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Call for Papers
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PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE!!!

CFP: LITERATURE AND AGEING

New Cultures of Ageing:
Narratives, Fictions, Methods & Researching the Future

8th – 9th April 2011

An interdisciplinary conference organized by the NDA-funded FCMAP Group of Investigators and by the BCCW Research Group, Brunel University, London.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Will Self
Fay Weldon

"Asexual: a person who does not experience sexual attraction." This definition is provided on the homepage of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), a web community of nearly 30,000 members worldwide that is generally considered the mouthpiece of the asexual community. AVEN's political platform calls for the depathologization of asexuality and the recognition of asexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation, with AVEN working toward these goals through an engagement with a variety of media – their website, blogs and discussion boards, guest appearances on television talk shows, documentary film, and participation in public events like Pride parades and public sex workshops.

This Comparative Literature session has been selected for inclusion in the 42nd convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association, to be held in New Brunswick, New Jersey April 7-10, 2011. The host institution is Rutgers University.

We invite papers analyzing degeneration in Western and non-Western works of, or portraying, the 19th century. What do fictions of degeneration tell us about the scientific, sexual and cultural politics of the 19th century? In what contexts is the fear of degeneration exacerbated or sublimated at the end of the century? How does contemporaneous biological theory become literature? Comparative approaches and papers dealing with 19th century popular literature welcomed.

25th Annual MELUS/USACLALS Joint Conference
April 7 – 10, 2011
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL

Native American Literature courses often attract self-selected students for the wrong reasons. Recently, when I surveyed my students as to why they were taking a course on Native literature, students replied that they enjoyed "folktales" or that they think they have distant relatives who were Cherokee. Students of diverse backgrounds, and particularly Euro-American students, when first exposed to the contexts and histories of American Indian literatures often feel disillusioned by this new knowledge, especially as that knowledge counters stereotypical and often romanticized associations of American Indian cultures.

The conference, organised by the Research Centre for Women's and Gender Studies (CIRSDe) at the University of Turin (Italy), aims to promote cultural exchanges among researchers interested in the gender perspectives in their work. At the same time, it's an occasion to relaunch the debate on how Women's and Gender studies can be integrated into traditional academic approaches.
The topics we intend to discuss are: globalization, cultural exchanges, transculturality, migrations, languages, economic development and the decline in importance of national boundaries. It will be necessary to adopt a gender perspective and an interdisciplinary approach in discussing these subjects.