twentieth century and beyond

Call for Papers

Special Issue of South Asian Review

Topic: South Asian Disasters in 20th and 21st Century 

Literature, Film, and Culture

With Health Humanities on the rise and medical memoirs flooding bookshelves, it's easy to forget that the alliances forged between literary representation and medical discourse are new and fragile. Writers from a multitude of traditions have long squared off against doctors for the right to understand illness and capture the essence of the diseased subject. Their motivations have spanned from the starkly political to the intensely personal.

This panel seeks to explore the formal approaches and theoretical implications of these Anti-Medical Humanities. What drives these writers to resist the assimilation of the literary into the medical, and vice versa?

Potential topics could include, but are not limited to:

Spanish Society Must Be Defended?: Revisiting Foucault, Biopolitics, and Sovereignty Today

Human Cognition in Andreï Makine’s Oeuvre

La cognition humaine chez Andreï Makine

Study days postponed to July 1-2, 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic

Deadline for paper submission extended: January 15, 2021

Keynote speaker: Prof. Dr. Alexandre Gefen (CNRS, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)

Call for Papers

Virtualizing Material Games (SCMS Virtual Conference Panel 2021)

Even before worldwide quarantines added impetus, material gaming had already become increasingly enacted in virtual spaces.  Rather than virtual play replacing the material, as some speculated in the early days of videogames, material play has become increasingly entangled with virtuality.  These increasingly complementary modes of play offer a rich space for exploring the multifaceted embodied and conceptual activity of play, the blending of material and virtual that in many ways defines games.   

Dear Colleagues,

We seek original, previously unpublished essays for a Special Issue of Humanities on the topic modern and contemporary Irish writing.

Irish writing has emerged, especially since the turn of the last century, as a space of compelling and varied production. While we remain mindful of Emer Nolan’s important proviso that the Republic of Ireland “now appropriates all ‘success’ (including literary ‘success’) as evidence of its own dynamism, tolerance, and inclusiveness,” we are nevertheless interested in examining the ways in which historical and emergent forms of expression have combined in contemporary Ireland to produce this present moment of innovation and compelling creativity.

Modern Drama

Call for Papers

Special Issue for Fall 2021: New Approaches to Harold Pinter

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we would like to extend the submissions deadline for the special issue of Modern Drama, "New Approaches to Harold Pinter."

Entanglement and Entropy: The Weave of Claire Messud’s Novels

This is a call for chapters for an edited collection of essays on Claire Messud’s novels. Since this would be the first book-length study of her work, chapters on all of her six novels are sought (When the World Was Steady, The Last Life: A Novel, The Hunters, The Emperor's Children, The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl). Papers that foreground narratological, historical, cultural and ideological features are most welcome.

Call for Papers (Fall Issue 2020)

    The Middle East is a highly dynamic and strategically located region that is experiencing numerous challenges and opportunities in contemporary times. Political revisionism, religious fundamentalism, major regional and international powers foreign intervention, the rise of radicalism and terrorism, endeavor to reshape the political systems, replace them with a one- model political, social, and economic system led to slowdowns surrounding the decline in global energy supply chains and people-led protests against corrupt regimes. These are just a few variables affecting the region.

This guaranteed session will be part of the March 11-14, 2021 NeMLA convention in Philadelphia, PA: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html.  Proposals must be submitted through the NeMLA’s conference website.

Please contact Tom Hertweck (thertweck@umassd.edu), Vice President of Kurt Vonnegut Society, with questions. 

Panel Title: “Kurt Vonnegut Changing the World—and In a Changing World” 

                            Reading Gandhi Today: Critical Perspectives and Approaches

Climate change is an important issue that has become a frequent topic in twentieth as well as twenty-first century literature and film. From science fiction of the past to the present-day speculative fiction, this roundtable presents an opportunity to provide and study examples both past and present regarding climate change issues in literature and film. Dystopias written by international writers reflect the world-wide concern regarding climate change. For example, novelists such as British-born Maggie Gee’s The Flood or French-born Pierre Boulle’s La Planète des singes[The Planet of the Apes] speculate on the possibility of climate changes causing devastating destruction.

Viral Memes : Research and Reflections on the Coronapocalypse

Virtual conference on Saturday 7 November, 2020
at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, with Zoom.

Humankind has ever been impressed by, and formed by, the natural world. The world’s beginning and end are a subject in numerous narratives. Ecocriticism addresses large scale concerns about anthropocene changes. In literary tradition there is a multiplicity of understandings, while Biblical religion has stated that God made both heaven and earth. 

Six papers contributed by scholars from the UK, France, Canada, the USA, Poland and Australia will be distributed and then discussed in the video conference on 7 November 2020.  The CLSG interest is in exploring Christian and Biblical themes in Literature.