Dear Colleagues:

Please consider submitting a proposal by November 1 for the collection described below.

Nobody's Disease: Theorizing Syphilis and Subjectivity

In Book Five of Middlemarch, titled "The Dead Hand," Mr. Casaubon's will acts as a "promise" by which he might "keep his cold grasp on Dorothea's ife." The power of the dead and of the past to exert control on the present is a central concern of Victorian literature and culture. Besides providing a form of narrative closure, inheritance may figure as a burden or a privilege, a "great expectation" or a surprise. The treatment of
inheritance might comment on personal and familial identities, national and racial anxieties, or cultural and artistic influences. Inheritance, or the prospect of inheriting, preoccupies figures as diverse as Thackeray, whose

Medievalists @ Penn (M@P) is a graduate-student organization at the University of Pennsylvania interested in developing a broad interdisciplinary understanding of the Middle Ages. We are pleased to announce our 7th Annual Graduate Student Conference, "The Medieval Archive."

Keynote Speaker:
Jessica Brantley, Associate Professor of English, Yale University

46th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association
April 30 - May 3, 2015
Toronto, Ontario

At cultural moments when the meaning of race is contested and reformulated, new textual languages of racial identity and performative indices of bodily inscription emerge. Bringing together studies of literature, sound and dance, this session seeks papers that explore performance and racial identity in the twenty-first century. Topics include but are not limited to Afro-futurism, representations of performance in contemporary Afro-diasporic narrative, alterity and embodiment, soundscapes, urban dance forms, spectacle and transgression, race, gender and sexuality.

Deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2014

Indiana University plans an academic symposium welcoming scholars, archivists, filmmakers, and others interested in celebrating the centennial of Orson Welles's birth. The event will be held April 29-May 2, 2015 on the beautiful Bloomington, Indiana campus and hosted by Indiana University's newly established Media School; the Indiana University Libraries (including the Lilly Library, home of the Orson Welles Papers, and the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive); and Indiana University Cinema, which has earned an international reputation for the high quality of its facilities and programming.

The International Theodore Dreiser Society will sponsor two panels at the American Literature Association Conference in Boston, MA on May 21-24, 2015.

Panel One: Open Topic
• Papers are invited on any topic concerning Dreiser.

Panel Two: Dreiser and Gender
• Papers are invited on topics concerning gender and sexuality in Dreiser's life and work. Over the past two decades, gender and sexuality have become particularly crucial issues in Dreiser studies. We welcome papers that contribute to the complex, provocative dialogue about these issues.

Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes. Panelists are not required to be members of the International Theodore Dreiser Society.

The New Voices Planning Committee is proud to announce that we are now accepting proposals for the 2015 New Voices Conference. This year's annual conference will be held winter 2015 at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, and will feature papers, panels, workshops, creative writing readings, and speakers related to our annual theme, which is as follows.