twentieth century and beyond

Feeling, Form, Mind: A Conference on the Thought of Susanne K. Langer

An interdisciplinary conference by the Susanne K. Langer Circle in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

June 22–24, 2022

Susanne K. Langer (*1895; † 1985) is widely known for her contributions to a variety of fields ranging from the philosophy of art to mathematical logic. Her thought continues to be felt across diverse traditions, in theory as well as in artistic practice. 

Shaw Symposium, 22-24 July 2022

The Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ONT, CA and Zoom

The International Shaw Society and the Shaw Festival invite scholars and theatre artists to present new work at the 19thannual Summer Shaw Symposium. The event will be held on-site at the Festival; a Zoom option is provided for those who wish to attend the presentations digitally. 

Focused on Bernard Shaw’s life, his works, his contemporaries, and his legacies, the Symposium seeks presentations that relate to the plays included in the Shaw Festival’s 2022 season, especially Too True to Be Good and The Doctor’s Dilemma.

Call for Papers:  2023 General Issue of The Space Between:  Literature and Culture 1914-1945

The Space Between:  Literature and Culture 1914-1945 is the annual peer-reviewed journal for The Space Between Society.  Like the society, the journal is devoted to interdisciplinary scholarship on the period bracketed by the two World Wars.  We are interested in approaches to texts of all kinds, emphasizing research on lesser-known writers and artists and understudied topics of the period, including literary and cultural responses to the First and Second World Wars. We welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines and from scholars around the world, as we seek to approach our period from a broad range of perspectives.

The Willa Cather Foundation will sponsor two separate panels at the American Literature Association’s 33rd Annual Conference, to be held in Chicago, IL May 26-29, 2022.

Cather and Her Contemporaries: As the publication of her letters has demonstrated, Willa Cather had personal, aesthetic, philosophical, and social ties with a wide range of writers, artists, musicians, and public figures. What’s more, her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry were sites of engagement where many of these connections were both widened and deepened. The Willa Cather Foundation seeks paper proposals that pursue a richer understanding of Cather’s connections with her contemporaries, including but not limited to:

The Saul Bellow Society will host one session at the American Literature Association's Annual Conference in Chicago, Ill. on May 26-29, 2022.  Proposals are welcome for paper presentations of 15-20 minutes in length concerning any aspect of Saul Bellow's work or life, including comparisons with other authors.  

More information about the ALA 2022 conference may be found at: https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/general-call-for-papers/ 

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

1922/2022 – TOTAL MODERNISM:

CONTINUITY, DISCONTINUITY, AND THE EXPERIMENTAL TURN

Centro Studi “Arti della Modernità”

18-19-20 May 2022 – Torino (Italy)

CALL FOR PAPERS

 DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 7

Memories of military conflicts from both combatants and non-combatants alike have been a key tool in analyzing the unique traumas and socio-cultural affects of modern warfare. Scholars such as Samuel Hynes and Paul Fussell have done seminal work in articulating theoretical approaches to understanding the memories of bearing witness to modern war. Yet, mainstream war literature largely recounts the white voices from the West.

In 2015, the University of Edinburgh Press launched a multivolume series of scholarly, refereed anthologies entitled ReFocus. Edited by Drs. Gary D. Rhodes (Oklahoma Baptist University), Stefanie Van de Peer (University of Exeter), and Robert Singer (CUNY), each book focuses on a critically overlooked film director who worked in the studio system, independent cinema, mainstream cinema, experimental filmmaking, or the documentary tradition. Volumes published so far in this series include: Sohrab Shahid Saless, Susanne Bier, Pablo Larrain, Paul Leni, Teuvo Tulio, Xavier Dolan, Paul Leni, and Francis Veber, with many more in preparation.

The International David Foster Wallace Society will sponsor two panels at the 33rd annual conference of the American Literature Association in Chicago on May 26-29, 2022.

We are seeking submissions related to any aspect of Wallace’s fiction or nonfiction. 

Given the conference’s setting this year, in Illinois, we are particularly interested in work that considers Wallace’s relationship to or depiction of the American Midwest, or that considers Wallace as a Midwestern writer.

The Charles Olson Society will sponsor a panel at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference, to be held in Chicago, May 26-29, 2021. We are interested in abstracts that address themes, ideas, and theories related to American long poems. The form goes by many names: the serial poem, the long song, the epic, the life poem, or simply the long poem, but no matter the terminology that is applied to long poems, their abiding presence in the tradition of American poetry is clear.

UPDATE: CFP: Food in American Literature

Proposals due December 24, 2021

NOTE:

We are well along in the peer review process with a university press with favorable evaluations. In order to further bolster our collection, however, at this point we are looking only for proposals addressing the following:

• Food and one or more contemporary (last 20 years) African American texts;
• Food and one or more queer literary texts;
• Food and a 19th century American literary text.

For more detailed information on what to send, please see our original CFP below. Thank you.

OVERVIEW:

As early as the 1920’s, Robert Musil remarked on the enormous effort it takes to stand still in a world that demands constant motion. Reflecting on the zooming street he sees through his window,the protagonist of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften comments:

“Könnte man die Sprünge der Aufmerksamkeit messen, die Leistungen der Augenmuskeln, die Pendelbewegungen der Seele und alle die Anstrengungen, die ein Mensch vollbringen muss, um sich im Fluß einer Straße aufrecht zu halten, es käme vermutlich… eine Größe heraus, mit der verglichen die Kraft, die Atlas braucht, um die Welt zu stemmen.”

Call for Chapters: Of (Hu)Man and Monarchs: Humanness and the Fictional Representations of Monarchs in literature, Arts, popular culture and Media (The title may change) contact email: crowncollection436@gmail.com 

He wrapped himself in regal garments and fastened the sash.

When Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head,

a princess Ishtar raised her eyes to the beauty of Gilgamesh.

The Cultural Heritage and Memory of Totalitarianism explores the legacy of Fascism in Italy blending unique in situ visits to art, architecture and historical monuments led by international experts and classes on literature, film and culture led by Sapienza faculty. The goal is to broaden the scholarly assessment of the period and to suggest innovative curricula for students in the humanities, who are also interested in working in museums and cultural institutes in Italy and abroad. The heritage of Fascism will be approached in the context of Nazism and Stalinism, and framed within the broader scenario of European colonialism. Special focus will be given to the analysis of totalitarianism’s influence on postcolonial dictatorships and post-WWII culture.