Film Studies Summer School28 July - 2 August 2020 – London, UK

organised by

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

This summer school will cover topics in Film Studies, Media and Communication, Visual Culture, Oral History and Documentary Techniques. The school courses will explore the representations of time, space and ritual, gender roles and gendered gaze, they will also discuss memory, remembering and (auto)biographical practices, especially in conflict narratives.

"Culinary Evolutions"

22 August 2020 – London, UK

organised by

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Food is a basic foundation of culture and society, it is vital to our health and well-being and it plays a significant role in our everyday creative engagement with nature. The shifts in activities surrounding food acquisition, preparation and consumption are not only essential for learning a culinary tradition but for examining a broader societal change.

The Lincoln Humanities Journal (ISSN 2474-7726) is requesting article submissions for its 8th special issue, to be published in December 2020, on the topic of Travel Narratives and Real-Life Fiction. Contributors are invited to examine specifically (a) the evolving forms of life-writings (biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, blogs, etc.) as they pertain to travel; (b) the intersection of fictional and factual travel narratives, and (c) the emotional, economic, socio-political, environmental, physiological, and literary aspects of travel (in reality and in fiction; by land, sea and air; on earth and in outer space).

As people migrate, they are drawn to the familiar in their need to adapt to the unfamiliar, forming communities whose cohesiveness emanates from shared value systems and experiences. Culturally homogeneous networks constructed by migrant communities in the U.S. both shape and are shaped by the spaces they occupy. From these socially constructed spaces (like Mary Louise Pratt’s contact zones), which can be construed as physical, emotional, intellectual, or creative, immigrant groups negotiate their position in U.S. society. This transnational lens affects both individuals’ perception of their place in society and their success or failure to thrive in this new home.

CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSIONS - POSTPONED EXTENDED DEADLINE: Virtual Conference Option Open!

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference

In order to protect our members during the current pandemic, the PAMLA Board has voted to postpone the PAMLA conference until the fall of 2021. As a result, we will be putting offering a virtual option to our 2021 Las Vegas conference! Should you have any questions, feel free to call or email PAMLA Executive Director Craig Svonkin: 626-354-7526 or director@pamla.org.

PAMLA Needs You! Please consider joining PAMLA for the 2021 year to receive our journal and support PAMLA in these difficult times.

Hawthorne and the EcoGothic

The Annual Conference of the MLA will meet in Toronto on January 7-10, 2021. The editors of Gothic Nature observe that the Gothic now serves as a primary means to articulate the horrors of climate change and our current environmental crisis. EcoGothic, however, has been a fundamental component of American literature since William Bradford recoiled from the continent’s “hideous & desolate wilderness.” A recent spate of articles not only acknowledges this strange continuity but has begun to situate Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the tradition’s key figures. This panel invites papers that further investigate Hawthorne’s entanglement with the ecoGothic.

Blurring distinctions between the morally edifying, instructive, and perverse, P.T. Barnum’s American Museum at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York was central to the emerging culture of popular entertainment in the 1840s-1860s. Les Harrison estimates that by 1865, forty-one million visitors attended P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York: nearly six million more than the total population of the United States at the conclusion of the Civil War.