Human Resources / Ressources humaines
Call for Papers, Transverse journal
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Issue 14b

Transverse journal seeks to explore how we understand resources in their relation to human life and artistic expression. "Human resources" can be understood both as the use of resources by humans, and as the use of the human as a resource. What do we intend when we think of humans as resources, in a working, social or cultural context, and how do literary and artistic works depict the staging of human resources? What are the resources human beings can count on in times of crisis? What do we make of humans as resources for artistic creation, both outside and inside the work of art?

Words, whether in poetry or prose, have a power beyond their meaning. They are capable not simply of expression but also of action; they can hurt or they can heal. Throughout the Middle Ages the potency of words, their effect and force upon the mind, body, and soul is explored and engaged with, poured over and focused upon not simply by the arts of grammar and rhetoric, but by poetry and theology, by medicine and psychology. Medieval texts are pieces of linguistic craft and intention, their words chosen and arranged with a purpose in mind. Poems in this period can be as crafted as theological treatises, their meters and rhymes as intentional and purpose driven as any medical instrument.

Call for Papers: Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern World

Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) Aberystwyth-Bangor

Biennial conference, 3rd-5th September 2015, Bangor University

Keynote Speakers:

Michal Biran (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Daniel Carey (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Judith Jesch (University of Nottingham)

International Network for Alternative Academia - Extends a general invitation to participate

2nd International Symposium: Creating Characters, Inventing Lives: The Art of the Self

Part of the Research Program on: Aesthetic Lives, Artistic Selves

Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th of May, 2015

Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Venue: Betahaus BCN
Address: (Carrer de Vilafranca 7, Gràcia, 08024)

Sideways in Time: Alternate History and Counterfactual Narratives:
March 30-31, 2015 [Please note the change in dates from the previous cfp; we have also confirmed our 3 keynote speakers - see below]

Sideways in Time is an Alternate History Conference to be held at the University of Liverpool - in association with Lancaster University. This interdisciplinary conferences will bring together scholarship in science fiction, fantasy, historical and literary fictions, as well as historians and counterfactual thought-experiments, to discuss those fictional narratives that deals with alternate histories and parallel worlds.

The current notion of competitive sports involves an ambiguous attitude towards one's own belonging. On the one hand, sports have become increasingly globalized, and on the other the issue of competing in support of one's own nation goes on being an explicit responsibility of the professional athletes who comes from a specific nation but at the same time are supposed to "speak" a common language, universally understood regardless of one's national belonging. As Andrei S. Markovits & Lars Rensmann state in their Gaming the World (2010), globalization and local allegiances as conflicting influences are remoulding the cultural and artistic implications of sports all over the world.