Books and special issues of journals – Deadlines January-March 2018

Environment, Ecology, Climate and ‘Nature’ in 21st Century Scottish Literature
Special Issue of Humanities  (ISSN 2076-0787)
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2018

We invite submissions of abstracts of 300 words by 15th January 2018. Please note that contributors to this special issue will not be required to pay any article processing charge. The deadline for manuscript submission is 15 September 2018.

The detailed CFP and further Special Issue information:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/environment_scottish_literature#info

Keywords:

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/environment_scottish_literature#keywords

Please send proposals to both guest editors:

Carla Sassi carla.sassi@univr.it

Graeme Macdonald g.macdonald@warwick.ac.uk

(posted 27 October 2017)

Marx, Semiotics and Political Praxis
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies, De Gruyter Open
Deadline for porposals: 15 January 2018

Ed. Prof. Paulina Aroch Fugellie, UAM-C, Mexico City

As the first Frankfurt School theorists observed, the possibility of meaning-making has been in crisis at least since the interwar period. Yet the oversaturation of information that characterizes the “digital age” makes discernment today even more difficult than before. It is not only a question of large numbers of competing discourses blurring meaning itself out, but also of a fundamental disassociation between words and their use, between the constative and the performative dimensions of language as described by Jean Baudrillard, Peter Sloterdijk, Slavoj Žižek, Frederic Jameson, and Giorgio Agamben. In sum, the contemporary commodification of the semiotic field and the emptying out of signs as spectacles has severed the political, ethical, ideological, intellectual and even existential scope of (academic) writing as a political project. In this context, it is pertinent to return to the work of Karl Marx to reflect on and engage with his coherent articulation of words and their use, of words and actions, and of the intellectual and the political. The coherence of his discourse and praxis offers tools to think through, if not seek to transform, the alienated semiotic landscape of our times. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, in this special issue we want to honour his 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”. Thinking in this way of theory as an intervention in the world, we welcome papers that seek to impact the following areas of investigation:

  • the commodification of the semiotic field; the potential and limits of theory today as a transformative praxis;
  • the relation between words and actions in Marx’s oeuvre and praxis;
  • within and beyond the “young/old Marx” division: the co-constitution of the subject and political economy
  • work as a place of realization of human potential, a place for producing meaning and producing ourselves as meaningful, a place of construction of subjectivity and the implications of this understanding of work under current conditions of precarious labour and disembodied labour
  • the work of networks, the work of language, collective intelligence and Marx’s “Fragment on Machines” in the Grundrisse
  • Marx on and as homo faber; the intellectual as homo faber; homo faber in the age of structural mass unemployment; homo faber in the age of social networks
  • Foreclosure of the social totality, of the work as unity; fragmentation of experience, of the self and of language; alienation from the products of labor and alienation from subjectivity as a product
  • The work that late-capitalist schizophrenia does; ideological homes of the present, the desire that binds us in ideology, the pain of letting our ideologies go.

We are particularly interested in texts that, in analyzing semiotic and technological configurations of the present, explore the relationship of the erotic, corporeal, emotional, affective, psychological and existential binds of ideology with its more general political, economic, sociological and philosophical functions.

Please send a short outline (approximately 500 words) and the title of your proposed contribution to p.aroch@gmail.com by Jan. 15, 2018, The deadline for full papers is April 2, 2018. For more information see https://www.degruyter.com/page/1622

There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) or submission charges.

(posted 2 November 2017)

Geomedia and the City
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies, De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2018

Eds.: Prof. Mekonnen Tesfahuney (Karlstads Universitet) & Dr. Tim Simpson (University of Macau)

Geomedia is an emerging concept that has been deployed to capture a particular technological condition, associated with recent rapid developments in digital technology. As such, it signals to the dialectics of locative media and the mediations of localities. However, the concept of geomedia carries deeper/wider ontological and epistemological registers that transcend the simple twining of geography and media. In this wider sense, geomedia gestures to the expanding interdisciplinary terrain at the crossroads of media studies and geography, where various ontologies and epistemologies of space/time, flows/mobilities and mediation/ mediatization come together. The urban is a key terrain where these ontologies and epistemologies are articulated. At the same time ontologies and epistemologies of the urban are being reworked in and through geomedia processes, ranging from questions of urbanism/urbanity as a way of life, inclusion, exclusion and precarious urbanities, to questions of (new) spatio-temporalities of the urban, various flows and mobile appropriations of the city.

We seek submissions of articles on any topic related to the broad theme of “geomedia and the city.” However, we are particularly interested in papers which engage with one of the following sub-themes:

  • Geomedia and the right to the city. How do we interpret Lefebvre’s interrogation of “the right to the city” in an age of locative media and smart cities? How do forms of geomedia function to entice, enable, regulate, constrain, or prohibit access to public spaces in the city, or to urban mobilities? How do geomedia reinforce or problematize gendered, racial, and class-based mobilities?
  • Geomedia exclusion, precarity, and/or exception. How do geomedia technologies function in enclaves, zones, slums, camps, gated communities, and other spaces of exception? How do geomedia create, regulate, circumscribe, or transcend borders, boundaries, perimeters, or peripheries?
  • Geomedia and surveillance. What is the role of geomedia in contemporary regimes of surveillance? How do geomedia function to regulate a disciplinary society (Foucault), modulate a “society of control” (Deleuze, 1992), or actuate forms of military urbanism (Graham, 2011)?

Please submit abstracts (500 words maximum) to izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com by January 15, 2018. Manuscripts of 5000 to 8000 words will be due by May 1, 2018. For more information see: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1610

There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) or submission charges.

(posted 2 November 2017)

G. Ballard and Making
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies, De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2018

Ed. Dr Thomas Knowles (Birmingham City University)

G. Ballard’s fictional worlds are alive with making, remaking, repurposing and reinvigorating: ‘survival kits’ composed of unlike objects; the rekindling of creativity amongst the beach-fatigued denizens of Vermilion Sands; the surrealist constructs of ‘The Unlimited City’; the wound mappings and death scenarios of Crash; the consumerist totems and shrines of The Unlimited Dream Company, and more.

Amongst those that seek to mark difference between human beings and other animals, our ability to use tools and to reshape and reflect the world is often paramount. Why then does making, as much as denaturing and unsettling, seem so essential to Ballard’s project in works that radically destabilize binaries such as human/non-human, organic/inorganic, natural/cultural? Are the combinations of unlike objects and technologies in Ballard mere pataphysical play? Are they manifestations of derangement and/or faulty aesthetic judgement? Might the manipulation of objects and media point towards a means of resistance to seemingly reified social and political orders, or are such détournements inevitably recuperated?

This special issue seeks to explore these questions in the context of Ballard criticism and study, but also in the context of creative responses to Ballard’s work. As such we welcome proposals from creative practitioners, educators and researchers. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • The repurposing of objects
  • Old or defunct technology
  • Junk and waste
  • Assemblage
  • Collage
  • Graffiti
  • Ballard and the plastic arts
  • Posthuman creativity
  • Film/painting/sculpture/jewellery/music etc. that responds to any aspect of Ballard’s work
  • Pedagogical essays and/or case studies that draw upon Ballard’s work and making

Please send proposals or abstracts of up to 500 words along with a short biography to Thomas Knowles thomas.knowles@bcu.ac.uk before January 15, 2018. Manuscripts of 5000 to 8000 words will be due by May 1, 2018. For more information see: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1625

There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) or submission charges.

(posted 2 November 2017)

Breaking New Grounds: Perspectives on Recent Indian English Fiction
A collection of essays
New extended deadline for proposals: 31 January 2018

Indian English writing, from its infancy, has been preoccupied with representing the nation. This national dimension of Indian English writing is undoubtedly its most distinctive feature. Indian English novels as a postcolonial genre emerged out of the colonial encounter, and it is only natural that “its concern has been with that equally postcolonial entity, the nation-state” (Priyamvada Gopal, 2009). India as a postcolonial nation is a classic case of the history-nation confluence.  Writers have been much beholden to this confluence as both history and nation come together to shape what political scientist, Sunil Khilnani terms, after Nehru, “the idea of India” (Khilnani, 1983). This national dimension of Indian English writing is undoubtedly its most distinctive feature. The 1980s witnessed a boom in these nation-centric narratives or “nationsroman” (Joshi, 2004). Largely revisionist in nature, the novels of the Rushdie-generation regarded the task of representing India and Indian history as a huge project.

But in more recent novels that have emerged after the fading of pan-Indian nation-centric trope in the texts of the Rushdie generation, the engagement with the nation and pan-national history has become much more diffused. This diffusion in the engagement with the pan-Indian dimension in the more recent works of Indian English fiction has taken diverse lines of development. On the one hand, a large number of novels have emerged that have sought to focus on the micro stories of regions and people which did not find a place in the earlier epic narratives of the nation. Unlike mainstream Indian English writings, these novels are written with settings in small towns of India, and they deal with the issues and problems most urgent and real to these regions and people. They show a keen sense of place or rootedness. The nation remains an integral concern of the writers. The younger and recent writers, though not rejecting the national altogether, seem to be moving away from pan-Indian nation-centric engagement to a more localized engagement with history, politics and Indian society. This concern with local allegiance and people seems to be increasingly the dominant tendency of recent Indian English novels.

Another significant development to this diffused approach towards history and nation is the growing urge of Indian English writers to tackle the issues of globalization and ramifications of economic liberalization. Indian English writing is now strongly embedded in the global frame, and it is now engaged in asking questions like “what shape does ‘India’ take fifty or more years after the independent nation-state officially came into existence on the world stage? How are older narratives of nation being rewritten or replaced by new ones that seek to break, remould or interrogate the former in the face of migration and globalization? Who owns ‘the past’ and what is the writer’s responsibility in relation to it?” (Gopal 2009). Apart from these broad trends, we can discern other new tendencies and thematic and ideological concerns in the new generation of writers. This new body of Indian English fiction in the new millennium have started dealing with such diverse issues as small-town life (The Bus Stopped and The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, The Romantics by Pankaj Misra), gender transgressions ( Ratika Kapur’s The Private Life of Mrs Sharma), patriarchy and female desire (Anuja Chauhan’s Battle for Bittora), small histories (Alka Saraogi’s Kalikatha: Via Bypass, Aminuddin Khan’s A Shift in the Wind) fantasy (Meluha seriesby Amish Tripathi), Dalit life (Manu Joseph’s Serious Man), global terrorism, 9/11 and Indian Diaspora (Transmission by Hari Kunzru, Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos, The Disappearance of Seth by Kazim Ali), friction between old and new cultures (Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph), drugs and underbelly of big cities (Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil and Eunuch Park by Palash Krishna Mehrotra), ethnicity, ethnic relations, insurgency and issues of identity, belonging and history of migration (e.g. fiction from the northeastern part of India by writers such as Siddhartha Deb, Daisy Hassan, Anjum Hassan, Janice Pariat, Dhruba Hazarika etc.), insurgency and political conflicts (Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir, graphic novel by Malik Sajad), child abuse and violence (Hush by Prateek Thomas, another graphic novel) among others.

The editors of this proposed book are seeking contributions that shed fresh light on these new developments in Indian English fiction in the new millennium. The book envisages critical engagements with writers and texts that veer away from the usual focus on the writings of the Rushdie generation. Some of the writers and works mentioned above have received little critical attention. The proposed book, therefore, seeks to collect critically rigorous essays adopting different theoretical and thematic angles which will not only boost interests in these writers but also instil a new vigour and dimension to the study of Indian English fiction. Apart from the mentioned writers and texts, proposals are welcome from other writers who have started writing in the new millennium.

Abstracts of (maximum 400 words) and short biographical notes should be sent to the co-editors Dr. Arindam Sarma (dr.arindam.sarma@gmail.com) and Himakshi Kalita (himakshisarma.kalita@gmail.com) by January 31, 2018 (new extended deadline). If selected, the final papers will have to be submitted by March 30, 2018. The papers should follow the latest MLA style of parenthetical sources and works cited format.

Works cited:
Joshi, Priya. In Another Country. New Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004.
Gopal, Priyamvada. The Indian English Novel: Nation, History, and Narration. Oxford: OUP, 2009.
Khilnani, Sunil. The Idea of India. New Delhi: Penguin, 1983.

(posted 10 December 2017, updated 19 January 2018)

The Green Critique
A collection of critical essays (edited volume with ISBN number)
Deadline for submissions: 15 January 2018

Email ID for the submission of paper: environscritique@gmail.com

The sub-themes are as follows:

  • Ecological Imperialism
  • Women and nature: similarity and differences
  • Environmental challenges and responses
  • Ecopoetics
  • Ecocriticism and Folklore
  • Eco-consciousness in classic literature
  • Deep Ecology
  • Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Nature, Culture, Power.
  • Ecocomposition and Rhetoric
  • Eco Pedagogy and teaching
  • Man, masculinity and nature
  • Environmental ethics
  • Nature and supernature
  • Zoo theory and nature
  • Animals and/in Ecocriticism

Editing requirements

  • Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: 1.5 lines, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides
  •  Title of the paper: bold, Sentence case (Capitalize each word), centered
  • Text of the paper: Justified. Font & Size: Times New Roman – 12
  • References: Please follow MLA style (latest)
  • Articles should be submitted as MS Word attachments only
  • The length of article should be 3000-5000 words
  • Any book review should be within 2000 words.
  • Use endnotes, not footnotes.

Important dates

15th January 2018- Final Submission

31st January 2018– Intimation of Acceptance

Authentic, scholarly and unpublished research papers are invited from students, scholars and researchers. The book will be published with an ISBN by a renowned publisher in the month of April 2018.

Criteria for selection

  1. The newness of approach or method.
  2. Relevance to the theme/sub-themes.
  3. Clear presentation of the argument.
  4. The originality of conception.

For any further queries, contact

Krishanu Maiti krishanumaiti@yahoo.com
Soumyadeep Chakraborty soumyadeepmid@gmail.com

(posted 11 December 2017)

Lexical and Semantic Neology in English
Issue nr 12 of Lexis, Journal in English Lexicology
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2018

The 12th issue of Lexis will deal with lexical and semantic neology in English, from a synchronic or diachronic approach. Neology is traditionally defined by lexicologists as the “incorporation of new items in the lexicon of a language” (“l’incorporation d’éléments nouveaux dans le lexique d’une langue” (Humbley [2006: 91]), but neology is not so easy to delimit and define, as one of the characteristic features of neologisms seems to be that they exist in “discourse” (“parole”) but not in “language” (“langue”), as they are not (yet) recorded in dictionaries (see Humbley [2006: 92], Pruvost & Sablayrolles [2003: 6]). Then, it is interesting to focus on both the linguistic and the extralinguistic contexts which surround the creation of neologisms. Neologisms in standard English (mostly found in teenage speech, as they are linked to generational criteria and as the main motivations do not seem to be to fill in a lexical gap) need to be distinguished from neologisms in English for specialized languages, such as political and institutional neologisms, among others, which are linked to the emergence of new concepts, of new disciplines requiring new terminology or lexicon.

The 12th issue of Lexis will specifically, but not necessarily, focus on three main areas of research:

  • The first area of research will tackle the definition and the motivation of neology by focusing on English, or by adopting a contrastive analysis between English or French, and even by studying the role of other languages if the research is on borrowing in English;

  • The second area of research will focus on the issue of productivity, especially the productivity of the various word-formation processes and mechanisms for lexical creativity, be they about lexical or semantic neology, either by analyzing a specific word-formation process, or a combination or comparison of several;

  • The third area of research will deal with the diffusion and the success of neologisms in English, by focusing on how neologisms are perceived, how they may evolve and how they thrive (how lexicographers, institutions, speakers, authors, etc. react to them).

Researchers and scholars in the field of lexicology, but also in the fields of sociolinguistics, lexicography, comparative linguistics, translation studies, cross-cultural linguistics and corpus linguistics are invited to submit papers. 

The following issues (which are gathered in three sub-groups) may be addressed; this list is by no means restrictive or exhaustive:

(1) The issue of definition and motivation:

  • How to define a neologism (as opposed to a hapax, a nonce-word, etc.)?

  • Why create a neologism in English? What are the underlying reasons for lexical or semantic neology?

  • Can different motivations explain neology in different contexts?

  • Is a neologism only created to designate a new referent or a new concept (semantico-referential motivations) or is it created in order to give a different name to an existing referent or concept (pragmatic motivations)?

  • What roles do languages for specific purposes play in contemporary semantic and lexical neology?

  • What is the impact of political correctness on contemporary neology?

(2) The issue of productivity (whether it concerns neology or the propagation of neologisms):

  • Are semantic neology and lexical neology equally productive?

  • Within semantic neology and lexical neology, are there differences in productivity depending on the word-formation process(es) used?

  • What is the incidence of the status of English as a lingua franca on lexical and semantic neology in French, as well as in English?

  • What is the link between neologisms and languages for specific purposes?

(3) The issue of propagation and success:

  • What are the factors that favor the propagation of neologisms in English?

  • Do these factors play a part in the potential success of neologisms?

  • Is the phenomenon identical in general English and in English for specific purposes?

  • What are the reasons that may explain the success and the lexicalization of neologisms in English? Are they mostly semantic, morphological, phonological/euphonic, pragmatic, etc. reasons?

  • Do parts of speech have a part to play in the creation and the diffusion of neologisms? Is the proportion of neologisms which belong to the same part of speech identical to the proportion of words which belong to the same part of speech in the English lexicon? Does the fact that neologisms are mostly created in order to designate a referent mean that most neologisms are nouns?

  • What is the lifespan of a neologism? Can it be predicted (more or less precisely)?

  • Are some neologisms more suitable to enter the English lexicon, according to the semantic field, the period, the register, etc.?

The articles may tackle these issues, whether from a purely theoretical perspective (in other words, what do neologisms tell us about our linguistic systems?) or from an applied perspective, mainly via corpora of general English or of English for specific purposes.

How do submit
Please clearly indicate the title of the paper and include an abstract of no more than 3,000 characters as well as a list of relevant key-words. All abstract and paper submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed (double-blind peer reviewing) by an international scientific committee composed of specialists in their fields. Papers will be written preferably in English or occasionally in French.
Manuscripts may be rejected, accepted subject to revision, or accepted as such. There is no limit to the number of pages.
Abstracts and articles will be sent via email to lexis@univ-lyon3.fr

Deadlines
October 1: call for papers
January 31: deadline for sending in abstracts to Lexis
March 2018: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors
June 30 2018: deadline for sending in papers
July and August 2018: proofreading of papers by the Evaluation committee<
September 1 to October 31: authors’ corrections
October 31 2018<: deadline for sending in final versions of papers

(posted 26 January 2018)

Ecofeminist Science Fiction
Deadline for chapter proposals: 1 February 2018

Full name / name of organization: A. Vakoch / METI
Contact email: dvakoch@meti.org

Chapter proposals are invited for an edited volume titled Ecofeminist Science Fiction. Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and sample of a previously published chapter or article to dvakoch@meti.org by February 1, 2018. Proposers will be notified about whether their submissions are accepted for the book by February 15, 2018. For accepted proposals, first drafts of full chapters (5,000 words) are due by June 1, 2018, and final versions are due August 1, 2018.

Confirmed chapters for Ecofeminist Science Fiction include the following:

  • “Traversing Bodies in Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World(1666).” Calley A. Hornbuckle, PhD, Division of Languages and Literatures, Columbia College, USA
  • “Ecofeminist Utopian Speculations in Henrietta Augusta Dugdale’s A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age(1883), Catherine Helen Spence’s A Week in the Future (1888), and Mary Anne Moore-Bentley’s A Woman of Mars; Or, Australia’s Enfranchised Woman(1901).” Nicole Anae, PhD, Department of Literary and Cultural Studies, Central Queensland University, Australia
  • “Woman, World, Dance: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle.” Deirdre Byrne, PhD, Institute for Gender Studies, University of South Africa, South Africa
  • “An Ecofeminist Reading of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Always Coming Home.” Karl Zuelke, PhD, Writing Center, Mount St. Joseph University, USA
  • “The Runa and Female Otherness in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow.” Lesley Kordecki, PhD, Department of English, DePaul University, USA
  • “No Easy Answers: Karen Traviss’s The Wess’har Wars Series.” Patrick Murphy, PhD, English Department, United Arab Emirates University, UAE
  • “Extinction is Forever: Ecofeminism and Apocalypse in Louise Lawrence’s Young Adult Short Fiction.” Michelle Deininger, PhD, Humanities Department, Continuing and Professional Education, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, and Gemma Iqbal, MA, Department of Humanities, Cardiff Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
  • “Ecofeminist (Post) Ice-Age Dystopia: Doris Lessing’s Mara and DannSeries.” Julia Tofantšuk, PhD, Tallinn University School of Humanities, Estonia
  • “Margaret Atwood’s Science Fiction: Approaching Ethics, Gender, and Ecology.” Izabel F. O. Brandão, PhD, Department of English, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil and Ildney Cavalcanti, PhD, Department of English, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil
  • “Ecofeminist Women in Daughter by Loa Yu-jin and The Waste Tideby Chen Qiufan.” Peter I-min Huang, PhD, English Department, Tamkang University, Taiwan
  • “Rethinking Resistance:  An Ecofeminist Approach to Anti-Colonialism in Indigenous and Palestinian Science Fiction.” Benay Blend, PhD, Central New Mexico Community College (Retired), USA

All chapters should examine works of science fiction, and not fantasy, through an ecofeminist lens. Only contributions not previously published will be accepted.Essays representing science fiction from around the world are especially encouraged, as are contributions that are significantly informed by both science fiction studies and ecofeminism. Contributors should have already earned a PhD.

The editor of Ecofeminist Science Fiction, D. A. Vakoch, PhD, is general editor of Lexington Books’ Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series. Vakoch’s other edited books include Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (2011), Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (2012), Women and Nature?: Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment (2017), Ecofeminism in Dialogue (2017), and Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices (2018).

(posted 2 January 2018)

The 20th- and 21st- Century Irish Literatures: Between Realism and Experimentation
HJEAS (Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies)
Deadline for proposals: 15 February 2017

HJEAS (Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies) seeks essay submissions for a thematic section of a 2019 issue on “The 20th and 21st Century Irish Literatures between Realism and Experimentation.” HJEAS is a peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, Hungary, publishing critical articles and book reviews in the fields of American, British, Canadian, and Irish literature, history, and culture, and is available from JSTOR and ProQuest. (http://www.hjeas.unideb.hu)

The tension between realism and experimentation has marked the development of modern Irish literature, being intrinsic to the work of a number of major Irish writers. Often regarded as a father-figure of all experimental writing, James Joyce was attacked by as different commentators as Lukács and Pound for the scope and radicalness of experiment, particularly in Finnegans Wake. Joyce himself considered his work to be firmly set in the realist tradition. At a time when he was yet to publish his first collection of lyrics, W. B. Yeats was encouraged by his father to write realist prose, which may eventually have contributed to his abhorrence of realism in favour of ever more daring experimentation in verse writing. Nonetheless, Yeats’s poetry is packed full of amazingly realist portrayals of the world about him. J. M. Synge may have worked in a realist mode but his implementation of vernacular Aran speech paved the way for the linguistic experimentation of the following generations of Irish (also English-language) playwrights.

Modern Irish literature may seem to be a field of vacillators (whether conscious or not remains to be investigated) who employ traditional genres and modes of writing, while at the same time, almost instinctively, seeking to supersede conventions. Sometimes this happens tacitly, by pushing the boundaries of expressiveness a little further, like with Synge. Occasionally the revolt engulfs conventions in flames in which new means of expression are forged, as is the case in Joyce.

Papers may include but are in no way limited to:

  • Realist and experimental modes in high modernism and onwards
  • Experimental literature today and a century ago: continuity and change
  • Revisions of the realist mode in contemporary Irish literatures
  • Ethics and aesthetics of realist and/or experimental literature
  • The great masters’ (stifling/enabling) influences
  • Contemporary realisms (including magical realism)
  • Voices from the margin (social, cultural, racial, etc.) and the conventions and aesthetics they have embraced or created
  • Cosmopolitanism vs. parochialism – openness and resistance to foreign trends
  • Irish literature and globalization (e.g., realism and experimentation in literary responses to global traumas, literature and the new media, literature and migration, etc.)
  • The aesthetics of nostalgia and futurity

Completed manuscripts of 5,000-10,000 words must follow the MLA parenthetical citation with Works Cited. Please follow the HJEAS Style Sheet available at http://www.hjeas.unideb.hu/submitting-manuscripts.html

Proposals of 500 words with a 100-150 bio are due by February 15, 2018. Final papers are due by July 15, 2018. Please send the submissions and all inquiries to the guest editors, Wit Pietrzak (witpietrzak@wp.pl) and Katarzyna Ojrzyńska (k.ojrzynska@sens.net.pl)

(posted 14 August 2017)

Black Womanhood in Popular Culture
Open Cultural Studies, Peer-Reviewed Journal by De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proopsals: 15 January 2017

Editors: Dr Katharina Gerund (Erlangen/Nürnberg) and Dr Stefanie Schäfer (Jena).

In contemporary popular culture, black womanhood frequently takes centre stage. It occupies an increasingly central place and articulates new and renewed dimensions, prompting questions about the status of black women in the cultural imaginary of the US and beyond. Most prominently, Michelle Obama’s First Ladyship has sparked scholarly and media discussions around the significance of stereotypes associated with black women, the possibilities and limitations of public figures to create new images and anchor them in the cultural imaginary, and about the subject positions and images that express and shape constructions of black womanhood. Further examples include the pop singer Beyoncé, who has proclaimed her commitment to feminism and designed an already iconic celebration of black motherhood (concerning Afro-futurist tropes), wildly popular TV shows like Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder which feature black female protagonists, or literary works and feminist manifestos such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) or We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017). Our special issue aims to examine the multifaceted ideological implications of this proliferation of black womanhood in popular culture. We would like the contributions to this special issue to discuss representations and performances of black womanhood in the transatlantic sphere. Contributions may address a broad range of topics, pertaining to e.g. visual culture (comics, films, TV shows, etc.), material culture and bodily practices, literature, performances, or the arts. We welcome academic essays as well as images to our volume. Issues to be explored include but are not limited to:

  • Black women as cultural agents
  • Feminist agendas and their representation in cultural discourses
  • Epistemologies of black womanhood and systems of knowledge production
  • Afropessimisms and ontologies of black subjecthood
  • · Histories and genealogies of representing black womanhood

Please submit abstracts (500 words maximum) and biographical information to schaefer.stefanie@uni-jena.de and katharina.gerund@fau.de by January 15, 2018. Manuscripts of 5000 to 7000 words will be due by May 1, 2018.

Full call for papers is available here: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1431

(posted 5 September 2018)

S.T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria
The New Series of  The Anachronist, 2017 issue (to be pubished in 2018)
Deadlne for proposals: 20 February 2018

The New Series of The Anachronist invites academic papers for its 2017 issue (to be published in 2018), celebrating the 200th anniversary of the publication of T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.

We welcome studies that deal with the afterlives, the influence of, and engagements with Biographia Literaria in various national, critical, historical and intellectual contexts. Papers focusing on particular details, aspects or features of the work are also considered. We seek to compile a collection of essays that offers perspectives on the impact of Biographia Literaria in various contexts in the past 200 years.

In keeping with the journal’s traditions, the thematic issue will also have a general section, where papers on any subject in the field of English and American literature are considered for publication

Deadline for submissions: 20 February 2018

Submission guidelines:

  • please submit your text electronically, in Word of RTF document format, sent to the following email addresses: anachronist@freemail.hu and komaromy.zsolt@btk.elte.hu
  • please attach an abstract of 150-200 words
  • papers must not exceed 10,000 words in length, including footnotes

Evaluation process:

Selection of articles to be published is based on readers’ reports from members of the Editorial Board and the Advisory Board, and double-blind peer-reviewing by experts of the given subject.

The New Series of The AnaChronisT  is an international academic journal in the field of English and American literature and culture, published by the Department of English Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. It is the relaunch of the journal of the same name that has a history of 20 years of publication.

The journal is indexed by a number of traditional bibliographies and is included in various online databases.

For further information, visit http://seas3.elte.hu/anachronist/Volumes.htm (to be updated).

(posted 17 November 2017)

Postcolonial British Generations
2018 Autumn issue of in esse: English Studies in Albania
Deadline for proposals: 20 February 2018

“My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.
I am often considered to be a funny kind of Englishman,
a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories.”

(Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia)

The process of human migration is as old as humanity, however, migration as we know it in a contemporary context has strong ties with the colonial past of the Western world, as colonisation, conquering, forming empires were one of the most massive processes of European history. Even if former Empires vanished in the 20th century, the consequences, mindsets and socio-cultural heritage of the colonial past are still present. One of these components of the colonial heritage is migration, resulting from the displacement left and felt after the disintegration of imperial structures.

Though migration is a worldwide phenomenon, one of the countries and cultures most affected by the loss of the Empire and the intensifying migration in the aftermath of the imperial heritage is Great Britain. Their colonial enterprise and imperial domination ended and resulted in an increasingly multicultural and multiethnic society.

As a result of the decades that have passed since the beginning of modern migration, various multicultural and multi-ethnic environments have developed, and today we have the chance to examine the experiences of multiple generations of migrants; not only as a consequence of passing time, but also of post-colonial, diaspora, multicultural arts practiced by various generations of (im)migrants. The experience of migration, the challenges of settling down, fitting in and assimilating into a culture or keeping to one’s roots, cultures and languages– although often thought to be a homogeneous phenomenon – show not only individual differences, but elicit varying responses and strategies in different generations of (im)migrants.

While reading, watching, experiencing such pieces of art, a multitude of questions may arise. How many generations does it take to blend into a culture as someone having outlandish origins? Is there such an urge present in different generations at all? How do different generations of immigrants approach their cultural heritage? Are their examples of taking pride in being a(n) (descendant of) an immigrant? For how long is the offspring of immigrants considered as an nth-generation immigrant? How long does the “us vs. them” narrative haunt contemporary societies? What are the attitudes (and do they show variations among different groups) towards the colonial past of Britain? How can the history of the Empire be revisited and possibly rewritten?

The 2018 Autumn issue of in esse: English Studies in Albania is inviting contributions that approach the above questions from an interdisciplinary point of view as represented in the fields of British literature, film and popular culture.

Topics for contributions may include but are not limited to:

  • migrant narratives
  • diaspora experiences
  • issues of cultural heritage(s)
  • problems of identity and identification
  • assimilation and/or embracing roots
  • multiculturalism
  • multi-ethnicity
  • in-betweenness
  • rewriting the colonial past/colonial texts
  • commenting on colonial strategies of representation

Please send an abstract of 250 words with 4-5 keywords as an email attachment to the following email address: fannifeldmann@gmail.com

Contributions should not exceed 6000 words.Please follow the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition) for citation. Further queries should be addressed to the General Editor at armelap@assenglish.org or to the guest editor of the issue at fannifeldmann@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: 20 February 2018

Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2018

Deadline for papers: 20 June 2018

For further information please visit: http://www.assenglish.org

(posted 6 January 2018)

Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Spaces in Europe
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies, De Gruyter Open
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2018

Eds.: Dr. Anna Rastas & Dr. Kaarina Nikunen (University of Tampere)

This special issue of Open Cultural Studies (https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/culture) explores the social and cultural spaces in which identifications with African and black diaspora(s) become articulated, (re)negotiated and established as a field of collective agency with transformative power in European societies. African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals’ engagements with Africa and its global diaspora, or mediatized and commercialized notions of Africanness/blackness, but also through collective agency aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. The fields of African/black diasporic agency and cultural expressions include, for example, arts (e.g. literature, music and dance, visual arts, theater), various media spaces (especially social media and diasporic on-line communities), museums and other cultural heritage institutions, youth cultures, and national and transnational political movements.

We welcome contributions that go beyond descriptions of local diaspora communities by acknowledging the global circulation of the signifiers of African and black diaspora cultures, and the meanings of the transnational connections for local diaspora communities. We are also interested in analyses of how the tensions and power relations between and within different African and black diaspora communities and cultures (e.g. the old and the new, or those based on generational differences) are articulated and reflected in the African/black diaspora subjects’ agency.

Please submit a short bio note (max. 200 words) and an abstract (max. 300 words, in one paragraph) to both Guest Editors (anna.rastas@uta.fi and Kaarina.nikunen@uta.fi) by 28 February 2018. The deadline for submitting full articles is 1 August 2018. For more information see: https://www.degruyter.com/page/1599

There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) or submission charges.

(posted 2 November 2017)

Industrial Heritage in the UK : Mutations, Conversions and Representations
Contributions are invited to an issue of LISA e-journal
Deadline for proposals: 1 March 2018

https://lisa.revues.org/9025

Since the mid-1950s, the UK has witnessed a growing interest in the study, protection and conservation of industrial heritage, and is often considered as a leader in the exploration of the significance and potentialities of such historical remains. This rise in public awareness was accompanied by the development of industrial archaeology as a discipline in its own right, which later led to industrial heritage being seen as a resource for regeneration and for a global reflexion on the protection of memories of the collective past. The discovery of the economic and social potential of derelict buildings has gone hand in hand with the development of (living) museums, with a surge in urban renewal policies in the context of deindustrialization and with preoccupations with sustainable development or green tourism.

This LISA e-journal issue will thus focus on industrial infrastructures such as former textile mills, factories or warehouses – whether listed or not – along with their surroundings when they constitute a landscape and/or are integrated into a conservation area. The palimpsestic quality of this industrial past is integral to popular and collective memories that are kept alive through museum initiatives whether in the private, public or charitable sectors but also through fictional or documentary films, web sites or the social media. Nostalgia for a glorious past era of British history contributes to the desire to preserve and celebrate the unique skills, the impressive know-how and more generally the salient traits of a bygone civilization.

We welcome contributions aiming to explore changes in the field of industrial heritage and industrial conservation and their instrumental role in the provision of spaces for tourism, culture, and urban regeneration, while bearing in mind the potential conflicts arising from the relationship between these various processes. Examining representations of industrial society and the tangible traces of industry in order to foreground mutations in how industrial heritage has been depicted and perceived since the beginning of the industrial revolution thus offers a more comprehensive picture of the contrasting visions of a once neglected heritage.

The perspective chosen for this Revue LISA / LISA e-journal issue is inter- and pluri-disciplinary, articulated around a variety of approaches including cultural geography, cultural history, art history, media studies, urban studies, heritage studies, architecture, etc.. Studies offering comparisons between the UK and other geographical area(s) or country/ies, are also welcome.

Possible themes thus include (but are not limited to):

  • Care of industrial and technical collections, the conservation of industrial artefacts.
  • Representations of a vanishing industrial society and its heritage: depicting the industrial past, its people and its physical reminders in urban and rural landscapes.
  • Memorizing the industrial past: educational projects, social media, TV or cinematic fictions or documentaries, festivals, attractions, museum developments, memorabilia…
  • Industrial ruins and post-industrial landscapes: creative acts inspired by engagements with physical testimonies to the past, their otherness and unstable state.
  • Recycling industrial buildings and their immediate environment through culture and heritage.
  • New functions for vacant industrial buildings: the discourse of sustainable urban development or of imaginative regeneration of derelict or unused sites.
  • Reinterpreting industrial sites for creative uses: questioning the inventiveness, viability and durability of adaptive re-use by such projects.
  • Conservation and conversions: conflicts arising between architectural, cultural, historical, economic and promotional priorities.
  • The contribution of industrial heritage to tourism and employment in post-industrial areas.
  • Industrial heritage/past as an inspiration for fashion, design, decoration or life style …

Proposals (abstract and bio, not exceeding 500 words) should be sent to Aurore Caignet, Renée Dickason and Tim Edensor by 1st March 2018. The deadline for completed articles is 1st October 2018.
Contributions should not exceed 6,000 words in length and should be sent together with a short biography of the author (max. 200 words) and an abstract (max. 300 words). For submissions, you are invited to read and follow the norms for presentation indicated on the peer-reviewed Revue LISA / LISA e-journal website https://lisa.revues.org/159
ISSN: 1762-6153, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Revues.org.

(posted 8 July 2017)

Mind the Gap in Tourism Discourse: Translation, Mediation, Inclusion
Issue n. 21 – 5/2019 of Altre modernità/ Otras modernidades/ Autres modernités/ Other Modernities
Deadline for proposal: 5 March 2018

Editors: Mirella Agorni and Cinzia Spinzi

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/AMonline/article/view/9305/8800

Travel and tourism has become the world’s largest and fastest growing industry and, in many countries, it is becoming an effective driver of economic growth and inclusive development.
The focus of this issue will be translation as an intercultural mediation practice applied to tourism discourse, with special attention to the notions of accessibility and inclusion in all their facets. As a matter of fact, as highlighted by the General Secretary of United Nations World Tourism Organization, Taleb Rifai, “accessibility is a central element of any responsible and sustainable tourism policy. It is both a human rights imperative, and an exceptional business opportunity” (WTO 2013).
Accessibility in tourism thus aims to enable visitors with access requirements to function with equity by delivering inclusive services and products. Information delivered in the language of tourists who do not speak the same language as that of the host countries is also a way to break down information and communication barriers. It goes without saying that translation plays a key role in tourism discourse (Gandini 2013; Gotti 2006). Many scholars working in the field of tourist translation (Cappelli 2008, Gandin 2015, Agorni 2016) agree on the tendency towards domestication of original tourist texts which, by their very nature, are culturally bound.
Tourism text translators face up with the arduous task of “finding a balance between the need to provide both accessible and appealing contents” (Agorni 2016) and, as a consequence, a variety of strategies will have to be used, in order to allow “outsiders” meet and appreciate the culture of the “insiders” (Katan 2016). If, on the one hand, tourist message needs to be user-friendly in order to ensure the knowledge transfer and overcome communication breakdown, on the other hand, the risk of widening the cultural gap is very high where the provision of too much information makes the tourist text inaccessible to the target reader.
The final aim of this issue of Other Modernities is to discuss and draw conclusions on tourist accessibility – and accordingly inclusion in language, either from a cultural mediation perspective, or as a form of inclusion of tourists with disabilities.
The aspects mentioned above and many others will be explored and discussed from diverse methodological, professional and pedagogical perspectives. We welcome proposals on tourism discourse translation/mediation related to the notions of accessibility and inclusion (Iwarsson S., Ståhl A. 2003).
Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

  • Tourism discourse translation in theory and practice
  • Cross-cultural mediation of tourism discourse and analyses of linguistic and cultural mediation strategies aiming at making tourism destinations accessible
  • The assessment of tourist specialized knowledge and information evaluation
  • Discussion of particular forms of tourism mediation, such as audio-guide tours, accessible multimedia guides and other digital services for tourists
  • Tourism mediation as a strategy for inclusion, both from a cultural perspective and as a strategy of inclusion of tourists with disabilities

However, this list is not intended to be exhaustive and the editorial board will take into consideration other topics related to the main themes of this issue.
References:
AGORNI M., 2016, “Tourism Across Languages and Cultures: Accessibility Through Translation”, Cultus 9, pp.13-27.
CAPPELLI G., 2008, “The translation of tourism-related websites and localization: problems and perspectives”, in A. BAICCHI (ed.), Voices on Translation, RILA Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata, Bulzoni Editore, Roma, pp. 97-115.
GANDIN S., 2015, “Il linguaggio e la traduzione del turismo accessibile. Uno studio preliminare”, in Lingue e Linguaggi V.18, pp. 47-64.
GANDIN S., 2013, “Translating the Language of Tourism. A Corpus Based Study on the Translational Tourism English Corpus (T-TourEC)”, in Procedia: Social & Behavioral Sciences 95, pp. 325-335.
GOTTI M., 2006, “The Language of Tourism as Specialized Discourse”, in O. PALUSCI, S. FRANCESCONI (eds.), Translating Tourism: Linguistic/Cultural Representations, Università di Trento, Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Filologici, Trento, pp. 15-34.
IWARSSON S., STÅHL A., 2003, “Accessibility, Usability and Universal Design-Positioning and Definition of Concepts Describing Person-Environment Relationships”, in Disability and Rehabilitation 25 [2], pp. 57-66.
KATAN D., 2016, “Translating for Outsider Tourists: Cultural Informers Do It Better”, in Cultus 9, pp. 63-90.

To this purpose the editorial board has established the following deadlines:
Authors should send in their proposals in the form of a max. 50-word abstract with a brief bio-bibliography to amonline@unimi.it (both in English and in the language of their choice) by 5th March 2018.
The deadline for the submission of the papers is the 5th of June 2018.
The issue will be published within the end of May 2019.
We also welcome book reviews and interviews to authors and scholars who investigate the topics illustrated above. Contributors are free to contact the editors to discuss the objectives of their proposals, with a view to making the issue as homogeneous as possible also from a methodological point of view. The editors can be contacted via the Editorial Secretary (amonline@unimi.it).

(posted 1 December 2017)

Miniatures in the Early Modern Period  (16th-18th c.)
A special issue of Études Épistémè
Deadline for proposals: 5 March 2018

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Nicholas Hilliard’s death, the online peer-reviewed journal Études Épistémè (http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/) seeks articles examining miniatures in the early modern period from a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. Études Épistémè is DOAJ- and MLA- listed.

Nicholas Hilliard, a goldsmith and a limner for Elizabeth I and James I, was best known for his portraits of the English court and society as well as for some of the most striking likenesses of the ending years of the Valois court which he drew during his stay in Paris circa 1576-1578.

In order to celebrate this anniversary, we welcome new inquiries into miniatures, a medium which remains relatively understudied in France, although many literary, textual and visual sources are available. As a luxury good often endowed with sentimental value, miniatures are to be considered as hybrid objects encompassing portraiture, graphic arts and/or goldsmithery. Since the 1980s and the Victoria & Albert Museum’s exhibition on the rediscovery of portrait miniatures (1983), the technical analysis of miniatures has significantly developed. Groundbreaking studies by Jim Murrrell, Alan Derbyshire and the research teams at the Victoria & Albert Museum at large have led to innovative analyses and the refurbishing of the miniature galleries at both the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

Suggested topics for contributions in either French or English may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Generic definition
  • Production history
  • Status of the miniature / miniaturist
  • Theoretical history
  • Exchanges / conversations between writers and limners / miniaturists
  • Miniatures in literature
  • The circulation of miniatures (diplomatic gifts, political negotiations, personal gifts etc.)
  • Miniatures in drama (theatrical references, stage properties etc.)
  • Exchanges between artists (particularly between France and England)

Detailed abstracts of 300 to 500 words of proposed individual or collective articles are to be sent to the editors of the issue by March 5th, 2018 at the following address: epistememiniature@gmail.com.
Notifications of acceptance: April 2018. Full articles due by November 2018. The articles will then be peer-reviewed before publication in the Spring of 2019.

(posted 1 February 2017)

Literary Networks and Digital Media in Contemporary African Literatures
Double Guest Issue 13:3 & 13:4 of Postcolonial Text, 2018
Deadline for proposals: 9 March 2018

http://www.postcolonial.org
The aim of this double guest issue is to examine the notion of network(s) in relation to literary production on the African continent. As a theoretical tool, the notion refers to a complex system of interconnected individuals or institutions, one that often transcends physical borders and that is hard to delineate due to its ever-evolving and shifting nature. If one tends to focus on points of contact or connections, gaps and disconnection are also key in the architecture of a network
Literary networks developed in Africa and its diaspora in the early 1950s and 1960s, usually around university centers (Makerere, Ibadan, Nsukka), found means of expression through printed periodicals (Black Orpheus, Transition) and brought together writers and artists in clubs or collectives (Mbari Club in Nigeria, ChemChemi Creative Centre in Kenya). Linked to Pan-Africanism and the will to develop and promote African writing on the continent, Anglophone networks connected with writers from the Harlem Renaissance and the Négritude movement, thus extending over continental and linguistic borders. Through events such as Writers’ Conferences, organized on the continent and in metropolitan capitals, key issues facing African writers were debated and discussed.
Thus, African literary networks can be read as both the products and the producers of forms of literary sociability (the University, clubs, conferences) but also as budding literary institutions that published collective works (periodicals) and, in some cases, became publishing houses, giving shape to emerging local literary fields.
If most periodicals from those years have either stopped publication Black Orpheus) or been delocalized away from the continent (Transition), the early 2000s saw the rise and development of a network of literary magazines and infrastructures all over the continent (Kwani?, Saraba, Bakwa, Chimurenga, Jalada), most of which are linked to digital platforms and networks. The development and rise of the Internet, of social media (Twitter, Facebook) and blogs has indeed offered new platforms and now represent a space where aspiring writers can meet and exchange, fostering new “virtual”networks, which are in varying degrees disconnected from geographical locations. They also offer new possibilities for the emergence of new voices and less formalized genres (Facebook fiction, writers’ blogs). However, digital platforms often work hand in hand with print media and literary events (workshops, festivals).

 Among the questions this issue seeks to explore are the following:

  • How have new technologies altered the way in which literary networks are built, function and evolve?
  • How do those online networks develop to span national, transnational and global spaces?
  • How can their connections and disconnections be mapped, and what does this new geography tell us about contemporary literary sociability and the relationship between African literature and World literature at large?
  • How do these digital literary practices involve shifting relations to African languages and readerships?
  • What type of imagined communities to they contribute to fostering?
  • How does digital production function in relation to print, and to processes of legitimization and canonization?
  • How are notions such as Pan-africanism, nationalism, or cosmopolitanism explored and redefined through such networks and their literary outputs?
  • Can genealogies and (dis)continuities of African literary networks be mapped out across the longue durée of African literary production?
  • How are those networks linked to forms of literary activism?
  • What new thematic and generic directions do they explore?
  • What new theoretical tools are required to read such networks and the literary works they produce?

Submission Procedure and Calendar:
300-word abstracts, along with a short bio-bibliography should be submitted to Aurélie Journo (aureliejourno@hotmail.fr) by 9 March 2018.
After acceptance, full-length articles (6,000 to 8,000 words with Works Cited) should be submitted for review by 29June 2018.
Authors are requested to follow Postcolonial Text guidelines: http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

(posted 26 January 2018)

Migration and Violence in Modern and Contemporary Culture
Chapters for an edited volume
Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2018

Chapter proposals are invited for an edited volume entitled Migration and Violence in Modern and Contemporary Culture. Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract and a 200-word biography to migration2017@outlook.com by March 15, 2018. Proposers will be notified whether their submissions are accepted for the book by April 1, 2018. For accepted proposals, full chapters are due by June 15, 2018.

Ever since the Second World War, refugees as well as those migrating for better work and study opportunities or a more democratic life make headline news, thematize political debates, elections and referendums. National identity is increasingly defined against and clashes with the free movement of people. Wars, crime, riots, violence, and terrorism, following events from the Jewish immigration to Israel to the contemporary migration crisis, have become the subject matter of iconic cultural productions. The photographs of Robert Capa, the films of Mira Nair and Fatih Akin, the mural pieces of Banksy, and the novels of postcolonial writers such as Salman Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee and Hanif Kureishi, have had a crucial effect on our cultural production and consumption. Thus, our volume aims to bring together articles from all disciplines of the humanities to discuss the phenomenon of migration, in all of its complexity, focusing on its challenges, violent consequences, and potential dangers to migrants and society.

It is our aim to create an overview of the issue in the recent and present state of culture, including documentary and feature films, photography, street art, popular culture, visual arts, and literature.

All essays should fall under the general label “violence caused by migration in modern and contemporary culture.” Therefore, proposed areas include, but are not limited to, the representation of:

  • Violence and aggression in modern society due to migration
  • War, terrorism and cultural conflicts caused by migration
  • The brutal aspects of migratory esthetics
  • Crime stories involving immigrants
  • Ethnic hostility, prejudice and racism
  • Prevention of hate crimes and hate speech
  • The dangers and harmful effects of land grabbing, globalization and transnationalism
  • The brutality of border control
  • Religion, crime and violence in the ethnic suburbs and diasporas

Only contributions not previously published will be accepted.

Contact information for submission and inquiries: migration2017@outlook.com 

(posted 19 January 2018)

Capitalist Aesthetics
A special issue of Open Cultural Studies, an Open Access Peer-Reviewed Journal (De Gruyter)
Dadline for proposals: 15 March 2018

This special issue will be edited by  Dr Pansy Duncan & Dr Nicholas Holm (Massey University)

 Assessing a world marked by what Hal Foster, bleakly, calls “total design” and by what Jacques Ranciere, more optimistically, calls the “aestheticization of common life,” and drawing on critiques by Fredric Jameson and Jan Mukarovsky, this special issue of Open Cultural Studies welcomes articles that explore the aesthetic configurations—from the cute to the comfortable, from the no-brow to the fringe—through which the economic logics of late capitalism come to crystallize today. It invites work that treats the stylistic and formal dimension of cultural objects, and the verdictive and affective dimensions of cultural discourse/experience, as valuable “cryptograms” of contemporary ideological formations and the economic relations they sustain. In the process, it will foreground the fact that—despite widespread suspicion, post-Bourdieu, of the discourse of the aesthetic—scholars associated with cultural studies, from Raymond Williams to Rosalind Gill, have developed a powerful set of critical tools for analysing aesthetic configurations, both as vehicles of ideological and economic domination, and as sources of subversion, pleasure, critique, and renewal.

 We welcome essays on any topic related to the intersection of capitalism and aesthetics, including: Aesthetic manifestations of capitalism; Capitalist mediations and expressions, genres and forms; “Post-Capitalist” aesthetics: designing the future; White collar aesthetics: corporate aesthetics, from the bank to the boardroom; Aesthetic subversion or critique of/as capitalism; Aesthetics and techno-science: datafication of/as aesthetics; Aesthetics as domination and/or liberation: between autonomy and heteronomy; Digital aesthetics and “platform capitalism”; Beyond “zany,” “cute” and “interesting”: late capitalism’s (other) aesthetic categories; The aesthetics of the Capitalocene: eco-catastrophe and environmental activism as late capitalist spectacle; Capitalist structures of feeling, capitalist affects; Neoliberal aesthetics; Representations of capitalism; Late capitalist temporal aesthetics, from speed to slowness; The “creative industries” and the “cultural economy” as late capitalist aesthetic formations; The fate of “political aesthetics” in cultural studies; New aesthetic currencies, from the corporeal to the celestial; Aesthetics and/of class.

 Full CFP is available at:  https://www.degruyter.com/page/1684

Please submit your proposals to  izabella.penier@degruyteropen.com  by March 15, 2018. The deadline for submissions of full papers is June 1, 2018.  The issue will be published in 2018. There are no Article Publishing Charges.

(posted 6 February 2018)

The Modern Short Story and the Magazines: 1880-1950
An edited volume
Deadline for proposals: 30 March 2018

Eds Elke D’hoker and Chris Mourant

This essay collection aims to bring together and represent the growing body of research into the close ties between the modern short story and magazine culture in the period 1880-1950 in Britain and Ireland.

That the rise of the modern short story in the late-nineteenth-century was made possible by the exponential growth of the magazine market is well-known. Following the famous example of the Strand, more and more magazines made it their policy to publish only self-contained works of short fiction rather than the serialized novels which had been popular for much of the nineteenth century. As a result, the number of stories published rose dramatically and so did the diversity of the short fiction output: different magazines preferred different genres, topics, and styles; writers and agents became adept at pitching their story at the most appropriate – and best-paying – magazine. The end of this “golden age of storytellers”, as Mike Ashley has called it, is similarly bound up with the periodical market. As TV took over as the most popular form of entertainment, the number of magazines that published short fiction declined dramatically around 1950 and this had a major impact on the overall popularity, production and publication of short fiction.

If most critics accept the intertwined fate of the short story and the periodical press, the actual interaction between short stories and the magazines in which they were published has only recently become an object of sustained scholarly attention. Short fiction studies, with its longstanding emphasis on canonical authors and on the modernist short story, is only now beginning to investigate the impact of periodicals on the generic and formal development of the modern short story as well as to take into account middle- and lowbrow forms of short fiction which flourished in particular in the magazine market. Research within periodical studies, on the other hand, is typically focused on the periodical as a single if fragmented textual whole with a specific ideological, political or social dimension rather than on the status of one literary genre within that textual whole.

Situated at the crossroads of these two research domains, this essay collection aims to investigate the presence, status, and functioning of short stories within various magazines – literary, popular and mainstream – from 1880 to 1950, in both Britain and Ireland. The perspective of this investigation will be two-fold: the impact of a given magazine context and co-texts on the production, publication and reception of short stories will be considered, as well as the specific status, positioning, function and role of the short stories within the textual and ideological whole of magazine text.

Specific research questions may be (but are not limited to) the following:

  • What opportunities did magazines afford short story writers? And what constraints (financial, formal, ideological) did publication in magazines place on short story writers?
  • How are short stories positioned and presented within a magazine, and how does this affect their meaning?
  • What is the relation between the ideological and thematic identity of the magazine and the ideological and thematic concerns of the short stories it published?
  • How does the periodical context influence the reception of the story?
  • How are authors presented in the magazines? How are their stories advertised? When, where and why are stories published anonymously?
  • How does a given author pitch his or her stories to a particular magazine?
  • How does a magazine set out markers (implicitly or explicitly) for specific genres or styles for the short fiction it publishes?

By addressing these questions, the book as a whole aims to illustrate (a) the impressive variety of short stories published in magazines in the period (from so-called literary stories in avant-garde little magazines or mainstream literary journals, the entertaining yet didactic stories published in women’s or family magazines, to the genre fiction that dominated a host of popular magazines); (b) the different methodological/theoretical concerns that are at stake in the study of periodical short fiction; and (c) the historical developments short fiction and the magazines in which they were published underwent between 1880 and 1950.

We invite chapters that address these issues through case studies and/or more general historical overviews. 500-word proposals for chapters can be sent to the editors (elke.dhoker@kuleuven.be and C.mourant@bham.ac.uk) by March 30th. Upon acceptance, the deadline for the full chapters is September 1st 2018. The editors will submit a book proposal to Edinburgh University Press

(posted 22 February 2018)

Terrible Beauties: Europe, Conflict and the Imagination in Literature and the Arts
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2018

A rationale for the collection

Episodes of conflict have often proved to be watersheds in the history of Europe, its states and its peoples. Wars have involved the redrawing of maps and the reconfiguration of identities of smaller as well as larger units – of nations, localities, institutions, and the connecting networks of solidarity and allegiance. Conflict has dictated the rise and fall of states and political regimes, the slaughter and displacement of populations, the destruction of infrastructures; it has also entailed medical and technological progress, and stood at the roots of much social innovation and artistic creativity. Additionally, war has played a central role in the relationship between Europeans and people in other parts of the world, most notably Africa, Asia and the Americas in the long course of modern imperialism. From Agincourt to the Somme, from Balaclava to El Alamein, the history of civilization is inextricable from the history of catastrophe. Indeed, not a few catastrophes have been caused in the name of civilization.

The present peer-reviewed collection aims at considering the consequences that a history of conflict(s) in Europe has had, within imaginative production, for an ongoing refashioning of perceived identities. The volume is intended to showcase and discuss the impact of such processes on literary and artistic representations, with an emphasis on materials from the British Isles but preferably also from a comparatist perspective.

The collection reflects the ongoing concerns of a research group, Relational Forms: Medial and Textual Transits in Ireland and Britain, based at CETAPS (the Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies), which has been responsible for a wide gamut of publications, including Relational Designs in Literature and the Arts: Page and Stage, Canvas and Screen, ed. Rui Carvalho Homem (Rodopi: 2012), and English Literature and the Disciplines of Knowledge, Early Modern to Eighteenth Century: A Trade for Light, ed. Jorge Bastos da Silva and Miguel Ramalhete Gomes (Brill-Rodopi: 2017).

Call for contributions

We invite contributions of essays (6000-8000 words) consistent with the volume rationale outlined above. Suggested (merely indicative) topics include:

  • European wars in literature and the arts
  • rout and road: narratives of disaster and displacement
  • heroism, patriotism, faith, adventure, trauma
  • poetry and battlefields, self and community
  • reviewing the massacre: verbal and visual reenactments of war scenarios
  • conflict, identity, translation: representations across media / across languages
  • drama, war and Europe: “a nation thinking in public…”
  • shooting Europe: film, war and memory
  • war after peace, peace after war

Prospective contributors should send an extended abstract (250-300 words) to relational@letras.up.pt. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 31 March 2018. Contributors will be notified of the editors’ decision before 30 April 2018. The collection is due to be published by a global publisher in 2019.

(posted 27 December 2017)