Poverty and precarity are among the most pressing social issues of our day. The last fifteen years have seen not only an ever widening gap between rich and poor across the globe as well as an exponential growth in the number of border subjects – refugees, asylum seekers and illegal migrants –, but also a steady growth of fictional and non-fictional representations of disenfranchised groups and individuals. This correlates with an intensification of research into the visual and narrative forms of these representations. For its 2017 conference, GAPS invites panels and individual papers addressing conceptualisations of poverty and precarity and investigating the ethics and aesthetics of representing poverty and precarity across the postcolonial world.

Call for papers

Mise en Abyme. International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts - Nr 5 (July/December 2016) - Deadline: 16th October 2016

The theme for the monographic section of issue nr 5 (July/December 2016) will be Europe vs Europe.

Early Modern Literary Inventories - ACLA Panel, Utrecht 2017

The 3rd Biennial Latina/o Literary Theory

and Criticism Conference

Latinx Lives, Matters, and Imaginaries:

Theorizing Race in the 21st Century

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

City University of New York

April 13-15, 2017

Abstracts due: December 12th, 2016

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Dr. Mary Morrissey (University of Reading)

Professor Andrew McRae (University of Exeter)

Expanding on our ongoing research project on the spatial and visual dimensions of the poetry and prose of John Donne, we are organising a conference seeking to investigate issues of ‘Space, Place and Image in Early Modern English Literature’ (c. 1500-1700). The conference will take place on the beautiful campus of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, on 11-13 May 2017.

Despair, in medieval thought, existed at the intersection of a number of discourses. It was at once a theological state defined by the rejection of divine grace; a deadly sin of slothful torpor, when folded into the category of acedia; a melancholia caused by humoral imbalances; and a type of emotional suffering endured by heartsick lovers.

 ‘Walvis Baai, Luderitz, Lobito, Luanda, Douala, Port Limbe, Bonny, Port Harcourt, Onne, Lagos, Cotonou, Lome, Tema...’ This list comes from the newly established website 'Ports and Ships: Shipping and Harbour News out of Africa' which provides a useful reference point for thinking about port cities in Africa and the spider web of connections shipping routes establish with ports in the global south and beyond. Port cities manage the relation between sea and land and facilitate the movement of people, animals, commodities and ideas across continents, among countries, and between hemispheres.