theory

Addressing Precarity: Semiotics, Semiosis, and Semioethics

Semiotic Society of America

45th Annual Conference (Virtual)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, October 20-23, 2021

The theme for this year’s conference is Addressing Precarity: Semiotics, Semiosis, and Semioethics. The conference centers on considering precarity through the framework of semiotics. Presenters are encouraged to develop panels and submissions that consider semiosis, semioethics, and precarity. As always, we welcome abstracts on any subject with a connection to semiotics (both theoretical and applied), not solely those inspired by this year’s theme.

Issue Ten: Enchantment, Disenchantment, ReenchantmentRethinking practices of interconnection in a century of crisis

The Marxist Literary Group is seeking proposals for its guaranteed session at MLA 2022, which is currently scheduled to be held in Washington D.C. from January 6th - 9th, 2022. 

How is our understanding of particular genres, or even the concept of genre itself, shaped by Marxist thought? We welcome discussions of popular film, television, or literature. Please submit 300-word abstracts and bio to mmacer2@uic.edu and ahbrown@sas.upenn.edu by March 15th, 2021.

This conference will provide a deeper look into the dynamic and complex relation between construction, codes, language, expression, on one side and the crisis of representations, traumas, discontinuities and tensions in discourses, on the other. This will be conducted according to three research areas:

1. The anachronism

2. Narratives and discourse

3. The temporality of trauma and subjectivity

The Poetry and Poetics standing session at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) seeks abstract submissions exploring any aspect of poetry and poetics. We are open to paper topics that encompass a wide range of subgenres, time periods, and critical approaches; in particular, we are interested in papers that engage with the PAMLA special conference theme of "City of God, City of Destruction."

The editors invite contributions to Symbolism. An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to pursuing fundamental questions on the forms and functions of the symbolic. Symbolism publishes high-profile research on topics related to the use of figurative language, thought and signification in artistic expression and representation. While maintaining a strong literary focus, the annual also inquires into practices of the symbolic across discourses in media ranging from the cinema and painting to opera, sculpture and other arts.

Festschrift for Andries W. Oliphant

MLA 2022 in Washington DC 6 - 9 Jan 2022

ASECS/allied organization panel

This panel invites considerations of philosopher Sylvia Wynter’s theories of humanness in reimagining eighteenth-century studies, particularly how race, location, and time together inform what it means to be human. 

Please send 200-word proposals to Tita Chico (tchico@umd.edu) by March 15, 2021.

Call for Papers

Alluvium Special Issue: “Futurity in Crisis”  (Abstracts deadline 8th of March 2021. First Draft Submissions 5th April 2021)

Guest edited by the Contemporary Theoretical Network

In this special issue of Alluvium, the Contemporary Theoretical Network (Ctrl Network) invites submissions on the topic of futurity in crisis.

The CLCS Renaissance/Early Modern forum of the MLA invites paper proposals for a guaranteed session at MLA 2022 (Washington, D.C., 6-9 January 2022).  We plan a panel on insurrection, tyranny, and resistance in a wide range of early modern contexts.  What political theories and literary traditions shape early modern writers’ understandings?  How do literary texts themselves respond to contemporary events, imagine alternative futures, and transform current conversations?  We particularly welcome comparative and transnational perspectives.  Please send 250-word abstracts and brief CVs to Penelope Anderson pea@indiana.edu by 20 March 2021.

Henry James scholarship has hesitated to engage with the challenges and opportunities presented by the rich and proliferating constellation of thought that is Trans Studies. How might the question of transgender revise, reinvigorate or transform our understanding of James’s writing, and / or of James as a biographical subject?

We welcome proposals addressing any aspect of the topic. Possible approaches might include:

-          Transgender subjects in James’s fictional worlds and nonfiction texts

-          Transgender and subjectless queer critique

-          Sex, gender, and narration

-          Transgender and sexuality

-          Transgender and sibling relationships

I'm seeking abstracts of 250 words due March 7, 2021 for an edited collection under contract with an academic publisher entitled "Women Writing Trauma in Literature."  The book considers literary representations of trauma by women writers. Rather than focusing on one time period or nationality, this collection considers a global range of women’s experiences with or depictions of traumatic encounters in literature. In particular, this book examines the relationship between trauma, identity, and literary form. Send abstracts to laura.leigh.alexander@gmail.com. Notification of accepted essays by April 1, 2021. Completed chapters (4000-6000 words) due by July 2021. 

Cornell EGSO 2021 Conference: Vulnerability

DEADLINE EXTENDED: February 15, 2021

Virtual Conference April 16th - 17th, 2021 

Call For Proposals:

From Celluloid to Streaming: Conservation and Circulation of Small Cinemas
12th edition of the Small Cinemas Conference
Santiago de Compostela October 28-29, 2021

Keynote Speakers:Mette Hjort is Chair Professor of Humanities and Dean of Arts at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Affiliate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, and Visiting Professor of Cultural Industries at the University of South Wales.

Elena Neira is lecturer in the degree of Communication Studies in the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and member of the research group GAME. She also teaches Audiovisual Distribution in the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya.