Call for Papers for the Panel:

Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe

As part of the Fourth Euroacademia International Conference 'The European Union and the Politicization of Europe' to be held at Anglo-American University, Prague, Czech Republic, 27-28 November 2015

Deadline: October 15, 2015
Panel Proposed by Cassandra Sciortino, University of California, Santa Barbara

Panel Description:
Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe

Often the most immediate object of interest for audiences, characters frequently serve as the direct means by which we engage with a work of media. The figures represented onscreen tend to be one of the moving image's most captivating elements. We are absorbed by their fictional dilemmas, preoccupied by the circumstances of their creation, fascinated by their varying treatments across traditions, and engrossed in debates about their broader cultural impact. An ambitious collection of new essays, Screening Characters will be the first major English-language anthology with a concentrated focus on this relatively neglected subject.

The Georgia-Carolina College English Association (GACCEA) invites proposals for individual papers and three-person panels at its annual meeting in metropolitan Atlanta. The conference will be held on Friday, 29 January 2016, at Georgia Gwinnett College.
The topic is "Diaspora in the Digital Age: Texts of Leave-Taking to New Lands."
The plight of refugees far from their homeland has been a societal phenomenon for thousands of years. In the last two centuries alone, people have fled famine and fighting for resettlement in new lands. In the last two years, families have abandoned ancient villages for new destinations on other continents. Many families have left rural regions for urban centers during migrations within countries.

Since the era of slavery and continuing through the present, Black women have articulated a vision of freedom, equality, anti-racism, and racial uplift, drawing from Scripture to sustain their work of promoting equal rights for African Americans. From the early female abolitionists such as Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman, to the anti-lynching activists Ida B. Wells and Mary Talbert, to the twentieth-century civil rights activists Ella Josephine Baker and Septima Clark, and countless others, these "churchwomen" actively challenged the status quo that relegated Black women to the least empowered positions in the social order.

Premodern plant studies debuted at Kalamazoo in 2015 with the first "Secret Lives of Medieval Plants" panel. In this follow-up panel for the 42nd Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium on Medieval Natures (1-2 April 2016), we want to continue the work of pushing back against plant blindness and zoocentrism in analyses of medieval culture. Even as medieval people nominally operated within a Platonic-Aristotelian framework treating plants as "inanimate" and "non-living" (Matthew Hall's terms), they nonetheless recognized diverse forms of vegetable agency in practice.

Volume 2.2 (Summer 2016) will highlight the work of Caribbean Writers, Performance Artists, and Visual Artists working from Canada.

Critical essays on all aspects of Caribbean Writers [working from Canada] are welcomed entries.

Previously unpublished poetry and literary nonfiction from Caribbean artists [working from Canada] are welcomed entries.

Visual art images and video links to performances by Caribbean artists [working from Canada] accompanied by artistic statements also will be accepted for publication consideration.

Interviews with Caribbean Artists [working from Canada] will be considered as a special feature of Volume 2.2 (Summer 2016).