In 2009 Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, her first novel in almost ten years, was an instant bestseller. The author or co-author of thirteen books, Kingsolver has recieved both critical and popular acclaim and remains a prominent figure in contemporary American literature. I am soliciting paper proposals for a proposed panel at the American Literature Association in San Francisco May 27-30, 2010. The panel seeks to examine both Kingsolver's early contributions to American Literature as well as her newest works of fiction and non-fiction. This panel welcomes a variety of approaches to Kingsolver's work in any genre.

In our increasingly globalized world, journeys have become a pervasive part of everyday life; however, this phenomenon is not limited to modern times. Rather, travel and its ramifications have been a part of the German-speaking world's discourse since the Middle Ages. These journeys may be not just physical, but also spiritual or emotional in nature. This conference seeks to explore the multifarious manifestations of the journey motif in German literature, film, theater, history and art with topics including, but not limited to:

After a very successful conference entitled "Early Modern Dramatic and Literary Spaces" at California State University, Long Beach this past November, the organizers are proposing a collection of essays. (Conference program and details are still available at www.csulb.edu/centers/med-ren)

CFP: Session Proposal for 2010 Meeting of ASA

The Nature of Culinary Choices: Foodways and the Environment

Organized by the CLEU research group of the University of La Coruna in northwestern Spain, this international conference, scheduled for September 23-25, 2010, aims to provide a forum for the exploration of the relationships between the ecological and the utopian in American letters and American culture at large. Combining politics and poetics, the conference intends to look at the convergence of both terms in different cultural and literary manifestations so as to bring out and debate the utopian element within the ecological and/or the ecocritical, as well as the presence of the ecological within contemporary utopian proposals, real or fictional. How does utopian discourse manifest itself within ecology-oriented writings?

Women as Leaders in Education: Succeeding Despite Inequity, Discrimination, and Other Challenges (working title), a new book published by Praeger, will bring together a multidisciplinary and multicultural discussion of issues women educators face, including differences in leadership styles, obstacles to advancement, and pay, benefit and resource inequity. This book will address themes of ethical decision making, authority, power and leadership, and conflict in organizational life. It will also discuss interconnections among equity issues: sex, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability.