Books and special issues of journals – Deadlines October-December 2019

Using Literature to Teach English as a Second Language
Call for Chapters
Proposals Submission Deadline: 2 October 2019

https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/4239

Full Chapters Due: November 15, 2019
Submission Date: February 23, 2020
Nowadays, in the era of communication, technology and globalisation, English, rather than a complementary subject has become in the last decades a key determinant towards success present in all curricula, studied by learners and people of all ages all around the world. With the passage of time, teachers’ position as simple and arbitrary dispensers of knowledge of a second language – in this case English – has changed, and with this, also the methodologies applied to transmit suitable and valuable pieces of information in the classroom. Innovation has replaced stereotypical and old methods as an attempt to make English language teaching and learning appealing, effective and simple.
O’Sullivan claims that “the teaching of literature has recently been resurrected as a vital component of English language teaching” (2017: 1). Teaching a second language through literature might be a paramount tool to consolidate not only students’ lexical and grammatical competences, but also for the development of their cultural awareness and broadening of their knowledge through interaction and collaboration that foster collective learning. Besides, reading ignites students’ imagination and their critical thinking due to the interpretation, discussion and expression of their opinions on universal themes which might relate to their personal ones.
But precisely these strengths, according to the experts on the field, are transformed into serious difficulties that make the method totter. Language pedagogy using authentic literary texts is definitely not an innovative instrument as it counts with years of tradition; Spack (1985) talked about “bridging the gaps” between the use of literature and the teaching of reading and writing. Already in the 1970s, the methodology of teaching English through literature was displaced and substituted by the so called task-based and content-based approaches. Among the reasons alleged for this exclusion is, on the one hand, the long-standing disassociation of the fields of language teaching and learning to literature and, on the other, the possible frustration caused by literary corpus. The text might present a complex range of vocabulary that might be unknown to the learner, with parts scattered with metaphors and charged with symbolism and motifs which might hinder and obscure the comprehension of the text.
Nonetheless, all seems a problem of focus on the method and on the teaching/schema. According to Sanju Choudhary “literature plays a vital role in teaching the four basic skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking” (2016), and oral and written abilities must be taught and learnt as being complementary to each other and not isolated units whichever might be the education level or the stage in the learning process. The progression in the acquisition of a foreign language must be perceived as an ensemble, rather than a four-part separate project, but also the adaptation of authentic texts to learners’ educational level. Several have been the studies which tackle the link between teaching methodology and literature, employing not only fiction (Sage, 1987; Collie and Slater, 1990; Stern, 1991; Custodio and Sutton, 1998), but also drama (Lenore, 1993) and poetry (Hiller, 1983; Çubukçu, 2001). In spite of the extensive scholarship on the literary approach to teach English as a second language, the influx of innovative methodologies strongly favour ground-breaking orientations regarding new technologies, gamification, flipped classroom, design thinking, to name a few.

Objective

Objective”>The overall goal of this book is to give a comprehensive picture of the current landscape of learning English across different educational settings, from kindergarten to higher education, placing special emphasis on the latter . In view of the above, then, the main purpose of this book is to expose the current state of this methodological approach nowadays, and to observe its reverberations, usefulness, strengths and weaknesses when used in a classroom where English is taught as a second language. In this way, this book will provide updated tools to explore another way of teaching and learning through the most creative and enriching manifestations of one language, literature. This is how literature’s position in relation to language teaching is revindicated and revalued.

Target Audience

Books such as this one are especially important for compiling high-quality, up-to-date, scholarly cases that can support and enhance the effective design of online courses incorporating current and emerging digital tools to meet the evolving needs of diverse learners in a variety of sectors. The cases will be valuable for teachers, higher education faculty and teacher educators as well as educational designers in educational settings.

Thus, this book is intended for:

  • ESL teachers, instructors, university professors
  • Educational designers and developers
  • Instructional technology faculty
  • Distance learning instructional designers and faculty

Recommended Topics

Recommended Topics include but are not limited to the following:

  • Theoretical review of the use of literature for ESL. The state of the art.
  • New technologies and literature in ESL.
  • Distance learning / Online learning and literature in ESL.
  • Flipped classroom and literature in ESL.
  • What is thematically acceptable? Adapted materials, how to know that a material is suitable to the class’s level? The selection of texts. Should these texts be culturally universal?
  • Creative thinking in ESL classroom.
  • Are all the literary genres (poetry, science fiction, drama, and novel) suitable for teaching English? The benefits of using each genre, pursuing different objectives according to the age of the learner.
  • Possible problems and/or challenges of this approach, among them the preparation of the teacher or professor in the area of literature – do teachers need a solid background in literature in order to use the method? – , the importance of tested-designed materials, the need to establish clear-cut objectives etc.
  • When, why or how literature should be incorporated during the learning process? The importance of pre-reading. The steps to be followed when this method is used.

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before October, 2, 2019, a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by October 7, 2019 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by November 15, 2019, and all interested authors must consult the guidelines for manuscript submissions athttp://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/before-you-write/ prior to submission. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Trust in Knowledge Management and Systems in Organizations. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process.

All proposals should be submitted through the eEditorial Discovery®TM online submission manager.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2020.

Important Dates

September 2, 2019: 1st Proposal Submission Deadline
September 6, 2019: Notification of Acceptance
October 2, 2019: 2nd Proposal Submission Deadline
October 7, 2019: Notification of Acceptance
November 15, 2019: Full Chapter Submission
December 29, 2019: Review Results Returned
February 9, 2020: Final Acceptance Notification
February 23, 2020: Final Chapter Submission

(posted 7 Septembe 2019)

Urban spaces in films
A special issue of Chalchitra Darpan
Deadline for proposals: 14 October 2019

About Chalchitra Darpan
Chalchitra Darpan is an upcoming film journal by Celluloid, the Film Club of Miranda House, University of Delhi. The journal is a medium to bridge the gap between film academia and undergraduate research. It aims at encouraging film and media enthusiasts towards analysing the ever-changing field of films.
Editors-in-chief: Giitanjali and Oli Chatterjee

About the theme
Urbanisation and urbanity have brought with them new cultures, artistic avenues and opportunities. The cultural perceptions of a city, its conception, its morality and its decline have become an arena for discussions of modernity, technology, crime, theology, nostalgia and much more.
Cities have been explored in cinema in a myriad manifestations: as a character, as a fetish, as a historical document, as a cultural monument of religiosity, as a symbol of liberalism, sexuality and decay. The politics and juxtaposition of interior/exterior, public/private, political/civil, urban/rural are themes which deserve more ink to be shed on.
A paucity in urban cinema research and a panel discussion on the city of Kolkata made us evaluate the nature of the urban spaces and the themes it can span to, making us understand the need for such a research.
While we would largely want to focus on South Asian cinema, we do look forward to explorations of the theme beyond what we’ve already talked about. We also highly encourage studies on the vicissitudes of the city vis-a-vis ecology, imperialism, history and capitalism and hope that papers will not be limited to narrative cinema and would also explore the aesthetic and politics of documentary and experimental form. Empirical studies on urban film culture would also contribute substantially of the discourse we’re trying to garner. Issues of film historiography would also require an immensely critical-reading of texts and would be a great addition to the Journal. Of course, these are but a few limited themes and we expect scholars to play around with the subject!

Research Paper Submission
In the light of new developments in film studies and a lack of structured discourse on the same by undergraduates, we urge everyone to send in their papers and examine the theme from various perspectives.
Chalchitra Darpan accepts written pieces for submission. Written pieces can be either essays for our ‘Features’ section, which should be between 5,000-7,000 words (including footnotes, excluding bibliography) or shorter articles of approximately 1,000-3,000 words (including footnotes, excluding bibliography). Book reviews are typically 1,000 words.
While this is largely an undergraduate journal, we do encourage some expert comments or articles from researchers working in field.
All submissions should not be under consideration elsewhere, and should be original and previously unpublished.
Submissions can be in Hindi and English.

Abstract Submission
Proposal abstracts should be of no more than 250 words and must be accompanied by an indicative bibliography. A brief biography of the author of approx. 150 words should be provided along with the abstract. Abstracts should be sent through as Word Documents and titled “For consideration: Author First name Author Surname”
Please submit your proposal on chalchitradarpan@gmail.com

Time-table:
Abstract Submission Deadline: 14th of October, 2019
Abstract Decision Announcement: 25th October, 2019
Final Draft Deadline: 30th December, 2019
Final Draft with Corrections: 5th January, 2020

Please feel free to contact us for further queries.

(posted 21 September 2019)
Dynamics of collapse in fantasy, the fantastic and SF
Issue 63 of Caliban, June 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2019

Apocalyptic patterns have fuelled SF, fantasy, horror and the fantastic for a long time. The central argument of many classics within these genres is the annihilation of the world or that of civilisation. In this respect, the example of R. Matheson’s novel I Am Legend (1954) is typical, with its pandemic turning people into the living-dead. The story spawned multiple movie adaptations,[1] eventually giving birth to the “zombie apocalypse” sub-genre, via G. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Along this legacy, another post-apocalyptic piece was a fruitful inspiration to dystopian anticipation, albeit in a perspective closer to action films or motorised western movies: G. Miller’s Mad Max2: The Road Warrior (1981). Here, it is the depletion of oil resources which brings about the end of civilisation. Thus, the pattern is similar to the evolution the world has actually known since the release of the movie, as the world oil production peaked in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency.[2]

Closer to home, some recent works have been presented and/or interpreted by ecocritics as metaphors for climate change and the catastrophes it triggers: J. VanderMeer’s Annihilation (2014) and its movie adaptation by Alex Garland, in which air alteration around a growing area causes mutations in the fauna and the flora; or P. Bacigalupi and T.S. Buckell’s fantasy novel’s The Tangled Lands (2018), in which excessive use of magic unhinges the environment.[3]

Meanwhile, within the scientific community, more and more speak up to take stock of an undergoing collapse rather than to prevent a remote apocalypse. Among these authors, are the French astrophysicist J. Blamont and his Introduction au siècle des menaces[4], the American historian and geographer J. Diamond’s now classic Collapse(2005), in which he analyses the collapse of past societies to understand contemporary threats[5], or, of course, the regular reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These issues were already outlined in The Limits to Growth (1972), aka “Meadows report”, the seminal essay written for the Club of Rome, but these predictions were not taken seriously at the time.

The most comprehensive synthesis of all those works must be Comment tout peut s’effondrer[6] (2015), written by the engineer in agronomics and ethologist P. Servigne and the independent scholar and eco-advisor R. Stevens, in which they study the implications of signs foreshadowing a “global […] economic and probably socio-political” collapse leading, potentially, to « the end of thermo-industrial civilisation »[7] and which « might trigger a collapse of the human species or even of all but a few living species ».[8] For the authors, the concept of collapse combines two complementary meanings. They borrow their technical definition from J. Diamond, “a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time”,[9] and combine it with a more pragmatic perspective borrowing from Y. Cochet : “at the end of the process which we will call collapse, the basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) are no longer provided to most of the population by services which are regulated by the law”[10]. As for “collapsology”, a science the authors meant tocreate and which has since been developed successfully, it is “the transdisciplinary study of the collapse of our industrial civilisation and of what might come next, based on two cognitive modes, which are reason and intuition, and on scientific works of standing”[11]. On this basis and in a perspective both technical and anthropological, collapsologists mean to explore a world in which “global warming is already causing longer and stronger heat waves as well as extreme events” and in which “we already witness water shortages in highly populated areas, economic losses, social unrest and political instability, as well as the propagation of contagious diseases, the proliferation of pests, the extinction of many living species […], the melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, and the diminution of agricultural productivity”.[12]

Caliban #63, entitled Dynamics of Collapse in fantasy, the fantastic and SF, intends to start a reflection on the more or less “collapsological” perspectives that our new context can bring to the creation or the reading of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic works. Those may belong to the fantastic genre, in the classical sense of a supernatural intrusion in a realistic background or in the Todorovian acceptation of a sustained doubt as to the reality of the supernatural occurence. They may also pertain to fantasy (Todorov’s marvellous), in the classical sense of a universe in which supernatural events are either normal or beyond ontological doubt. Last but not least, they may belong to science fiction, in a broad acceptation in which the causes of collapse, whether realistic or not, are presented with Suvinian cognitive rigour.[13] Thus, Stephen King’s The Stand (1978) pertains both to the fantastic in the classical sense and to SF, since the apocalypse is caused both by a pandemic (SF) and by the eldritch action of evil supernatural forces (fantastic). The whole spectrum of what can be called more or less loosely science fiction is thus relevant — from post-apocalyptic space opera such as the TV series Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) to various uchronia, dystopia, and works of anticipation which may focus more on sociopolitical evolutions and collapse rather than on technological evolutions and collapse.

The works under study may be literary or cinematographic, of course, but essays on comics, boardgames, role playing games or video games are more than welcome.

The main approaches to these issues are the study of recent works that may have been influenced by the context of undergoing collapse, or the re-reading of older works from the standpoint of our new context and/or of reflections developed by “collapsologic”-minded scholars. Those works may also be used as starting points to question the concept of collapse, to ponder the ways they illustrate different kinds of collapse (such as collapse of climate, energy ressources, infrastructures, finance, politics, biodiversity…) and their interactions, since each type may trigger collapses of a different kind, just as the proposed solutions to each may also trigger other kinds of collapse.[14] Here is a non exhaustive list of relevant works with suggestions of potential thematic perspectives :

– Imagining the aftermath:The Walking Dead (comic book series and adaptations), Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Russel Hoban’s Riddley Walker,Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, John Crowley’s Engine Summer, Mick Jackson’s Threads, Walter Murch’s Return to Oz, Franklin J. Schaffner’s The Planet of the Apes and its sequels. Any post-apocalyptic dystopia or dystopia about an undergoing collapse: George Orwell’s 1984, Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games,Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green; the boardgames Outlive or Pandemic Legacy Season 2, the video games Forsaken, Falloutand Wasteland,the role playing game Polaris.

– How it all goes crashing down:

● with a bang (Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, Max Brooks’s World War Z, H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest, Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, Stephen King’s The Stand, Dan Simmons’s Ilium and Olympos,China Miéville’s Embassytown; the movies Deep Impact, Blindness, Contagion, Perfect Sense, The NeverEnding Story; the boardgame Pandemic;Mark Rein-Hagen’s role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade)

vs with a whimper (Asimov’s Foundation, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, Crowley’sLittle, Big, Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore; Mike Judge’s film Idiocracy; Francesco Nepitello’s role playing game The One Ring – especially its campaign The Darkening of Mirkwood).

● inescapable (Le Guin’s « Paradises Lost »,  Orson Scott Card’s The Call of Earth, Asimov’s « The Last Question », C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew andThe Last Battle, Joss Whedon’s TV series Dollhouse; the board games Small World, Vinci, War of the Ring and the role playing game The One Ring)

vs. preventable  (Deep Impact, Armageddon, The Lord of the Rings, The Farthest Shore, Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the board games Pandemic and Arkham Horror or the role playing game The Call ofCthulhu).

● individual responsibility (Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven, Drew Goddard’s film Cabin in the Woods, Terry Gilliam’s12 Monkeys, Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire; the video game Plague, Inc.: Evolved; the episode trilogy « Weirdocalypse » concluding the animated series Gravity Falls),

vs collective responsibility (the TV series Dollhouse and Black Mirror, the board game Anacrony, Clifford Simak’s novel City, the movies The Day After Tomorrow and Idiocracy and more generally political dystopia),

vs third party responsibility (the series of novels and movies Left Behind or the video game Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s film This is the End)

orintermingled responsibilities (Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials or David Wong’s This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It)

Submitted articles will be double-blind peer-reviewed. They can be written either in English or French and will not exceed 30,000 signs (including spaces, footnotes and bibliography). They must be sent by 15th Oct, 2019 to both these email addresses: cyril.camus@hotmail.fr / florent.hebert.eng@gmail.com

———————

[1] In 1964, starring Vincent Price; in 1971, starring Charlton Heston; in 2007, starring Will Smith.

[2] “In the New Policies Scenario, production in total does not peak before 2035 […] never attaining its all-time peak of 70 mb/d in 2006”. Nabuo Tanaka, dir. “World Energy Outlook 2010”, International Energy Agency, 2010, p. 125.

[3] cf. Maddie Stone, “The Monsters of Climate Change”, Earther, 2018, https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-monsters-of-climate-change-1829826348

[4] « Introduction to the Age of Hazards ». J. Blamont, Introduction au siècle des menaces (2004), available in French only.

[5] Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, 2005, Londres: Penguin Books, 2011, p. 6-10.

[6] « How Everything Might Collapse : A Collapsology Handbook », Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, Comment tout peut s’effondrer : petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes, Paris : Editions du Seuil, 2015.  Available in French only.

[7] Servigne and Stevens, op. cit., p. 25-26.

[8] Ibid., p. 129.

[9] Diamond, op.cit., p. 3. Quoted in Servigne and Stevens, op. cit., p. 178.

[10] In the original: “le processus à l’issue duquel les besoins de base (eau, alimentation, logement, habillement, énergie, etc.) ne sont plus fournis à une majorité de la population par des services encadrés par la loi ». Yves Cochet, « L’effondrement, catabolique ou catastrophique ?”, convention, 27th May, 2011, Institut Momentum, https://www.institutmomentum.org/l’effondrement-catabolique-ou-catastrophique/. Quoted in Servigne and Stevens, op. cit., p. 15.

[11] In the original: “exercice transdisciplinaire d’étude de l’effondrement de notre civilisation industrielle, et de ce qui pourrait lui succéder, en s’appuyant sur les deux modes cognitifs que sont la raison et l’intuition, et sur des travaux scientifiques reconnus” Servigne and Stevens, op. cit., p. 253.

[12] In the original: “le réchauffement provoque déjà des vagues de chaleur plus longues et plus intenses et des événements extrêmes [et l’on] constate déjà des pénuries d’eau dans les parties densément peuplées, des pertes économiques, des troubles sociaux et de l’instabilité politique, la propagation de maladies contagieuses, l’expansion de ravageurs et de nuisibles, l’extinction de nombreuses espèces vivantes […], la fonte des glaces polaires et des glaciers, ainsi que des diminutions de rendements agricoles”. Servigne and Stevens, op. cit., p. 67-68.

[13] See Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, 1976 p. 7-8.

[14] Servigne and Stevens, op.cit., p. 124-125.

Imagineering violence: the spectacle of violence in the early modern period
A special issue of the Journal of the Northern Renaissance
Deadline for propsals: 30 October 2019
The CfP can also be found at http://www.northernrenaissance.org/call-for-papers/#n1

Guest editors: Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Université Libre de Bruxelles) & Kornee Van der Haven (Ghent University)The early modern period witnessed an explosion of the representation and performance of violence. In European cities, renaissance and baroque theatre staged gruesome and passionate plays, while in the streets, during religious festivals and public entries of sovereigns, state and church conjured up violent images of subjection and suffering.The book market added to this spectacle of violence, as the early modern period saw the development of an advanced material infrastructure for the production, distribution, consumption, and appropriation of such imagery.

A fast-growing body of texts and prints registered violent episodes of the past and the present. On a daily basis, the public could study in detail the techniques used in battle, to torture martyrs, or to execute criminals. How can we explain this apparent fascination for violence? What effects and affects did these scenes aim to arouse? What relationships were evoked or enforced between the audience and the depicted or enacted scenes? What groups were depicted as violent, and with what specific violent practices and qualities were they associated?

This special issue aims to analyze early modern techniques of representing violence and their transformations over time. We invite proposals from all relevant fields of studies, including, but not limited to, history, theatre studies, art history and visual culture studies, literature, book history, emotion and sensory studies, the history of ideas, and cultural studies. We specifically invite articles that cover the technical and performative aspects of the depiction of violence, whether in print or painting, on stage, in the anatomical theater, the scaffold, or elsewhere. What regimes of representing and staging violence can we trace?

We assume that by zooming in on the concept of violence, we are forced to rethink traditional boundaries, between secular and religious realms, between East and West, between baroque and classical styles, between theatricality and spectacle, and between the public and the private sphere. Violence engages audiences in complex ways: it provides strong embodied experiences, can fascinate or repulse, exploit the curiosity and the desires of the public of consumers, install a breach with daily life, or turn reality into a stage.

Papers could explore how the development of an advanced market for violent imagery could drive spectators into new realms, getting caught in new technical loops by advanced visual means, and rethinking their own position towards the institutions in power. Authors may also exploit the cultural (social/gendered/religious) distinctions enforced by these visual regimes: which groups were depicted as violent, and how were these distinctions made into embodied experiences?

Submitted articles should be around 6,000 – 8,000 words, including all references and bibliographical material, and should be sent to northernrenaissance+iv@gmail.com. If you plan to submit a significantly shorter or longer paper, please contact the editors beforehand. We welcome informal inquiries from authors considering submitting work: these should be addressed to karel.vanhaesebrouck@ulb.ac.be and Cornelis.vanderHaven@UGent.be.

The deadline for submissions is 30 October 2019.

All essays should be double-spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman, and have paragraphs clearly numbered. When using images, pictures, or sound files, it is the responsibility of the author to secure copyright permission from the relevant copyright holder. Each image or sound file should be accompanied by a caption. JNR follows the Style Guide of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). For any further information please refer to http://www.northernrenaissance.org/information

(posted 2 August 2019)
Brexit and Academia
A special issue of Volume 25 of EJES (2020)
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2019

The outcome of the 2016 referendum and the consequences the United Kingdom and Europe are currently facing in its aftermath will have a deep effect on various sectors within academia. It will not only affect research funding, the recruitment of talents and cross-border collaborations between academics on the continent and in the United Kingdom, but also have an impact on student and staff exchanges. Above all, however, Brexit and the debates surrounding the referendum posit new challenges to the role of academics in a renationalising Europe: the Vote Leave campaign was driven by an anti-establishment, anti-supranational, and anti-European rhetoric that did not stop short of academia.

The short- and long-term implications of Brexit on academia and the relationship between British and EU universities are hard to predict, but need to be addressed. While some universities have already reacted to the looming Brexit by founding research networks to support the exchange with researchers from the UK (such as the BritInn-network at the University of Innsbruck) or by establishing strategic partnerships with research institutions in the UK, more initiatives are needed to further support long-term collaboration post-Brexit.

This special issue on Brexit and Academia aims at scrutinizing the consequences of Brexit for the European research landscape, future collaborations between colleagues from Europe and Britain, and academia as a whole from a wide range of different (trans-)disciplinary perspectives.

Papers might address, but are not limited to,

  • analysis of the referendum campaigns, the subsequent Brexit-negotiations, or the future relationship between the UK and the EU;
  • the specific challenges faced by researchers involved in cross-border projects;
  • the impact of Brexit on the arts, humanities, and sciences and possible solutions;
  • the consequences, challenges, and possible solutions for higher education institutions;
  • the impact on different areas within politics, the economy, culture, and society that will have a lasting effect on academia;
  • the role of academia for maintaining collaboration and exchange in post-Brexit Europe
  • possible solutions for universities and research institutions to further support collaboration between researchers from Europe and the UK

Detailed proposals (up to 1,000 words) for full essays (7,500 words), as well as a short biography (max. 100 words) should be sent to sibylle.baumbach@ilw.uni-stuttgart.de and Andreas.Maurer@uibk.ac.at by 31 October 2019.

Main Editors:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sibylle Baumbach, Department of English, University of Stuttgart
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Maurer, Department of Political Science, University of Innsbruck

The EJES website:https://essenglish.org/ejes

(posted 20 May 2019)

The book-to-film debate in the age of visual commodities
Winter 2019 issue of The ESSE Messenger
Deadline for proposals:: 1 November 2019

‘An adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative – a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing.’ (Linda Hutcheon)

‘Did you read the novel?’ – ‘No, but I saw the film.’ This is a dialogue that often takes place today. Besides being common, this short conversation is also very revealing about the relation between the printed text and its visual representation as a film or TV series. And, obviously, it couldn’t be otherwise in a world dominated by TV sets, computers, tablets and smart phones with video facilities incorporated, and by video games, rock videos, home cinema, and many other appliances that reproduce images. More than that, the new commercialism could not but take advantage of such a reality and turn everything into commodities and try to extract profit from them. Novels about Harry Potter or Games of Thrones would probably not have achieved such rocketing success if they hadn’t subsequently had their visual adaptations. J.R.R. Tolkien might still be resting on dusty library shelves surrounded by his Middle-earth if he hadn’t been (re)discovered by film makers and adapted for the silver screen.

Today’s reality is that every day we have to face a flood of adaptations, not only in the domain of cinema and television but also in that of virtual reality, thematic parks, clothes, mugs, pens, and household and furniture objects, an impressing array of accessories, etc. We live in a world where everything is adaptable and, in fact, today we become more and more aware of the practice of watching adaptations. Paraphrasing Linda Hutcheon with her fundamental A Theory of Adaptation (Routledge, 2006) — quoted extensively in this Rationale — we can say that anyone who has ever experienced an adaptation (and who hasn’t?) has his or her own theory of what an adaptation means, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

Watching book adaptations tends to replace the reading of novels, or, on the contrary, to accelerate the selling of the books, when the viewing precedes the reading experience, because the watchers want to compare the adapted text with the film. The responsibility of producing and receiving an adaptation of any kind becomes even more noticeable in the case of novels that are part of the literary canon.

Though films may have their limitations, being unable to dig into the depths of psychology or emotional consciousness, or to render the nuances of voice and tone in spite of good acting on the part of the performers, if understood as cultural translation, the process of adaptation becomes a distinctive, individual work of art. Each adaptation is the product of a cultural context through which various worldviews are expressed, and therefore the adaptation can be contradictory once it has been taken out of its own cultural background. Its existence is not only conditioned by the cultural context that created it but it stays alive within such a context.

What film makers have to decide when they start out on a project of adaptation is not only what to adapt but also how, namely whether their aim is to merely recreate visually the story of the book or to depart from it and offer their own creative vision of that particular story. This double nature of any adaptation is what Linda Hutcheon refers to when she states in A Theory of Adaptation (6) that ‘[a]n adaptation’s double nature does not mean, however, that proximity or fidelity to the adapted text should be the criterion of judgment or the focus of analysis. For a long time, “fidelity criticism,” as it came to be known, was the critical orthodoxy in adaptation studies, especially when dealing with canonical works such as those of Pushkin or Dante. Today that dominance has been challenged from a variety of perspectives […] and with a range of results.

And, […], when a film becomes a financial or critical success, the question of its faithfulness is given hardly any thought.’

But, for Hutcheon, what is of further interest when adapting a novel is not so much the act of deciding between fidelity or creativity as the fact that ‘the morally loaded discourse of fidelity is based on the implied assumption that adapters aim simply to reproduce the adapted text […].

Adaptation is repetition, but repetition without replication.’ (7). The result is what she sees as the urge to consume and erase the memory of the adapted text or to call it into question and problematize it. This is the case when the dictionary meaning of ‘adaptation’ as a process of adjusting, altering or making suitable becomes almost literal.

Starting from this theme and context, the December 2019 issue of the ESSE Messenger invites contributions concerned with what Hutcheon suggests as ‘distinct but interrelated perspectives’

  • of a contemporary process of adaptation:
    1. as a formal entity or product, an announced and extensive transposition of a recognizable particular work;
    2. as a process of creation, an interpretive act of appropriation which involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation;
  • as an extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work, with the stress on its process of reception, when adaptations are perceived as palimpsests which make our memory of other works resonate ty repetition with

Work Cited: Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. Routledge, 2006.

(posted 25 July 2019)

Drama
December 2019 – January 2020 issue of Litinfinite
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2019 (midnight)

Drama can be considered to be a composite whole consisting of theoretical, performative, socio-political, religious, economic, and psychological aspects. Litinfinite invites original and unpublished research papers, interviews, articles and scripts for its December-January issue. Subthemes include, but are not limited to:

  • Drama beyond borders
  • Indian English drama
  • Regional Indian drama
  • Dramatists and their major works (One at a time)
  • Folk drama
  • Song, music, dance, and drama as a performing art
  • Drama and mythology
  • Comparative analysis (drama and theaturgy)
  • Case studies on drama

Submission guideline:

  1. MLA 7th for reference.
  2. Word limit: 1500-2000 words (including citations)
  3. Font: Book Antiqua, 12
  4. Author bio: 50 words maximum
  5. Abstract: 150 words maximum
  6. Keywords: 5 maximum

Note: All papers will undergo a blind peer-review process. Plagiarism of any kind will lead to the disqualification of a paper. Acceptance mail will be sent within 20 days of the last date of submission. Papers will be selected for the print version or online version, or for both. Please check the status of your paper in the acceptance mail after the submission deadline is over.

Along with these, Litinfinite is accepting short stories, poems, book reviews and essays in English and Bengali for its regular section.

Section:
Short stories: English or Bengali (1500 words maximum)
Poems: English or Bengali (Maximum 2)
Book review: 700-800 words, with book details including cover page, ISBN number, price, author name, publisher name and year of publication.
Essays: 1000 words maximum.

Litinfinite does not promote any political party, organization, and religious groups. Please do not send us writings that are influenced by a strong political, religious or communal bias.

We do not provide complimentary copies, and encourage readers to buy books although the online version is completely free and open-access.

(posted 24 October 2019)

Just art. Documentary poetics and justice
A special issue of the journal Synthesis
Deadline: 1 December 2019

Special Issue Editor: Naomi Toth (13. 2020)

The unprecedented scale of violence unleashed during World War I inaugurated a new relationship to the document amongst writers and artists in Europe and North America. Whereas in 19thcentury works, documents were predominantly treated as source material to be transformed into works of art or fiction, in the aftermath of the 1914-1918 conflict, four new trends took centre-stage. Firstly, testimony comes into its own as a genre, defining itself against both fiction and ego-narratives, claiming documentary status in order to shore up its legitimacy under the pressure of negationist discourse on the one hand and in the context of an increasingly positivist historiography on the other. The genre would only gain in importance after World War II and the Shoah, with the work of Primo Levi or Charlotte Delbo. Secondly, avant-gardes in the literary, performing and visual arts engaged in the appropriation and repurposing of documents produced by the press, state bureaucracies and legislatures. In addition to surrealist and Dada works, such practices gave rise to experimental works such as Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony. Documents enter these projects in unmodified or minimally modified form, giving rise to works which foreclose arts’ tendency towards idealisation and elevation above concrete and circumscribed experience. At the same time, building upon the tremendous expansion of the role of the press in the 19thcentury and reinforced by the crisis of the Great Depression, the model of the reporter as producer of documentary narrative and evidence sees the flourishing of photojournalist publications and the rise of the non-fiction novel, which would come into its own with John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Finally, in theatre, documentary and verbatim practices emerge with works such as Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind in the interwar years and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation. Such shifts in the relationship to the document cannot be restricted to the industrialised West and its attempts to come to terms with historical and socio-political crises: colonial, post- and de-colonial contexts as well as reactions against authoritarian regimes and the exercise of power deemed illegitimate have seen similar practices flourish across the globe in the course of the 20thcentury.

In both their form and content, these different currents of documentary aesthetics all accord a privileged place to the judicial system, interacting with its regime of proof, the frameworks of the enquiry and the trial, and its mission to administer justice. Historically, the works of Reznikoff, Capote and Weiss are perhaps the most emblematic; today, artists, writers and theatre practitioners such as Luis Camnitzer, France Leibovici and Julien Serroussi, Vanessa Place, Anna Deavere Smith, or Milo Rau continue to produce documentary works in close contact with the judicial system. However, though such works structurally undermine claims to aesthetic autonomy and voluntarily confine themselves to the historical particular, they circulate in extra-judicial spheres and invite forms of judgement that differ from those administrated by the legal system. What motivates this recourse to art, and what effects might this aesthetic supplement seek to engender? Do such works act to shore up the judicial system in place? Do they seek rather to complement it or palliate its shortcomings? Or do they sometimes turn the tables and put the law itself on trial? To what ends? What, if any, alternative conceptions of the just do they generate? And what, if any, changes do such works aspire to effect on the course of the history they engage with?

Exploring the role documentary poetry, literature, theatre and art play in legitimating or questioning legal systems over the past century and in contemporary contexts, this issue of Synthesis invites submissions that reopen the question of literature and art’s critical potential as a laboratory for extra-legal conceptions of justice.

Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to Naomi Toth atntoth@parisnanterre.fr andsynthesisjournal2008@gmail.com by1 December 2019.

Notification of acceptance will be delivered by 10 January 2020.

Accepted articlesare tobe submitted by 30 May 2020.

Final articles should be 6,000-8,000 words long and include an abstract of no more than 300 words.

All enquiries regarding this issue should be sent to the guest editor, Naomi Toth, at ntoth@parisnanterre.fr.

(posted 16 Septembe 2019)

Feminist Responses to Populist Politics
An issue of Volume 25 of EJES (2021)
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2019

Guest editors: Mónica Cano Abadía (University of Graz), Sanja Bojanić (University of Rijeka), Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade)

‘Populism’ is as slippery a term as the political soil it rhizomes in. During the last decade, it has been tested in political reality on numerous occasions and with varying outcomes. The distinction between right and left populisms has also become a staple in everyday academic, policy, and civil society discourses. On the left or the right, populisms often act as a bogeyman, as a threat to politics as usual, and as a sure sign that the world is, yet again, out of joint.

But are these misgivings of any substance? Perhaps the world is actually disjointed. It may be that populisms, left or right, fill in the cracks and fissures that have been lain open for only a short period of time, one that coincides with decades of sustained feminist efforts to change the world for the better. Despite the gains, much of what has been won is now being brought to a halt – and it seems that populisms play their share in this stoppage. It is therefore vital to ask what feminist responses to populisms could be. Can the answer to this question be reduced to the issue of political allegiance, or is it a matter of needing to adjust to new political realities? Would this imply then embracing these realities as well? What is the role that populisms now play in shaping the relationship between radical and mainstream feminisms? If we claim that feminism has always been populist to a certain extent, then we have to have a clear notion of the populus at its core. Alternatively, we might categorically posit that feminist populism is a contradiction in terms and therefore also reject the possibility of left populist feminisms.

This special issue addresses feminist visions of politics as a different answer to populisms’ challenges. We wish to mark ambivalences and name conceptual reasons for why it is insufficiently daring or even reactionary to place feminist emancipatory strategies close to politically divisive contemporary tendencies. Instead, we call for a return to notions of feminist resistance and resilience – notions that put an emphasis on agency, change, and hope in the face of the grave challenges we are faced with around the world. The following topics may be addressed:

What does ‘feminist populism’ refer to?

To what does feminist resistance to populism refer?

How does feminist resilience function?

What are the consequences, challenges and possible solutions that feminist resilience can bring about in civil society and institutions?

Detailed proposals (up to 800 words) for full essays (7,500 words), as well as a short biography (max. 100 words) should be sent to all of the editors by 31 December 2019: Mónica Cano Abadía (monica.cano-abadia@uni-graz.at), Sanja Bojanić (sanja.bojanic@uniri.hr), Adriana Zaharijević (zaharijevic@instifdt.bg.ac.rs)

The EJES website: https://essenglish.org/ejes

(posted 20 May 2019)

Disseminating Knowledge: The Effects of Digitalized Academic Discourse on Language, Genre and Identity
An issue of Volume 25 of EJES (2021)
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2019

Guest editors: Rosa Lorés Sanz (Universidad de Zaragoza), Giuliana Diani (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)

Recent decades have seen a substantial evolution in discursive practices, particularly those associated with institutions, the sciences and the economy. This state of affairs has been enhanced by the appearance of digital platforms, which have made of the web a privileged access platform both for knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination in an increasingly globalized society. This scenario is also characterized by the use of English as the international language of communication, most users being non-native speakers of the language. Thus, the spread of electronic platforms as well as the use of English as a vehicle of international communication have led to the emergence of new discursive practices or the adaptation of existing ones to the digital mode.

Digital affordances, and the immediacy, visibility, and connectedness they bring along, have changed the way we communicate and project our identities. They have also changed the way we approach texts as objects of analysis. This special issue aims to become a forum for some of the latest contributions to this topic. Proposals from different analytical approaches are welcome. These approaches might include computer-mediated discourse analysis, pragmatics, intercultural rhetoric, genre-based analysis, corpus studies or multimodality. The following topics may be addressed:

Are digital genres in academic settings modelled on traditional genres in paper format? Or, rather, is the digital mode generating new genres? What are their rhetorical and discursive features?

How is identity constructed and represented in digital academic discourse?

In which ways has the use of English as a Lingua Franca in the academic world been influenced by the use of digital platforms? To what extent do culture and discipline affect the shaping of academic web-mediated discourse?

How do verbal and visual modes interact in academic digital contexts? Which new methods of approaching discourse are needed to understand web-mediated texts?

Detailed proposals (up to 800 words) for full essays (7,500 words), as well as all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to both editors by 31 December 2019: Rosa Lorés-Sanz (rlores@unizar.es) and Giuliana Diani (giuliana.diani@unimore.it).

(posted 20 May 2019)

Formal Intersections between Narrative Fiction and Other Media
A special issue of Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature, Vol. 44, no. 2 (2020)
Deadline for contributions: 31 December 2019

A special issue guest edited by Grzegorz Maziarczyk and Wojciech Drąg

The new millennium has seen a resurgence of literary narratives which combine a variety of semiotic modes, such as “image, writing, layout, gesture, speech, moving image, soundtrack and 3D objects” (Kress, Multimodality 79). Some of them situate themselves in the tradition of postmodernist experimentation (represented by such authors as B.S. Johnson, William H. Gass and Raymond Federman), while others aspire to break out of the avant-garde niche and reach a wider audience. As demonstrated by the examples of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, multimodal novels are capable of gaining the status of bestsellers. They have succeeded in appealing to a broader audience because most readers are used to the multimedia environment of print, film, computer etc. By drawing on readers’ experiences with other media, contemporary fiction is becoming increasingly hybrid. It has productively engaged with the computer (digital/electronic literature), videogames (interactive fiction), touchscreen devices (Reif Larsen’s Entrances and Exits), photography (works by W.G. Sebald and Steve Tomasula), painting (Tom Phillips’s A Humument) and sculpture (Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes). A synthesis of text, image, sound and video, Tomasula’s TOC: A New-Media Novel may be a harbinger of how fiction will evolve in the decades to come.

We invite original articles examining various aspects of the formal interaction between narrative fiction and one or several other media, including collage/montage, illustrated and tactile works, altered books, card-shuffle novels, electronic fiction, fragmentary writing and other kinds of formal experimentation. We also welcome articles that interrogate the ways in which literary devices and conventions are incorporated/transformed/subverted in other media. We are particularly interested in analyses of Anglophone works published in the second half of the twentieth century and post-2000. The articles should be 25-30,000 signs (with spaces) in length and should follow the house style of Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature as set out in the guidelines for the authors (https://journals.umcs.pl/lsmll/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).

Contributors are requested to submit their works by email to Grzegorz Maziarczyk (grzegorz.maziarczyk@kul.lublin.pl) and Wojciech Drąg (wojciech.drag@uwr.edu.pl) by 31 December 2019.

(posted 26 July 2019)