Dear Colleagues,

Submissions are currently being accepted for an anthology of Appalachian ecocriticism. The Appalachian region has largely been underrepresented in ecocritical studies, and this unique volume will represent Appalachian literature and its environment to the community of ecocritics and, more broadly, the scholarly community as a whole.

Critical investigations into the ways in which Appalachian nature are portrayed in text is, of course, the central theme of the volume. However, additional intersections may include, but are not limited to, the following:

-Accessibility/Disability and the environment

-Animal studies

-Mountaintop removal

-Significance of water/Water quality

-Fracking

Although we have recently seen the implementation of institutional changes that have altered the legal and socioeconomic status of queer people in the United States (i.e. United States v. Windsor in 2013 and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015), queer individuals continue to encounter discrimination, violence, and death based on their gender and/or sexual orientation. The stark rise in murders of trans people of color and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting are just a few of the events that have disrupted the misguided sense of utopia instilled by institutional change, and have brought into question whether it is possible for queerness to link to notions of futurity. 

We welcome you to join us in Hiroshima, Japan for the 4th Asian Symposium on the Humanities and Human Rights Education (SHARE 2017), which will coincide with the 72nd Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Remembrance Ceremony.

In addition to the conference, participants will have an opportunity to visit Hiroshima Peace Park and the Shrine Island of Miyajima — both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

A.K. Ramanujan in a poem entitled “Small-scale Reflections on a Great House” had mused, “Sometimes I think that nothing/that ever comes into this house/goes out. Things come in every day/to lose themselves among other things/lost long ago among/other things lost long ago”. The description may seem oddly apt for the field of postcolonial studies which continues to search for new shores even as some of the concerns of the past begin to fade with the inevitable processes of history. Even as the field remains committed to a quest for emancipation from violence and discrimination and deprivation, caused by the forces of race, class, gender, sexuality and a number of other factors, the modalities continue to change and the boundaries begin to blur.

Call for Chapters

WHITENESS AND THE AMERICAN SUPERHERO

Co-edited by Sean A. Guynes and Martin Lund

The Fifth Biennial Meeting of the Defoe Society

Tolerance and Intolerance in the Age of Defoe

September 7-9, 2017

New Haven, Connecticut

Plenary Speakers:

Jill Campbell, Yale University

Wolfram Schmidgen, Washington University