We are currently seeking submissions for our panel "The biopolitics of sensation" for SLSA (Society for Literature, Science and the Arts) meeting, 'After Biopolitics', at Rice University, Houston, Texas, November 12 – 15, 2015. Deadline is soon, March 30th.

Panel stream will include Roundtable with Patricia Clough

Mark Paterson, University of Pittsburgh (Paterson@pitt.edu)
David Parisi, College of Charleston (ParisiD@cofc.edu)

The Value of Survival

Convenors: Carlo Burelli (carlo.burelli@unimi.it), Marco Piasentier (marco.piasentier@gmail.com)

Since at least Hobbes, political philosophy has been either explicitly or implicitly revolving around the question of survival and its normative status. However, this status has rarely been brought to light. Some traditions, like political realism or bio politics, do address this theme directly, while in others, like for example liberalism, it lays dormant as a hidden but crucial assumption.

Reflections for Revenge Conference at the University of Leicester – only two weeks left to submit your abstract!
Please can I remind you all of the exciting new conference we are holding in September at the University of Leicester. The Call for Papers is open but will close on the 2nd April. For more details about the conference, and the wider collaboration into the study of revenge, please visit our website: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/criminology/research/current-projects/r... or contact us on revenge@le.ac.uk.

Is twitter fiction a new/emergent literary form, or is it a derivative shorthand narrative for a generation who won't/can't read long works? Looking for a paper to round out a panel on the role of Twitter in contemporary literature, and in particular an excavation of the publics producing/produced by it. Send a 250 word abstract and brief bio to ljj4@psu.edu by March 25, 2015.

The News from Poems

The Sixth Biennial Conference of the
William Carlos Williams Society

William Paterson University
June 18-20, 2015

Keynote Speaker: Paul Mariani
Author of William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked

The year 2015 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Williams' Journey to Love by Random House and a sort of midpoint in Williams' late career renaissance culminating in Pictures from Breughel. In Journey to Love, Williams continues a lyrical reaffirmation of his identity as a poet and of poetry as a necessary response to the vicissitudes of life—especially the vicissitudes of ageing and the diminishment of time, which is recuperated through poetry, made new:

Proposals invited for this MMLA roundtable session, which seeks innovative approaches to teaching literature surveys from a variety of perspectives. Proposals may explore practical, institutional, or theoretic/disciplinary matters. Practical concerns might include textual choices, examples of teaching strategies, including relevant assignments, syllabi, etc. Institutional matters might include possible ways of introducing innovation in the curriculum through surveys and/or assessment matters, as well as surveys from a range of institutions.

In recent years, it has become clear that 'Gothic' as a critical term has the potential to bring together varied perspectives, from numerous areas of enquiry. While there has been some interest in analysing examples of tourist experiences through a Gothic lens, this has mainly been limited to a small number of locations and disciplinary perspectives (London, Whitby and literary related subjects and approaches, for example). Thus, the topic of 'Gothic tourism' offers a new area that can be addressed from a number of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.