Civilisation and Fear: Writing and the Subject/s of Ideology

Conference Call for Papers

22-25 September 2OlO
Ustron, Poland

***
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, ll.27-3O)
***

Pynchon's California

With the publication of Inherent Vice (2009) it becomes possible to speak of Thomas Pynchon's "California novels." Unlike Pynchon's pagemonsters, which are set around global historical crises, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice are set in California in the present or recent past; they are also shorter and somewhat more traditionally plotted, and two revolve around Pynchon's only female protagonists. Two of his longer, globetrotting works, Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day, also wind up in California. Papers are invited for this proposed panel on any aspect of Pynchon's "California novels" or his use of California as a setting in his writing.

North Carolina State University English Graduate Student Symposium [March 5-6, 2010]

Extended Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2010.

The Resurrection of the Paranormal: Investigating Otherness in 21st Century English Studies

Relevant submissions to the symposium will be considered for publication in Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora.

Keynote speakers will be Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy and author Melissa Marr.

Dr. McKoy is the Director of Africana Studies at North Carolina State University and editor of the journal Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. She is also the author of the book When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures.

Composing Ourselves:
A Graduate Conference in Literature, Composition, and Rhetoric
Friday, April 16th, 2010
English Graduate Organization
Department of English and Comparative Literature
University of Cincinnati

Many of us have experienced the sense of being put together by the process of putting together.
We have composed, and in a sense we are composed.
–Robert Heilman

Rodopi Press Amsterdam / Atlanta announces a new series of literary studies entitled Dialogue under the general editorship of Michael J. Meyer. The series will offer new and experienced scholars the opportunity to present alternative readings and approaches to classic texts (those which have received canonical acceptance in either American or Continental Literature). The call for papers will work as follows: the series editor or a guest editor will list several different topics or approaches to the text in question. These topics should have in the past elicited a significant level of disagreement among critics or have an inherent controversial element.

UPSTAGE, a new peer-reviewed online publication dedicated to research in turn-of-the-century dramatic literature, theatre, and theatrical culture, seeks submissions for its inaugural issue scheduled for the spring or summer of 2010. This is a development of the pages published under this name as part of THE OSCHOLARS, and will henceforth be an independently edited journal in the oscholars group published at www.oscholars.com, as part of our expanding coverage of the different cultural manifestations of the fin de siècle.