In a letter to his friend Axel Kaun, Samuel Beckett once described the “terrible materiality of the word surface” that faces every writer as they set pen to page. Their goal, Beckett claims, is to puncture this surface, boring holes into the word so that a different materiality “lurking behind” it might seep through. When the word is filled with holes, when what is said is ineffable and indescribable, it is no longer subordinated to its representative function. Rather, the word reveals its own sense and sensuousness, its materiality entirely distinct from that of its referent. The “sounding of impossible bodies” of the voices of the dead in M.

Call for Papers

 LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, MUSEUMS AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) 40th Annual Conference, February 20-23, 2019 Hyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center Albuquerque, New Mexico http://www.southwestpca.org Proposal submission deadline: November 1, 2018 

Very Special Episodes: Event Television and Social Change Anthology

Edited by Jonathan Cohn and Phil Scepanski 

Abstracts/Proposals (300 words) due December 10th.

Chapters (no longer than 6000 words) due April 1st

Please submit queries and proposals to:  cohn@ualberta.caand scepanski.phil@gmail.com

Call for Papers

The sixteenth HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics, and Religion will be held from March 18-22, 2019. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The HCA Spring Academy will also offer participants the chance to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study. For this purpose, workshops held by visiting scholars will take place during this week.