Shakespeare’s Ashes

An International Conference, organized by the Shakespeare Society of India

New Delhi, October 21st-22nd, 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS

Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal

Special Issue on “Data”

Guest Editors: Miriam Posner (UCLA) and Lauren Klein (Georgia Tech)

Editors

Abigail G. Scheg (Western Governors University, USA)
Melanie Shaw (Northcentral University, USA)

Call for Chapters

Proposals Submission Deadline: June 15, 2016
Full Chapters Due: October 15, 2016
Submission Date: January 30, 2017

Perspective, in the context of time or place, is one of the primary orienting tools of narrative.  In life and story, new or different perspectives can reveal hitherto hidden aspects of realty, and differences in perspective lead to misunderstanding or conflict. In literature ranging from the English poet William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience to the Australian novelist’s Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, readers are exposed to the possibilities and problems that emerge from differences of perspective. In the very act of reading and writing, readers and authors alike are forced to confront the points of contact between their own perspective and those of others.

In keeping with this year’s SAMLA theme of utopia and dystopia, this panel will investigate the ways in which work, class, and labor have been represented throughout these traditions in American literature and culture. From utopia texts from authors like Edward Bellamy and Ignatius Donnelly to dystopian films like The Hunger Games and Divergent, utopian and dystopian representations have had a lot to say about work, class, and labor. In this panel, the questions we are interested in posing in this session are these: how are utopias/dystopias important for thinking about social class and labor? What can these representations tell us about popular and theoretical understandings of social class and labor?

CONTEMPORARY SPANISH AMERICAN LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

This panel invites papers that focus on any aspect of contemporary Spanish American literature and popular culture. By May 30, please submit a 300-word abstract, brief bio, and A/V requirements to co-chairs Elisabeth Austin, Virginia Tech (elaustin@vt.edu) and Elena Lahr-Vivaz, Rutgers University, Newark (el431@rutgers.edu).

This panel intends to examine the works of Muslim American poets, novelists, jazz musicians, punks, hip hop artists, mipsters, filmmakers, and visual artists. Muslims are woven into the American fabric, from the generations of Moorish slaves accompanying the conquistadors in the Southwest, enslaved West Africans such as those in the coastal Gullah communities, Arab laborers in the Midwest factories in the late 1800s, twentieth-century immigrants fueling the medical and technology sectors, to those currently displaced by wars and natural disasters. Papers are invited that explore the diverse compositions of Muslim American identities in literary and cultural texts.