twentieth century and beyond

Shortly after the end of WWII, the literary cultures of East-Central Europe were compelled to import the doctrine of socialist realism, which had already been active in the USSR for more than a decade. A malfunctional grafting of a would-be idealizing aesthetics and a formal pattern typical of traditional realism, the socialist realism brought along a new political novel with a limited collection of characters, narrative situations, and denouements, all projected against a overly simplified social background, painted in black and white.

Theorizing Literary Animals

Special Issue 2/2022

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia

studia.philologia@lett.ubbcluj.ro

Guest editor: Dr. Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin, vyroubae@tcd.ie

The 43rd meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Cultural Association will take place in person in Albuquerque, NM from February 23-26, 2022. After moving online last year, we are particularly excited to be together again in February. 

CFP: ACLA 2022

Stories of Memory in the 21st Century

Location: 

National Taipei Normal University

Taipei, Taiwan

*Contingency plan: 

It may be held online due to the ongoing 

pandemic, and the board will make a final decision in January 2022.  

Time: June 15-18, 2022

Abstract Submission Deadline: 

October 31st, 2021

Contact: Mavis Tseng

Associate Professor, 

Taipei Medical University 

mavistseng@tmu.edu.tw

Dr Anuparna Mukherjee and Dr Arunima Bhattacharya are proposing a panel at ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Annual Meeting to be held at the National Taiwan Normal University from June 15 to 18, 2022. Please find the abstract and the details regarding the submission on the ACLA website.

https://www.acla.org/crossovers-imaginaries-movement-culture-and-literary-aesthetics

Three main areas of focus for the panel are:

Migration is one of the most prominent cultural, socio-political, and economic questions of our time. In both industrialised and less developed countries, it would be hard to find people who do not have a personal experience of migration and its effects, which ultimately ‘become the hallmark of the age of migration’ (Castles et al., 2013). According to the World Migration Report 2020, international migrants consist of only 3.6% (281 million) of the world population, and they make ‘significant sociocultural, civic-political and economic contributions in origin and destination countries and community’ (WMR, 2020). However, a great majority of people do not migrate across borders; instead, a large number of people migrate within countries.

Transgender representation is currently at an all-time high. Whether it be in cinema, literature, or social networks, the visibility of trans individuals has tremendously increased. ​Changes in culture have allowed the transgender community to feel safer in coming forward with their stories, and therefore, this new movement has been pioneered by trans women, trans men, and non-binary individuals. For example, Lexie, the trans woman behind the ​popular Instagram account Agressively Trans (@aggressively_trans), published ​the book Une histoire de genres in February 2021. Petite fille, a 2020 documentary directed by Sébastien Lifshitz has won several prizes in various festivals.

The 53rd annual NeMLA Convention will be held March 10-13, 2022 in Baltimore, MD. More information here: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

This seminar invites 250-350 word abstracts for papers that will be circulated in February 2022, prior to the convention. During the seminar itself, session participants will briefly present their work before participating in a discussion with other panelists. Proposed papers should situate Soviet literature and/or other cultural products within a postcolonial context, or explain how postcolonial theory must be modified when applied in post-Soviet spaces. Please read the detailed CFP below:

American Comparative Literature Association 2022 Annual Meeting

National Taiwan Normal University

June 15-18

"Future of Cities / Future Beyond Cities"

In the last decades, cities around the world have experienced unprecendented economic, political, social, and spatial transformations. As these changes bring new challenges for the ways in which we categorize the boundaries of the urban and the definitions of the city, urban theorists have been condering the possibilities of the twenty first century bringing in post-urban stage.

This special issue of Women’s Studies aims to bring together new and exciting scholarship on the work of Eileen Myles. From their early involvement with the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York City in the late 1970s, to their breakthrough success in 2015 with the Ecco/HarperCollins publication of I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems and republication of their 1994 book Chelsea Girls, Myles has operated at the intersection of multiple traditions: the New York School, queer and trans feminisms, autofiction, and performance.

Reminder: Call for papers - deadline November 1st

Scoring Peak TV: Music and Sound in Television’s New ‘Golden Age’

We invite abstracts proposing contributions to a project led by Dr Steve Halfyard (RCS) and Prof. Nicholas Reyland (RNCM). The project will involve two phases of work: a conference/workshop (to be held in 2022, location and medium tbc.) and an essay collection co-edited by Halfyard and Reyland (to be submitted end 2023).

For over a decade now, the interdisciplinary study of human rights and literature has offered a generative lens for thinking about questions of citizenship, the nation-state, and narrative form. Scholars have studied the human rights novel (James Dawes), the co-constitution of human rights and the bildungsroman (Joseph Slaughter), literary and cinematic depictions of torture (Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg), and the rights-based political imaginations of American writers of color (Crystal Parikh), among other projects. These approaches have emphasized the discursivity of human rights: literature does not represent a static conception of human rights but rather helps shape understandings of what human rights are or could be.

Call for papers

Kathleen Raine, poet of the past or of times to come?

International Conference: A Homage to Kathleen Raine

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to confirm that the international conference in Homage to Kathleen Raine will be held in person at the Sorbonne and at the research center of the Sorbonne Nouvelle on March 24 and 25, 2022. The call for papers (see below) has been extended to October 31, 2021. You will find all the necessary information on the conference website.

**DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS EXTENDED TO OCT. 15!

"I, too, having lost faith / in language, have placed my faith in language" (Terrance Hayes, "Snow for Wallace Stevens")

As Terrance Hayes exemplifies in his portrayal of Wallace Stevens’ racism, language underpins both care-full and care-less representations. As an interdependent system that necessarily implicates and involves us all, language demands our thoughtful investigation when it comes to how we might communicate care.