Dear Colleagues,

We seek original, previously unpublished essays for a Special Issue of Humanities on the topic modern and contemporary Irish writing.

Irish writing has emerged, especially since the turn of the last century, as a space of compelling and varied production. While we remain mindful of Emer Nolan’s important proviso that the Republic of Ireland “now appropriates all ‘success’ (including literary ‘success’) as evidence of its own dynamism, tolerance, and inclusiveness,” we are nevertheless interested in examining the ways in which historical and emergent forms of expression have combined in contemporary Ireland to produce this present moment of innovation and compelling creativity.

Entanglement and Entropy: The Weave of Claire Messud’s Novels

This is a call for chapters for an edited collection of essays on Claire Messud’s novels. Since this would be the first book-length study of her work, chapters on all of her six novels are sought (When the World Was Steady, The Last Life: A Novel, The Hunters, The Emperor's Children, The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl). Papers that foreground narratological, historical, cultural and ideological features are most welcome.

Growing up is a perennial feature of human societies. While anxieties surrounding childhood are universal, the manifestations of these concerns vary between cultures. This series of sessions proposes to shed light upon the nexus of ambiguity surrounding the medieval child, as depicted in contemporaneous literature. We invite abstracts for papers that will explore the representation of childhood in texts of any language, genre, and period within the Middle Ages. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Historical notions of education, child-rearing, and ʻgood

behaviourʼ.

• Non-human and/or monstrous children.

• Infantilised adults and inescapable childhood.

(Re)Connect. (Re-)Establish a bond.

To connect is an integral part of the human experience. We are social, connected, beings. The unparalleled events of 2020 have made this even more evident --- they have forced us to disconnect from life as we knew it and to (re)connect to history, nature, people, ourselves, and forgotten practices. This has weakened and strengthened our established bonds, while creating new ones. Ultimately, it revealed how dependent we are on our connections.

Monmouth University is proud to announce the publication of a new scholarly journal. Entitled AMP: American Music Perspectives, the journal is sponsored by Monmouth University and published by Penn State University Press.

AMP welcomes manuscripts from a variety of cultural and theoretical perspectives, while also considering traditional, biographical, historical, and archival studies of American music and its artists, composers, genres, and practitioners.  AMP also welcomes interpretive analyses of American music, as well as manuscripts that investigate its sociocultural production, its political manifestations, and the history of the business practices and technological innovations associated with its development.

This year, the AAR-WR has asked us to examine the timely question: How can religious groups, and Religious Studies, be a potent contributor to the public good amidst our current medical, social, economic, ecological, and political crises? We in Jewish Studies know that the storehouses of Jewish tradition, the methodological approaches of our sub-field, and the experiences of Jews throughout history offer a great deal of wisdom on these topics. How can we, as Jewish Studies scholars, bring our unique perspectives to bear on the Covid-19 pandemic and systemic problems illuminated in its wake?

We believe the following three areas to be especially salient:

The MLA Convention (virtual, Jan 7-10, 2021) has opened up last-minute slots for proposed sessions discussing the events of summer 2020. The session organizer invites contributions for 15-minute papers that engage one or more intersections of Black studies, sexuality studies, Black feminist criticism, visual cultural studies, and surveillance studies. Full session description here: