The pluralistic, sophisticated and technocrazy nature of contemporary existence has blurred concepts like marginality and minority that are inherent in human existence. Because technology seems to have melted several existential boundaries, and because theories of global citizenry give the impression of free access to movement, the sense of being marginal is almost waning. However, the network of global philosophy and technological connectivity are themselves apparent mechanisms of marginalization especially in the postcolonial context. Postcolonial theorists, intellectuals and writers have taken the intellectual, political and moral authority to challenge representational claims made by dominant Western/imperial cultures.

This CFP is seeking proposals for an approved "Special Topics" session examining a variety of issues related to Historical Short Fiction (abstract/CFP below) for the 2015 PAMLA conference in Portland, OR (November 6-8th).

TITLE: Long Time, Short Text: Historical Short Fiction

When we listen to the South, what do we hear?

Taking advantage of the MLA Convention's 2016 visit to Austin, the live music capital of the world, the Southern United States Forum (formerly the Southern Literature Discussion Group) is organizing a panel that aims to bring together sound studies and southern studies. We invite papers examining auditory depictions of the South in music, literature, film, or other media.

Please send a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to Jolene Hubbs (jhubbs@ua.edu) by March 15, 2015.

Approaches drawing from emerging fields like sound studies and those employing more traditional methods are equally welcome.

Just over a decade ago, Dana Phillips (in)famously attacked ecocritics for uncritically borrowing terms and ideas from the discipline of ecology, which, he argued, is itself a "less than fully coherent field with a very checked past and fairly uncertain future" (45). While controversial, Phillips's critique sparked important discussions about ecocriticism's methodology, especially its claim to interdisciplinarity. So-called "second wave" ecocritics reexamined the field's founding assumptions; a period of self-assessment propelled ecocriticism toward a more rigorous engagement with the sciences as well as the humanities.

MLA 2016 (Austin, TX, 7-10 January 2016)
Special Session: The Romantic Public

Forms, definitions, spheres, resistances, effects, legacies of "the public" – past, present, and future – as imagined or provoked by Romantic literature.

Abstracts by 15 March 2015

Matthew Borushko

mborushko@stonehill.edu

Modes of Relative Certainty

This panel will explore areas of "relative certainty" in modernism, where the supposed impossibility of knowing anything for certain meets the practical reality that things can be known well enough that readers and citizens can make use of them. In the wake of postmodernist criticism's essential disdain for certain knowledge and a general acceptance of modernists as ambiguous, ironic, enigmatical, interested in differance and lack, textual density and obscure allusions, we bring attention to the ways modernist texts celebrate positive knowledge--as contingent as that knowledge may be.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford

George Meredith and his Circle: Intellectual Communities and Literary Networks

This will be the first international conference on George Meredith's work and critical reputation, and therefore a landmark event in Meredith studies. The conference also highlights debates about the circulation and exchange of ideas between Meredith and his contemporaries, encompassing the wider resonances of legacy and literary community in the circulation of ideas in the second half of the long nineteenth century.