The question of the relation of language to voice traces back to Aristotle’s De interpretatione, with its definition of speech as the sign of thought, and writing the sign of speech. In Jacques Derrida’s account of this phonologocentric model, voice is the ligature of “phōnē and logos,” securing their essential proximity. But if voice is only a mediation, then, as Barbara Johnson writes, voice is no longer “self-identity but self-difference.” Paradoxically, the voice marks the singular but is itself plural, sweeping the self up into an ever-ramifying play of differentiation. As David Lawton proposes, “voice is both a signature, ‘I,’ singularity, and a clear marker of difference, ‘not I,’ multiplicity”.

For the past two years, NeMLA’s keynote speakers have evoked the image of barbarians at the gates, and they are not alone in their use of this powerful image. Barbarians evoke a particular kind of wildness and danger that continues to resonate in popular culture, from the Dothraki and Wildlings in Game of Thrones, to the raiders in Parable of the Sower. In response to NeMLA 2020’s theme, “Shaping and Sharing Identities: Spaces, Places, Languages and Cultures,” we invite presentations that interrogate the idea of barbarism in speculative fiction. How is the barbaric defined and located? Can the racist and colonialist implications of the term ever be shed or inverted?

In the documentary, The Pieces I Am by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, David Carrasco calls Toni Morrison, “the Emancipation Proclamation of the English language.” The parallelism he conjures between the historical document and grandeur that is Morrison hints at the idea that she could do what Abraham Lincoln’s indenture could not: Toni Morrison frees black people from fake identities. Laced with the assurance that if others knew what she knows,—that prejudice exists in a hyperreality created by those who need it in order to define their purpose—black people will not accept perceived realities as their own; that their lives have meaning, and their stories can take center stage.

51st Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

March 5-8, 2020

The Oswald Review is a refereed undergraduate journal of criticism and research in the discipline of English.  Published annually, The Oswald Review accepts submissions from undergraduates in this country and abroad.

Guidelines

Submit each manuscript as a separate email attachment in Microsoft Word.  TOR discourages simultaneous submission to other journals. Each submission must be accompanied by the relevant professor’s endorsement of its originality.

All text must be in current MLA format, justified left only and without headers and footers.  Footnotes, if absolutely necessary, should be minimal.

In the last few years, attention to the adjunct plight, to include poverty-level pay, limited job security, as well as lack of respect for us personally and acknowledgement of our professional credentials and accomplishments, seems to have intensified, reflected in a variety of media outlets, from more liberal ones like The Atlantic and Washington Post to even the ultraconservative Fox News.

Call for Papers

Conference title: Disability Studies and Literature

Date of conference: 6th- 7thMarch 2020

This conference will be a student-led academic event organized by the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and supported by the University’s Wellness and Counselling Centre under the Office of Student Affairs. 

Scope and delimitation: