Following the success of the Fall Narratives project in 2014, this workshop will explore the theme of fallen animals. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is but one example of the ambivalence which has characterized the human-animal relationship over the centuries, both across, and within, cultures, societies and traditions. With publications such as Anat Pick's Creaturely Poetics (2011), the field of post-anthropocentrism studies has in recent years become particularly vibrant and attracts scholarly attention from a variety of disciplines. We welcome proposals with research interest in fields such as, but not limited to, literature, religion, languages, history, philosophy, psychology, art, film and visual culture, cultural studies and economics.

Call for papers and panels
University of Muenster, Germany
16 - 19 September 2015
www.wwu.de/AFROeu2015

In Cruel Optimism (2011), Lauren Berlant asks why we stay "attached to conventional good-life fantasies – say of enduring reciprocity in couples, families, political systems, institutions, markets and at work – when the evidence of their instability, fragility, and dear cost abounds" (2). The post-1945 social consensus in Britain, the reproduction of the American Dream, and the social democratic promises made across Europe are political expressions of the good-life fantasy after World War Two. These social contracts have long since worn out, put under pressure from various financial crises since the 1970s and radical shifts in the political landscape.

"N-Determination and Critical Practices of Resistance"
UC Irvine March 12-13 (Thursday and Friday)

This panel on the relationship between animals and romantic poetry will elicit new perspectives on how animal rights and science bear on poetic form and genre. There have been a number of studies of prose writings that address animals and animal rights. However, this panel will examine the intersections between animal and poetic forms, inviting papers that give precise and compelling eco-critical, historicist, and formalist readings of how romantic political, philosophical, and scientific discourses might challenge or amend typically metaphorical and figurative conceptions of animals in the period.

Quantum Metaphors and Fractal Verse: Intersections in Contemporary American Poetry and Science

Happy holidays, colleagues,

Is "submit a proposal to the Conference on Community Writing in Boulder, CO next October 16-17, 2015" on your holiday to do list? I hope so!
Call for papers is at the conference website: communitywriting.org

Check out our fantastic line-up of keynotes and invited speakers:

Keynotes: Eli Goldblatt and Paul Feigenbaum