twentieth century and beyond

The MLA’s Forum on Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Literature solicits abstracts for a guaranteed panel at the January 2024 MLA Convention in Philadelphia on queer theory and psychoanalysis. We particularly welcome theoretical and archival scholarship that centers LGBTQI+ theorists, artists, intellectuals, and writers.

Queer theory embraces psychoanalysis and its speculative concepts as crucial elements of counter-identitarian critical practice. Yet the relationship between these two fields remains under-examined. Topics of particular interest include:

How does modern poetry enact a paradox of emotion? This MLA 2024 special session invites proposals exploring ambivalence, co-existence or contradiction of emotive states in modern/late modern/postmodern poetics. Broader interpretations of the theme are certainly welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Joy/Sorrow
• Emotional valences
• Mood
• Somatic/Carnal
• Intimacy
• Hope/Loss
• Pride/Shame
• Emotion/Logic
• Trauma
• Embodied knowledge
• Perception
• Temporality
• Phenomenology of emotions

Kindly submit your abstract (250-350 words) as well as a short bio by Monday, March 20th to:

We invite papers for an MLA 2024 session exploring figures of the griot—as chroniclers, poets, songmakers, and Memories—in Doris Lessing’s later works and in the works of writers from Africa and throughout the postcolonial diaspora. This topic has been designed to fit in with the MLA's 2024 Presidential Theme, "Celebration: Joy and Sorrow." For more details on the theme, see: <https://www.mla.org/Events/2024-MLA-Convention/Presidential-Theme-for-th....
250-word abstracts and brief bio requested.

This CFP is for a special journal issue focused on South Asia and aimed for a postcolonial journal.

MUSLIM WOMEN’S POPULAR FICTION INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE – 5-9 SEPTEMBER 2023

Muslim Women’s Popular Fiction AHRC Research Network International Conference

Birmingham, UK, 5-9 September 2023

Free to attend for all speakers and attendees.

Keynote speakers

Professor Claire Chambers

Dr Rehana Ahmed

In the twenty-first century, readers, publishers, and booksellers have noted a surge in popularity of genre works written by Muslim women, particularly in the Anglosphere. From the detective novels of Ausma Zehanat Khan to G. Willow Wilson’s fantasy fiction, Ayisha Malik’s romantic fiction to graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi – Muslim women authors are embracing popular fiction forms and genres.

The proposed publication (to be published by a major academic publisher upon approval of book proposal) will provide wide-ranging critical insight into the works of Sally Rooney (novels, short fiction, poetry, essays) and the TV adaptations of her works with attention to contemporary Irish culture. The aim of this edited collection is to offer readings of the works of Sally Rooney which illustrate contemporary issues relevant to Irish history and culture. Even though the structure of the collection will be finalised once proposals are received, the current organisation of the book will be a thematic one, covering issues such as:

Memory, Ecology, and Sustainability

 The Second Annual International Conference of the Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS) in association with the Centre for Memory Studies (CMS) at IIT Madras

                                                                                  20-22 September 2023

Faculty Coordinators: Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj, Associate Professors, IIT Madras, Faculty Investigators CMS, Founding Chairpersons, INMS.

Modernism & Writing Pedagogy Roundtable

Call for Abstracts – 100-150 words

Deadline: May 24, 2023, 11.59 EST, to lhartm13@jhu.edu

Organizer: Laura Hartmann-Villalta, Johns Hopkins University

3-4 slots available

In the spirit of the roundtable organized and chaired by Nissa Ren Cannon in MSA Portland entitled, “Modernism in the Writing Classroom,” this roundtable recognizes the suitability of modernist texts for writing classrooms of all sorts. This roundtable seeks to share pedagogical approaches at the intersection of modernism and writing. The call is purposefully broad.  

Some topics to consider:

Technology can both protect and violate human rights. How does such paradox inform imperialism, and appear in the post-9/11 cultural representations including film, literature, music, and visual arts? Email 300 words abstract with bios.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, 17 March 2023

Muhammad Waqar Azeem, Binghamton U, SU of New York (mazeem1@binghamton.edu )

This CFP is posted on MLA Website here: https://mla.confex.com/mla/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Paper23490.html

This panel seeks papers exploring women’s experiences of and perspectives on combat, diplomacy, sexual violence, displacement, and/or reconciliation in political conflicts in the Global South. Intersectional feminist approaches, attentive to cultural contexts, are welcome.

 Please submit a 250-word abstract and CV to slal@lsu.edu by March 20, 2023. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED - deadline for submissions: March 24 2023

Contemporary Modernisms - Call for Papers 

Institute of English and American Studies and the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform

Goethe University Frankfurt

25th–27th May 2023 

Confirmed Speakers:

John Brannigan (University College Dublin)

Julie McCormick Weng (Texas State University)

Václav Paris (City University of New York)

Barry Sheils (Durham University)

This will be the 2nd Annual CS Lewis Symposium at Ulster University 

To be held: 13-14, November 2023 

Location: Ulster University, Coleraine, Northern Ireland (United Kingdom)

*Please Note: this will be an in-person event; at present, we cannot accommodate virtual/remote participation.

Keynote: to be delivered by Dr Malcolm Guite (Cambridge University) and Professor Jerry Root (Wheaton College)

Annual Conference on South Asia

October 18-21, 2023

Panel title: South Asian Literature in Translation 

The central  theme of the forthcoming 40th issue of our interdisciplinary journal "Świat i Słowo" [“World and Word”] is "Literature from a local and regional perspective." In the era of progressive globalization and universalization of culture, sometimes imposed  by the media and the so-called opinion-forming centers of the dominant civilization model, in which the world is perceived as a "global village" inhabited by a consumer society that is supposedly subject to inevitable changes forced by technological progress (with the revolution of artificial intelligence at the forefront), we want to turn to what we perceive as primal and natural, i.e. sources of literature, culture and art in our local and regional spaces and communities.