural concerns.

ManuScript?s next journal edition, following on from the conference held on 20th February 2009, will be on the topic of ?Urges?. We hope that the theme will encourage and allow room for a wide variety of responses from different discourses and fields.