Alternative Careers for PhDs in the Humanities

Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

September 8-9, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS: The graduate students in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University welcome proposals around the topic of alternative careers for PhDs in the humanities.

Keynote Speaker: Romand Coles, Professor of Political Theory and Practice, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University. Professor Coles is a scholar-activist who works at the intersections of continental and critical philosophy, radical democratic theory, and various modes of political organizing and activism.

In June of 1948, Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” appeared in The New Yorker. Jackson’s story juxtaposed a nostalgic depiction of rural America with a jarringly brutal ending, causing outraged readers to cancel their New Yorker subscriptions and to deluge Jackson with hate mail. In the 70 years since then, “The Lottery” has become a staple of short story anthologies and American literature curricula, as well as having been adapted into a radio play, two television movies, a popular educational film, an opera, a ballet, a one-act play, and an episode of South Park.

Serial Prestige:

Values in Contemporary “High-End” Episodic and Serial Drama

For this potential anthology with an academic press, the editors invite essays addressing cultural and production values of post-2000 episodic and serial dramas (cable, network, streaming) in view of their ambition to dissolve or minimize oppositions between high and low culture.