theory

Anticipating notions of modern cryptography, Marx famously observed in Capital Vol. I, that value “does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic.” Therefore, to understand the “product of [this] labour”--the commodity form–we must learn how to read (as in, decode) the “social hieroglyphic.” Reading, for Marx, thus becomes a site of significant contention as it leads to the making and unmaking of our social world. This panel seeks to examine ways in which the modernist era encountered processes of “social hieroglyph[y]” in the literary marketplace and turned the act of reading into a distinct practice with serious stakes.

NeMLA 2023: Niagara Falls, NY. March 23-26, 2023. 

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies

Vol. 49 No. 1 | March 2023

Call for Papers

Culture Chameleons: Narrative Code-Switching

Guest Editors

Earl Jackson, Jr. (Asia University)

Mary Goodwin (National Taiwan Normal University)

Deadline for Submissions: June 30, 2022

Within the genres of science fiction as well as in poetry and drama, scenarios of dystopic presentations are frequently reversed to reveal a more hopeful denouement. The focus of this year’s convention is Resilience which is identified on the NeMLA website as “an anchor term for critical and creative work that explores how we bear up under trauma,” amongst other critical issues in the world. Literature has been utilized as a means of explaining difficult issues and often works through a myriad of complications, revealing resilience as well as offering a glimmer of hope.  How do these writers achieve their encouraging shift from sometimes desolation and seeming hopelessness to a more hopeful viewpoint? Are there parallel constructs?

We have always lived with trauma, but how do we embrace trauma into our lives and create a meaningful life in the world we live in?

In recent years, critical considerations of aesthetics or beauty have been de-emphasized in literary criticism. There is a certain taboo about the notion of beauty, as Elaine Scarry has neatly pointed out: “many people have either actively advocated a taboo on beauty or passively omitted it from their vocabulary, even when thinking and writing about beautiful objects such as painting and poems” (117). There has been many talks about how aesthetics demeans a work’s values—serving as Bourgeois distractions from the real social issues we face, which rightfully remains as an important critical consideration.

Adaptation studies has contended with the question of hierarchies since it first emerged. Adaptation as a process similarly so: the problem of the source and the ‘original’ has established certain values and positions of texts. This has been challenged most notably through the debate in the field around fidelity, wherein the question of being ‘true’ to the source has been variously deemed fallacious, unhelpful, or both. Despite some recent proponents for it, what emerges from this is the challenging of the hierarchies that the fidelity debate espouses. Broadly, this has been main way in which these hierarchies have been challenged in adaptations, primarily due to the seemingly inescapable status fidelity has in the field.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Fictional persons and characters

International Online Workshop
October 12, 2022

It is tempting to think of fictional characters as if they were fictional persons. The inhabitants of a fictional world, where they live and engage in meaningful interactions as we do in the real world. However, this conception is problematic. First, because the concept of “person” is far from being clear. Are persons to be defined in physical or mental terms? And even if we restrict ourselves to a Lockean framework where persons are defined in mental terms, regardless of their physical features, could other entities besides human beings achieve full personhood?

Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020, a Kick Ass Project - Edited collection

We invite chapter contributions to the edited collection Women, “Failure” and Academia Post-2020, a Kick Ass Project:

Workshop “Moving Away from ‘Post-socialism’: Reconceptualizing Scholarly Approaches to Contemporary Eastern Europe and Eurasia through Feminist and Queer Theory Lenses”

Central European University, Budapest, 23-25 September 2022.

Call for Papers

Call for Contributions to a Proposed Collected Edition 

Disruptive Labor: Early Modern Gender, Capital, and Illicit Work

Disruptive Labor: Early Modern Gender, Capital, and Illicit Work interrogates how some labor is denigrated and yet simultaneously supportive of the formation of the capitalistic markets upon which European nations expanded empires. By focusing on how these patriarchal societies see specific types of work as gendered, this edition explores how the gendering of labor establishes dynamic markets as either culturally sanctioned or illegitimate and, in turn, grapples with how cultural approbation undergirds economic growth. 

PAMLA 2022 RHETORICAL THEORY PANEL

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Rhetorical Theory”
UCLA, November 11-13
Chair: Dr. Ryan Leack (USC)

Abstract

This panel will explore recent movements in rhetorical theory writ large, either in connection with or apart from composition theory and practice. Special attention will be given to proposals that engage with the conference's theme.

Description

44th Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS)

March 3-5, 2023, in Grainau, Germany

TEMPER: A Women and Gender Studies Graduate Journal

The Women and Gender Studies Graduate Student Union at the University of Toronto is pleased to introduce TEMPER, a new journal featuring interdisciplinary scholarship by graduate students.

TEMPER is a space where graduate students and their work can shine. We strive to provide  greater opportunities in graduate professional development, scholarship, and community development within the feminist university community.

"Home and Homelessness in the Ecologies of Daily Life"

PAMLA 2022, Los Angeles

Panel Chairs: Paula Cucurella (UC Riverside) and Tyler M. Williams (Midwestern State University)

Panel Abstract: