professional topics

Renaissance Conference of Southern California

64th Annual Conference

Saturday, 21 March 2020

The Huntington Library and Gardens

Pasadena, CA

PLENARY ROUNDTABLE

Interdisciplinary Research and the Renaissance: How to Do It 

Amy Buono (Art History, Chapman University)

Katherine Powers (Music, California State University, Fullerton)

Martine van Elk (English, California State University, Long Beach)

Panel: Problematic Faves - Ethical Reading in the Age of Cancel Culture

Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Boston

March 5-8, 2020

“We need to now consider that we have elevated what we’ve inscribed as genius at the expense of the humanity and potential of people they silenced, erased, and preyed upon.”

Aditi Natasha Kini

Since its emergence from the periodical press into the first mass-market novelistic craze, detective fiction has occupied a liminal position in the margins of aesthetic legitimacy—and critical study. Detection is a popular genre, a “literature of escape,” that nevertheless seems to make a claim to, and find purchase in, more rarefied aesthetic and intellectual precincts. Michael Holquist styles detection as a guilty pleasure of the reading classes: “The same people who spent their days with James Joyce were reading Agatha Christie at night.” This panel asks what that liminal position might show us about both the genre and the conditions—theoretical, professional, material—of its study. 

51st Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

March 5-8, 2020

Boston, MA

Recently, there has been an avalanche of news articles about spikes in mental illness on campus. Seminal works like Margaret Price's Mad at School (2011) have begun to expose the ableism inherent in the university and prompted more open discussion surrounding the politics of disclosure.

As interest in this crucial topic grows, we are seeking out academics with psychiatric disorders and disabilities to contribute chapters to an essay collection on Mad Scholars, showcasing personal perspectives and professional experiences from across disciplines and career stages.

The academic job market is famously difficult to navigate, particularly in the Humanities. While no discipline in the Humanities has a high number of positions available, it is especially challenging to find jobs in a Comparative Literature department, as the majority of hires are made through an English or Language department. Comparative Literature PhDs must therefore be prepared to market themselves to other academic departments and disciplines. This roundtable will offer practical advice for Comparative Literature PhDs on the job market. Topics we hope to discuss include:

· Applying for jobs in unitary disciplines such as an English or Language department

The 26th Annual Gender & Sexuality Writing Collective

Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

October 25-26, 2019, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

The Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester will hold a two-day writing collective on October 25-26, 2019. The writing collective will provide a lively platform for graduate students to workshop a paper with fellow graduate students and faculty from multiple institutions.

Proposals Submission Deadline: September 2, 2019
Full Chapters Due: November 15, 2019
Submission Date: February 23, 2020

The current “crisis” in the academic job market was already unfolding a decade before many recent PhDs were even born. The pages of publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education are littered with grim reports on the state of the profession, jeremiads against adjunctification, glib inducements to go “alt-ac,” elegies for those lost to the academy, and of course, “quit lit” testimonials by scholars who have said goodbye to the tenure-track job market. Talk is cheap, but organizing gets the goods. Accordingly, this roundtable will explore how members of academia’s army of surplus labor are responding to this situation and what alternative futures they are already working toward. 

For the C19 (Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists) conference in Coral Gables Florida, April 2-5, 2020 (https://c19conference.wordpress.com), please consider submitting a proposal to this panel.  

Dear Colleagues,It is with great pleasure that we announce two sessions for NeMLA’s 51st Annual Convention to be held in Boston, MA on March 5-8, 2020. Please find the CfPs below; abstracts may be submitted by September 30, 2019 via the links provided. Feel free to disseminate this invitation and send any questions to the organizers Erin Myers and Kate Bastin (erin.a.myers@gmail.com and bastink@eckerd.edu). Thank you for your consideration!

Vegetative/Meditative States and Other Lessons from Plants in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Seminar)

DECONSTRUCTING DOCTORAL DISCOURSES:

STUDENTS’ STORIES AND STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

Edited by

Deborah L. Mulligan and Patrick Alan Danaher

University of Southern Queensland, Australia

 FOCUS AND RATIONALE

Proposed dates:

10-12 November, 2019

Venue:

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary

Topic:

Interactive Narratives – the Future of Storytelling and Immersion in mixed reality mediums and performing arts. This conference aims to investigate whether XR/extended reality (VR/AR/MR) works will acquire a status comparable to film, performing arts and video games in the near future. On this basis, they are looking forward to papers that address narrative experiences enabled by XR and especially VR technologies. In addition, they want to challenge established storytelling strategies and instead more thoroughly analyse ways of creating engaging experiences. 

From Sue Doe and Seth Kahn, co-editors:

We are excited to offer our first call for proposals for a new book series called Precarity and Contingency, published by the Colorado State University Open Press and sponsored by the CSU Center for the Study of Academic Labor.

Deadline: August 30, 2019

Decisions: Early October 2019

What we want to publish