world literatures and indigenous studies

The notion of “community” sometimes centers unquestioningly on whatever it is shared by a given group of people without pausing to study the emergence of the uncommon, the disparate or the disjointed among its members. Thus, certain practices underlying distinctiveness, differentiation, and separation are manifested in ways that may become as equally meaningful to them as their common cultural, political, religious, material, and any other structures, values, and characteristics representing them and their community.

Call for papers---The Contested Space of Arab Spring (NeMLA 2018)

Deadline for submission: September 30, 2017

Northeast Modern Language Association: University of Pittsburg, PA, April 12-15, 2018

Chair: Joan Listernick

Protesting against corruption and dictatorship in favor of democracy, men and women poured onto the streets during the brief, but historically critical period of the Arab Spring. This potential watershed has produced a literary tide reflecting on its significance, a tide itself waiting to be explored. This panel will examine how contemporary literature has viewed the emancipatory possibility of the Arab Spring-- as a moment of historic exceptionalism or a slumbering ember.

Authorial literary translation 

            The study of any national literary system cannot exclude a comparative approach and an investigation into the function of translations. Our aim in this monographic issue is to study works translated by leading writers in international literary cultures (not exclusively European), and then analyse the role of these translations in the formation of supranational literary canons.

The leading writers of various literary traditions have in fact very often translated foreign works themselves by turning, on occasions, to translation as a fundamental practice for personal enrichment to creative and stylistic ends.

The PG CWWN (Postgraduate Contemporary Women’s Writing Network) are delighted to announce our next biennial conference, Fast Forward: Women’s Writing in the 21st Century, to be held at Sheffield Hallam University on 8th-9th September 2017.

Fast Forward: Women’s Writing in the 21st Century

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.” (Zadie Smith)

This panel considers examples of French and francophone literatures, films, and other art forms, in which contemporary women articulate and/or embody nonconformist physicality which challenges social order. How do women speak against or otherwise resist socially defined borders and boundaries of normative corporeality? Presentations may address both thematic and formal examples of textual disruption that is enabled by bodies which run counter to socially constructed ideals related to women, gender, and race. Possible thematic avenues of inquiry include but are not limited to: pregnancy, aging, disability, beauty, and illness.

Transcending Borders and Boundaries through the Act of Writing

SASGLS General Conference

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

 “Things fall apart”

17-19 August 2017, University of South Africa (Unisa), Pretoria, South Africa

The South African Society for General Literary Studies (SASGLS) invites scholars to submit proposals on the theme “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” for its biennial conference, to be hosted at the University of South Africa (Unisa), Pretoria, from 17 to 19 August 2017.

We are currently seeking writers, editors, and contributors of all kinds to The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature, an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook under development with the Rebus Community. Rebus is a non-profit organization that works with faculty, librarians, students, and staff to build tools and resources in support of free and open textbook publishing.

Renaissance Border Crossings: Documented and Undocumented
Portland, Oregon, October 19-22, 2017
 

Plenary speakers: Fran Dolan, Distinguished Professor of English, UC Davis  
and Daniel Vitkus, Professor of Literature, UC San Diego

Material culture assumes significance of massive proportions in cultures across the globe by virtue of its ability to trace everyday life and its nuances through the signifying metaphor of objects. The historical trajectories of nations, cultures and communities function in tandem with that of the prevailing material culture(s) in as much as transformations in the latter sphere inevitably represent ruptures or shifts in the former. The stories that objects recount surpass the boundaries of time and space as they transcend both. They function as signifying metaphors, carrying multiple significations of lives lived through and with them.

This edition tries to look into the struggles and empowerment of those mothers who showed courage to subvert the social construct and redefine “motherhood” in their own way; mothers who dared to transgress and transcend the threshold of domesticity, thereby, carving a niche for their successors to follow suit.

We welcome original, unpublished research papers related to the concept of “motherhood” with specific focus on mothers who have transgressed or subverted the societal norms. Topics for papers may include the various aspects of motherhood but are not limited to:-

The quint’s thirty sixth issue is issuing a call for theoretically informed and historically grounded submissions of scholarly interest—as well as creative writing, original art, interviews, and reviews of books.  The deadline for this call is 15th August 2017—but please note that we accept manu/digi-scripts at any time.

All contributions accompanied by a short biography will be forwarded to a member of the editorial board.  Manuscripts must not be previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere while being reviewed by the quint’s editors or outside readers.

We invite proposals for papers dealing with any aspect of women in literature. This session welcomes proposals on a wide variety of topics, with particular consideration granted to papers that engage with the 2017 conference theme of "The Sense of Sight: Visuality, Visibility, & Ways of Seeing." Possible foci might include narrative perspectives and frames; visual aesthetics; voyeurism; beauty and sublimity; and/or constructions of subjectivity.

Proposals may be submitted via PAMLA's online submission form: http://pamla.org/node/add/proposal

The editors of MFS seek essays that engage with the concept of inter-imperiality, as developed in the recent PMLA “Theories and Methodologies” cluster (March 2015) and elsewhere. The global turn in literary and cultural studies, although productive, sometimes elides the post/colonial, economic, and other historical or geopolitical conditions of literary-cultural production. We solicit essays that offset this tendency by reading literary-cultural texts within an inter-imperial framework.