It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us ...
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

The poet—the contemporary—must firmly hold his gaze on his own time. But what does he who sees his time actually see?
'What is the Contemporary?' – Giorgio Agamben

The Caribbean Studies Association 40th Annual Conference will be held May 25-29, 2015 in New Orleans, LA.

The Edwidge Danticat Society invites multidisciplinary papers for a panel at the 40th Annual Caribbean Studies Association conference. In keeping with the theme of this year's conference: The Caribbean in an Age of Global Apartheid: Fences, Boundaries, Borders – Literal and Imagined- we welcome papers that explore Edwidge Danticat's activist and creative work in relationship to fences, boundaries, and borders. The Edwidge Danticat Society invites proposals for 15-minute presentations, possible topics include:

Publication: St. John's University Humanities Review (Vol. Thirteen, Issue 1/Spring 2015)

"The chief defect of humanism is that it concerns human beings. Between humanism and something else, it might be possible to create an acceptable fiction."
-Wallace Stevens

Throughout the last decade or so the formerly rather "exotic" field of "Human-Animal Studies" (sometimes simply "Animal Studies") has grown immensely and produced an amount of exciting and innovative work that by now has gained some deserved recognition from the academic mainstream across a whole range of disciplines. Briefly put and among other things, Human-Animal Studies are interested in the manifold intersections of human and animal lives, the forms and modes of human-animal relations in different historical, social, literary, cultural and other contexts, and also inevitably touch upon the question of what it means to be a *human* animal.

http://www.luigiboccherini.org/operetta.html

The «théâtre musical léger» in Europe: From the Operetta to the Music-hall

organized by
Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (Lucca/Pistoia)
Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française (Venice)

5-7 October 2015
COMPLESSO MONUMENTALE DI SAN MICHELETTO - Lucca