religion

The Institute for Comics Studies is soliciting proposals for presentations, book talks, slide talks, roundtables, professional focus discussion panels, workshops and other panels centered around comics or comics related areas of study for Wizard World University—Philadelphia and Wizard World University—Chicago, the academic tracks of Wizard World Comic Book Conventions.

Panels that include participation by comics industry professionals are especially encouraged. ICS will provide assistance with recruiting professionals for participation in WWU panels.

The Harry Potter area of the Midwest Popular Culture and Midwest American Culture Association is extending its deadline for its upcoming conference. The MPCA/MACA conference will be held Friday-Sunday, October 30-November 1, 2009 at the Book Cadillac Westin in Detroit Michigan.

Please send proposals on any aspect of Harry Potter Studies to the area chair via email or mail. Emailed proposals should be sent to Kathleen Turner, Department of English, Northern Illinois University at turner8kathleen@gmail.com. Mailed proposals should be sent to Kathleen Turner, Department of English, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115.

The Center of Interdisciplinary Research in Languages, Arts and Humanities (CRILLASH) of the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, welcomes proposals for papers for the 3rd Symposium of the Young Caribbean Researchers to be held October 15-16, 2009 on the campus of Schoelcher in Martinique, French West Indies. The conference is a biennual event for the fostering of innovative research among academics, artists and writers who either belong to the Caribbean Diaspora or have dedicated an important part of their studies to the "Sixth Continent".

Adoption has often, though not always, involved secrecy. How has secrecy or openness affected the history, experience, and representations of adoption? How have literature and film portrayed the impact of secrecy and disclosure on adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents? What is the impact of recent revelations of secret histories in memoir, books such as _The Girls Who Went Away_, documentaries such as _First Person Plural_ (the creators of both will be keynote speakers)? How and why did adoption secrecy, and the practices it hides, develop differently in different cultures, countries, and even different states? Where are alternatives to secrecy practiced and how do they work?

This is a critical and creative new online journal. It is created to find, edit and publish superior works of fiction, non-fiction, art, multi-media and the like. The Pennsylvania Literary Journal is created to make a positive contribution to literary criticism and to the arts around the world. There are no geographic boundaries or genre boundaries in the first, summer issue – only the restraints of a website template.

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.

The English Graduate Organization (EGO) at Western Illinois University in Macomb is currently accepting CFPs for their 6th annual conference, Questioning Identity—Representations of Class. Possible paper topics might include but are not limited to the following:
Class Conflict
Marxism
Representations of Labor
Consumption
Capitalism
Globalization
Commodities
Working Class
Economics
Gender
Nationalism
We welcome your ideas! Please send a 250-300 word abstract to: SJ-Naslund@wiu.edu

In current debates about the War in Iraq, it has become commonplace for politicians and journalists to conjure the specter of the Vietnam War as a means of quantifying the impact of the current war in American culture and throughout the world. Surprisingly, though, few have scrutinized these comparisons to examine the differences between the popular music of the Vietnam era and the music of the current post-9/11 era. While the Vietnam era found countless bands and musicians responding in protest to that war, there has arguably been a significantly smaller amount of contemporary musicians who have taken overt stances, in their music, about the politics of post-9/11 life, in America and elsewhere.

CALL FOR PAPERS
South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA)
November 6-8, 2009
Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown
Atlanta, GA

Deadline: May 1, 2009

JUSTICE AND MERCY HAVE KISSED

When exploring the issue of human rights, two rallying cries are often heard. The voice of justice insists that mercy can only be had in a world of moral standards, while the call to mercy responds that justice can only condemn in a world that needs redemption. And yet, Christians are called to hold these two contrary impulses in careful balance – called to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Translating the Middle Ages.

Submission Deadline: 29 May
'Medievalism Transformed' is an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference for researchers in a variety of disciplines. The one-day event, which is supported by the Centre for Medieval Studies, will be held at Bangor University on the 20th of June. The theme for this year's conference will be Translating the Middle Ages: we will be convening to explore the practice of translating in the Middle Ages, but also to discuss the various ways in which medieval culture has been translated or adapted to the modern era. Topics within the general scope of the conference will be considered, including (but not limited to):

LITERARY JOURNALISM STUDIES, a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS), invites submissions of scholarly articles on literary journalism, which is also known as narrative journalism, literary reportage, reportage literature, "new journalism" and the nonfiction novel, as well as literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction that emphasizes cultural revelation. The journal is international in scope and seeks submissions on the theory, history and pedagogy of literary journalism throughout the world. All disciplinary approaches are welcome.

In current debates about the War in Iraq, it has become commonplace for politicians and journalists to conjure the specter of the Vietnam War as a means of quantifying the impact of the current war in American culture and throughout the world. Surprisingly, though, few have scrutinized these comparisons to examine the differences between the popular music of the Vietnam era and the music of the current post-9/11 era. While the Vietnam era found countless bands and musicians responding in protest to that war, there has arguably been a significantly smaller amount of contemporary musicians who have taken overt stances, in their music, about the politics of post-9/11 life, in America and elsewhere.

Shechem Ministries' Matter '09: A Creative Theology Event is now accepting submissions of papers and artwork for the conference September 17-19, 2009, at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Selected papers and artwork will be presented at the conference and will be published in the anthology of the conference, Matter, published by Shechem Press. All abstracts and digital image samples are due by noon CST on May 15, 2009, with completed artwork and papers due by August 31, 2009 at noon CST. Abstracts (250-500 words), panel proposals, and inquiries should be submitted via email to MatterCon@gmail.com.