There is a metaphysical gravity that pulls consciousness towards the incomprehensible darkness of ‘dread,’ like the impulse to willingly dive into the abyss, as into something utterly unknown - an analogy made famous by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Dread. But what is dread, exactly, and what are the cultural, philosophical and physical significances of a genre that uses dread as its primary structure of feeling? Is ‘horror’ even a genre? Can it be encompassing of dread, terror, angst or revulsion?

Fireworks: The Visual Imagination of Angela Carter

Call for Papers

The Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Bristol, BS8 1PX

in association with The University of the West of England, Bristol and the Festival of Ideas

Monday 9 January 2017

Keynote: Sir Christopher Frayling

Remix Studies is a nascent but fast-growing field. Just last year Routledge published its first critical companion to Remix Studies, and interest in the field -- which critically examines the relationships of sources and analogues, as well as the production and reproduction of texts -- is steadily growing. That said, to this point very little attempt has been made to apply this theory to the study of medieval materials. This session proposes to jump-start the discourse of Remix Studies in a medieval context by providing a venue for discussion.

In March 2010, journalists Faïza Zerouala and Widad Kefti published an invited column in Le Monde entitled “Ni Féministes, Ni Soumises.”  Then in their mid-20s and blogging for the Bondy Blog, they targeted the Republican feminism promoted by “Ni Putes, Ni Soumises,” the state-sponsored banlieue-based feminist organization.  Over the last decade, new ways of understanding female identity in the banlieue have multiplied alongside and sometimes in reaction to the NPNS agenda, including expressions of an intersectional and postcolonial feminism in which questions of gender, race, and class converge.  In the same timeframe, women's creative production has grown and diversified, holding at its center ways of being and doing as a fema

Call for contributions:

The environment is us: humanities and the ecological crisis

This panel focuses on the issue of transgender vocality and how it acts as a locus point in growing critiques of neoliberalism. Rather than reach for the megaphone, however, an examination of the voice’s ideological relationship to a post-Enlightenment understanding of subjectivity may yield queer answers that will contribute to dismantling hegemonic constraints on identity. Papers about drag performers such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, transgender vocalists such as Conchita Wurst or Dana International (Eurovision), transgender voice training exercises and therapies, decolonizing the voice, and more are welcome. The panel seeks to keep the materiality of sound as the foundation of analysis, regardless of methodological or disciplinary approach.