AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

    Call for Papers: 2017

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples is a multidisciplinary, internationally peer-reviewed journal published continually online as well as in quarterly print issues. AlterNative presents scholarly research on Indigenous worldviews and experiences of decolonization from Indigenous perspectives from around the world.  AlterNative publishes articles in English but also welcomes submissions in Indigenous languages, as well as ones that have been previously published in an Indigenous language and are translated into English.

The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC) is now accepting proposals for individual presentation submissions and complete panels for its 2017 annual conference, to be held 26-29 October 2017 at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The deadline for proposals is April 15, 2017. Visit the SCSC website (http://www.sixteenthcentury.org/) for more information and links to submit proposals.

Anglo Saxon and medieval writers spilled considerable ink considering the concept and nature of truth, how to find it and/or represent it, and how to interpret it or use it. Often this search involved conducting an exploration of two different, often opposing, perspectives, such as Christian-secular, right-wrong, art-logic, auctor-compilator, etc.

In keeping with the conference theme of “Artists and Activists”, this panel invites papers that address any and all approaches taken in the name of the search for truth or the exploration of binaries in service to the truth in any Old English or Middle English text or author.

How do literary forms foster, inhibit, or problematize cosmopolitanism? What forms are more likely to travel across national or cultural boundaries? 250-word abstract by 10 March 2017; Jessica R. Valdez (jvaldez@hku.hk) and Nan Zhang (nanzhang@fudan.edu.cn).

Academic institutions are structured so that different disciplines are housed in different departments. However, in recent years, there has been a call to augment the interdisciplinary scope of the humanities curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This push for greater interdisciplinarity in the humanities has resulted from many factors including the need to recruit students to increase humanities enrollments, a desire to sustain student interest in the humanities, better employment opportunities for those on the academic job market, and the production of unique, multi-faceted scholarship.

Documents play roles in all aspects of human life. Recognizing this, the Document Academy seeks to celebrate and explore documents beyond traditional and formal academic research publications. We take inspiration from works such as Pablo Neruda's odes to common things and memoir essays telling the stories of particular documents, such as “The Money,” by Junot Diaz. Such approaches have the capacity to illuminate aspects of reality that are overlooked by traditional academic research.

While digital technologies are generally seen as empowering because they offer increased scholarship opportunities and resources through Open Access, affordable education through MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses), and unlimited interpersonal interactions through social media, why is it that in South Asian countries, access to digital technologies only perpetuates existing social divisions?  Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey in their landmark study, The Great Indian Phone Book (2013) describe the mobile phone as a remarkable agent of change, but just how economically and socially leveliing is this change?