The Third Annual Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom, from April 25-28 2013, at the Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan.

CONFERENCE THEME: "The Impact of Innovation: Technology and You"

Call for Participants

Cultural Production and/as Cultural Studies
Proposed roundtable for the Cultural Studies Association Meeting
Chicago, May 23-26, 2013

Craig Willse
George Mason University
cwillse@gmu.edu

As an academic practice, cultural studies has challenged static notions of cultural objects in terms of their meaning, their production, and their consumption. Cultural studies also offers an opportunity to challenge the positioning of academic work as outside of or superior to the culture we study.

While our collection on the local manifestations of Occupy Wall Street currently boasts fourteen excellent essays, we would like to consider a few more proposals focused on the politics of the local and regional. We're looking, in particular for more theory-oriented essays, though imaginative takes on the topic are always welcome.

Deadline for proposals: Feb 15.

Please see below for the original call for papers:
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We are currently inviting submissions for a special issue of College Literature on "The Poetics of Surplus," guest-edited by Ranjan Ghosh.

Duquesne University
SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENSION: January 18, 2013.

With traditionalists hearkening for a return to founding principles while protestors of various stripes look forward to dismantling the very notion of norms themselves, questions about the foundations of societal structures occupy a central place in myriad contemporary debates. For the (anti)Foundations Conference—the Duquesne University English Graduate Organization invites considerations of societal structures, their foundations, and the ways that these structures are both reinforced and challenged by works of literature and culture.

This proposed special session will examine the typefication, marketing practices and consumption of a diasporic author's identity in the publishing process. Some questions to consider include: How does the publishing industry create and sell a persona of authors with hybrid/hyphenated identities? How are diasporic authors' identities sold and consumed in the literary market? Are authors presented as fully assimilated to the host country or as concretely tied to "ethnic" roots? Particularly when second and third generation immigrant writers are being marketed in relation to the motherland, how is their identity accepted as authentic?

We are seeking additional essays for this collection, which is slated to be released by McFarland in 2014. The collection features essays that examine how authors of the 20th and 21st centuries continue the use of sentimental forms and tropes of nineteenth-century literature. Current literary and cultural criticism maintains that American culture engaged in a turn-of-the-century refutation of the sentimental mode; however, the analysis of 20th and 21st century narratives contained within these essays reveals ongoing use of sentimental expression that draws upon its ability to instruct and influence readers through emotional identification.