Viva voce—"with living voice," but also (and more commonly) the phenomenon of "word of mouth." When incidents of speech, song, or shouting take place, it is the mouth that transforms private impulse into audible sound. Articulatory phonetics tells us that this physiological transubstantiation is little more than the aerodynamic energy of breath rendered into sound waves, or acoustic energy. Yet when do words become more than translations, and mouths more than translating machines?

The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians (Columbus State University) in conjunction with The Carson McCullers Society invite proposals for individual papers or complete panels, topics open, for the American Literature Association Conference to be held in Boston, May 21-24, 2015. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Alison Bertolini, Vice President, The Carson McCullers Society, at alison.bertolini@ndsu.edu no later than January 19, 2015. Preliminary inquiries are welcome.

Robarts goes POP!

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on Canadian Popular Culture

"The culture of a nation comprises many aspects… It includes the many ways that people express themselves in words, movement, music and images. It reveals itself in the ways people choose to spend their time, the music they listen to, the books they read and the films they watch, the sports they encourage and the historical sites and natural environments they protect. These factors shape how a nation sees itself, and how it establishes its identity." (Statistics Canada, 1995, 11)

LIES 2015 asks the fundamental questions of contemporary culture: What is the stance of poetry today? Can poets still be venerated as leaders of nations? Is poetry "relegated" to universities? Muldoon's Oxford Lectures in Poetry (2006) are entitled The End of the Poem, yet like in John Donne's Holy Sonnets, the end of one poem is the beginning of the next one.

The guests of honour at LIES 2015 (15-16th May 2015) are Paul Muldoon as well as Nick Hayes, a political cartoonist and the author of the graphic novel, Rime of the Modern Mariner – and thus we are going through Poetry into the Beyond!

The second issue of Angles, the new online journal published by the SAES, will aim at examining "angles and limes" in Anglo-American studies.

The purpose of this particular issue is to gather articles focusing both on the specific angles of each discipline and their limits, and on the instances when borders are crossed and limits are passed—must be passed—to further research. Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals developing and clarifying their own practices as regards limits and angles.

For a complete CFP, please visit: http://angles.saesfrance.org/index.php?id=90

This is a one-day public engagement conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers. We are excited to announce that Dr. Irina Metzler has been confirmed as the keynote speaker.

There are many misconceptions about the quality of health care in the medieval and early-modern periods. Even Blackadder II, set in the sixteenth century, popularises the idea that early-modern medical practices were both limited and ineffective:

Edmund: I've never had anything you doctors didn't try to cure with leeches. A leech on my ear for ear ache, a leech on my bottom for constipation.
Doctor: They're marvellous, aren't they?
Edmund: Well, the bottom one wasn't. I just sat there and squashed it.

11th Literature in English Symposium: Poetry and Beyond with Muldoon and Hayes

"I am with Raleigh, near the Atlantic" writes Paul Muldoon in "Promises, Promises" from the volume Why Brownlee Left ( ). Even though Plato wanted to banish poets from the (ideal?) Republic, poets and poetry have remained part of the social life. After all, the Romantics believed in the inborn superiority of literature as a mode of knowledge and judgment. Literature and not history or philosophy carried the meaning of life. Victorians placed a poet not above but within his/her community thereby asserting his or her social utility.