popular culture

Few political writers have had as much of an influence on literature as Niccolò Machiavelli. The Florentine and his ideas have inspired so many works throughout the years that one wonders if they should constitute their own separate genre. Although his presence is most keenly felt in early modern drama, whenever writers create a calculating villain or a speech on amoral politics, Machiavelli always seems to be standing over their shoulders.

The Society for the Study of Rebecca Harding Davis and Her World will host two sessions at the annual conference of the American Literature Association. The conference will be held May 26-29, 2011, at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. For further information about the conference, please consult the ALA website at www.americanliterature.org

Deadline for Abstracts: November 30, 2010

"Peace Matters" at CEA

For over twelve years, CEA members concerned with promoting peace through teaching and learning have gathered to share the results of our research and reflection. This year, we are please to ponder how the "wheel of fortune" influences peace. Papers and panels may deal with the fortunes (and misfortunes) of war and peace, the price--and rewards--of peace, and related topics. We invite anyone interested to explore with us the belief that "there is no way to peace; peace is the way."

Submissions: August 15-November 1, 2010.

Please see the submission instructions at http://cea-web.org/

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Call for Papers

Great Writing 2011

The 14th Annual Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference
Imperial College London
Saturday June 18th - Sunday June 19th 2011

Critical or creative presentations are invited for this, the 14th Annual Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, 18th – 19th June 2011.

To be held at one of the UK's great universities and great locations: Imperial College London, South Kensington, a cultural centre for the arts, sciences, music and museums, close to Royal Albert Hall and right next to the wonderful National History Museum.

Call for Papers for an edited book collection on Pacific Island women. The collection will span women's experiences in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia and contributors should submit a full-length text or 500 word abstract and a CV to drhelent@gmail.com by Friday December 17. Contributions can be academic papers, research studies, non-fiction essays, personal essays, fiction, poetry, or drama. Any kind of text in any discipline that reflects upon the experience of women in the Pacific will be considered. Proposals should be new and unpublished. Topics may include but are not limited
• Status of women in a Pacific island nation or territory

Call for Paper:

Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies (AALDP)
Special Issue on "Teaching Food and Foodways in Asian American Literature and Popular Culture"
Special Issue Guest Editor, Eileen Chia-Ching Fung
Submission Deadline Extended: December 1, 2010

The Executive Committee of the Twelfth Annual Graduate Symposium on Women's and Gender History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce a call for papers. The Symposium, which is the capstone event of the History Department's Women's History month celebration, is scheduled for March 3-5, 2011. To celebrate and encourage further work in the field of women's and gender history, we invite submissions from graduate students from any institution and discipline. The Symposium organizers welcome individual papers on any topic in the field of women's and gender history. Papers submitted as a panel will be judged individually. Preference will be given to scholars who did not present at last year's Symposium.

The Contemporary Times: A Public Intellectual Review (http://www.thecontemporarytimes.com) is BRAND NEW a grassroots online publication with no financial aims (i.e., The Contemporary Times has zero gross income). Its sole purpose is to provide an outlet for the exchange of meaningful, insightful, well-researched, and respectful dialogue among intellectuals (broadly conceived) concerning key intellectual debates and how these debates can be applied to ensuring the American democratic ideals of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This publication is not intended only for academics and researchers and is, therefore, written in clear, jargon-free language.

NeMLA, April 7–10, 2011, New Brunswick, NJ

"In the Wake of 9/11: American Texts in the Twenty-First Century"

The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 raises new questions about the possibilities and limitations of memorialization, bringing new complexity to acts of re-evaluation and re-assessment. In the past ten years, representations of 9/11 have recovered meaning at the site of loss and have also problematized such attempts, offering a range of ideas about the relationship between textual representations and the material facts of history. In Falling Man, Don DeLillo describes the post-9/11 landscape, writing, "Everything now is measured by after." In 2011, how do we measure these works?

[The deadline for proposals for this panel has been extended to September 25th.]

Game studies is quickly emerging as a popular, interdisciplinary field within the humanities and social sciences, yet medieval scholars are still only beginning to explore the relationship between recreational games and literature from a literary or cultural context. This session seeks to broaden this field of study by focusing on depictions of games and gaming in medieval literature and their relation to recreation in the Middle Ages.

42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association
April 7-10, 2011
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ

The received wisdom tells us that the modernization of American culture and society was contingent upon its secularization. And yet, when we look to both canonical works of American modernism and to contributions to the "cultural front," we find an abiding concern for the religious that troubles this dominant narrative. This panel seeks to reexamine the multivalent modernist concern for the religious in order to reassess its place in early 20th century American literature and culture, to analyze the myth of the 'secular age,' and to determine the place of religion in the conflict between capital and labor.

FIRST FICTIONS
Festival and Academic Conference
9-12th June, 2011

Confirmed delegates include:
Kate Mosse, Jackie Kaye, Elleke Bohemer, Michael Prodger, Bryan Cheyette, Scott Pack, Nicholas Royle and Isabel Ashdown.

Supported by Myriad Publishers, and Textual Practice

We are inviting abstracts for papers for an upcoming conference on innovations in creative and critical writing.

Call for Manuscripts

Journal of American Culture
Special Issue: Love and Romance in American Culture

CFP DEADLINE: 1 OCTOBER 2010

This is the first of the biennial conferences planned for the newly founded Romantic Studies Association of Australasia (RSAA), to take place at the University of Sydney from Thursday to Saturday, 10-12 February 2011.

Plenary speakers:

James Chandler (Chicago)
Deirdre Coleman (Melbourne)
Nicholas Roe (St Andrews)

Panel discussion with the assembled editors of 'The Oxford Companion To The Romantic Age' (1999):

Iain McCalman (Sydney)
Jon Mee (Warwickshire)
Gillian Russell (ANU)
Clara Tuite (Melbourne)

We invite submissions covering the full range of possible meanings of 'distance' in Romantic studies – including (but not limited to)