Following on from two hugely successful recent conferences, the 2010 School of English postgraduate conference at the University of Leicester will address concepts of personal territory, in any of its manifestations. A sense of personal belonging, or 'home',
contributes towards the idea of having a territory, and this can take any number of physical and psychological forms. Topics that might be considered are:

Local Culture seeks the submission of undergraduate essays for its Winter edition. Submission length should range from 1,500 to 8,000 words (approximately 5 to 20 pages, double-spaced) and should include a 100-word abstract.

Ruminating, or chewing and digesting information, stands as the hallmark of literary criticism. This journal aims to provide a place for masters' students to publish work that wrestles with the foundational problems of literature and literary study in creative, challenging and innovative ways.

Call for Papers: Open Topic Session on Pauline E. Hopkins.

The Pauline Hopkins Society seeks proposals for an Open Topic panel at the 2010 American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco May 27-30. Papers may examine any aspect of Hopkins's life and work including but not limited to her drama, fiction, biographical writing, oratory, journalism, editorial work, and ethnology. Especially welcome are proposals for papers that discuss significant literary, political, and historical influences on Hopkins and/or her influence on others, especially journalists, historians, and political activists.

Poe and Reputation, ALA San Francisco, May 27-30, 2010.

Papers might address Poe's efforts to promote and defend himself, his brushes with fame during his lifetime (e.g. "The Gold Bug" and "The Raven"), the attempts to damage and restore his good name after his death, his reception and reputation at home and abroad, and his elevation to the status of major writer and pop culture icon in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. 250 word abstracts and brief bios (three to four sentences) in MS Word to John Gruesser at jgruesse@kean.edu by Jan. 15,, 2010.

UPDATE: ACLA has extended the deadline for submissions to November 23.

The buzz surrounding recent Austen adaptation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies captures the ambivalence — equal parts horror and delight — evoked by the perpetual resuscitation of the nineteenth century. Leaving others to fight Austen's zombies, this seminar sets its historical sights slightly later, taking the figure of the zombie as a point of departure. Does Victorian Britain, like the zombie, refuse to remain quietly dead and buried? Or do we keep digging it up?

CFP: Cormac McCarthy (12/15/09; SW/TX PCA/ACA 2/10-2/13/10)

Panel(s) now forming on the work of Cormac McCarthy: novels, plays, screenplays:

Novels: The Orchard Keeper (1965); Outer Dark (1968); Child of God (1974); Suttree (1979); Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West (1985); All the Pretty Horses (1992); The Crossing (1994); Cities of the Plain (1998); No Country for Old Men (2005); The Road (2006)

Plays and Screenplay: The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts (1994); The Gardener's Son: A Screenplay (1996); The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form (2006)