Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in July 2017

11th International Conference of The Society for Emblem Studies
Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France, 3 – 7 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 September 2016

Society’s website : http://www.emblemstudies.org

The Eleventh International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies will take place in Nancy (France) from Monday 3 July to Friday 7 July, 2017. The conference will devote itself to the entire spectrum of emblem studies. Papers on all aspects of emblematics are welcome. Please submit proposals before 1 September 2016.
The conference will focus on four main directions which continue those pursued at preceding conferences: the history of printed books; theoretical and critical approaches; the “adaptable” emblem; the idiosyncrasy of the emblem.
Eight broadly different themes are proposed :

1. Making an emblem book.
This theme should focus on the various agents in the conception and production of emblem books (publishers, printers, patrons, academies, engravers, draftsmen, copperplate printers, authors, commentators, translators, proofreaders…), as well as on the steps and procedures of its creation (edition and re-edition, re-use, recurrence, plagiarism, counterfeits ; cooperation, competition…) until its sale.

2. Reading and collecting.
Further inquiry into the history of emblem books is prompted by studies focussing on their readers (inventories, foreclosures, ownership marks…), the rare books market, the liber amicorum, satire and censorship, collectors, the place of emblem books in collections and libraries, and connoisseurhip of emblems. Papers about important collectors in the 19th and 20th centuries, the organization and cataloguing of their collections, and the scholarship and literature devoted to them would be particularly welcome.

3. Methodology and historiography.
This theme includes the main theoretical issues in the ancient and recent development of emblem studies; the need for interdisciplinary approaches; problems of periodization; working practices and methods; the peculiar ethos of emblem studies; access to digitized documentation, and its effects on scientific language and production.
Meanwhile, any paper about the “pioneers” of emblem studies, such as Mario Praz or Karl-Ludwig Selig, Karl Josef Höltgen (and others such as Daniel Russell, Peter M. Daly), about the history of great thesauri (Henkel & Schöne) and databases or websites would be welcome.

4. The symbolic process.
The sessions in this part of the program might include discussion of theorists and treatises concerning the impresa and the emblem, including emblem book Prefaces, from the 16th to the 18th century.
They might also include discussion of the rules of the emblem as a defined genre, its relation with ars memorativa, ars meditandi, pedagogy and lusus, the function and role of enigma, the place of prosody or translation and polyglot texts.
Special attention might be given to the links between emblem and allegory.
This theme also includes research into the relationship between the semiotics of emblematics and comics, subtitling, or any other form of presenting inscriptions in art combining word and image.
The emblematic process in contemporary art also deserves special attention.

5. Emblem books, material culture, history of art.
This theme (cross-cutting with theme 2) aims to increase our understanding of the emblem book as an artefact, whether as an aesthetic object or more rhetorically as “une machine à communiquer”.
The focus may be on the shaping of text, page layout, typography, calligraphy; technical and artistic aspects of the woodcuts or engravings; printer’s marks; manuscript additions; bindings. Special attention might also be given to the role of ornament and decorative frames in the emblematic process.

6. Adapted and diffracted emblems.
Research related to applications of emblem to architectural spaces, furniture and objects has grown significantly in recent years; this rubric constitutes one thematic highlight of the call for papers.
The “adaptation” of emblematics might be concentrated in two areas: festivals and objects.
This section should therefore investigate the various uses of device, emblem and any symbolic combined form (including heraldry) in theater and festivals (entries, tournaments, masques…) ; the way they contribute to staging and meaning ; their application on medals and tokens ; portraits ; epigraphy ; Haussprüche ; sgraffito ; painted decorations and programs. As far as objects are concerned special attention might be devoted to household items (furniture, table and kitchenware, embroideries, textiles, costume, iron firebacks, sundials, domestic utensils) as well as to advertising, popular and educational imagery, posters and labels. Unexpected, unintentional uses or misappropriations of emblems might also be identified.

7. Emblems, curiosities, mirabilia
This theme intends to explore the relationships between emblematics and encyclopedic collections, cabinets of scientific and wondrous curiosity; taxonomy; categories of objects belonging to archaelogy, natural history, ethnography, historical and religious relics; the role of emblem in thinking, expressing and dramatizing the mundus symbolicus as a microcosm.
The representation of emblems and emblem-books in paintings, especially still-lifes, or any pictorial record of emblematics, constitutes a significant part of this topic.
A special highlight on technical and scientific innovation (engines, inventions) in emblems would be appreciated.

8. National idiosyncrasy of the emblem?
The theoretical and historical issues about the emblem as indicative of a peculiar mentalité symbolique (Daniel Russell) have proved very fertile. The Conference would like to verify the validity of such hypothesis firstly by inviting Shakespeare and Cervantes scholars to discuss the emblematical productions of these writers and secondly by focusing mainly (though not exclusively) on three cultural contexts and their protagonists: Italy, Central Europe, Lorraine and Grand Est France.

Papers on all aspects of your research into emblematics, in addition to these topics, are welcome.
Papers can be given in French, English, German, Spanish, or Italian. Please let us know if you would like to moderate a section.
Please submit proposals for a twenty-minute presentation before 1 September 2016 to both:

(posted 3 May 2016)


Establishing the Predominant Position of ESP within Adult ELT: 3rd International ESP Conference and Summer School
University of Niš, Serbia, 3-7 July 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 15 May 2017

Keynote Speaker & Director of Summer School: John I. Liontas, Ph.D.

Making a Mountain Out of ESP: Unearthing Idiomaticity Buried Beneath the SurfaceIn keeping with the conference’s theme, Establishing the Predominant Position of ESP within Adult ELT, this keynote investigates the many theoretical and practical ways the predominant position of ESP may be established within adult ELT. In so doing, the keynote shall purposefully “make a mountain out of ESP” by unearthing important matters of idiomaticity believed to be buried just beneath the surface of ESP. Accompanied by an amazing cast of mind-blowing images worthy of a thousand words each, this keynote aims to deliver a breathtaking landscape of ideas and pedagogical constructs in order to establish the predominant position of ESP within adult ELT. Most importantly, this keynote seeks to explore the teacher-training practices affecting the attainment of idiomaticity in English as a second or foreign language. Said practices are anchored in a pragmatic methodology of idiomaticity teaching that takes into account learners’ interests and active involvement. It will be argued that such focus shall be particularly useful for the purposes of diagnosis and achievement, and the ESP/ELT research to date is a promising start to further work on idiomaticity. Recommendations for idiomaticity training-and-teaching as well as time-tested practices for further theorizing and research will be employed in an unapologetic fashion to engender a great many “aha!” experiences. It is hoped that the practices and recommendations explored here will spur on more research in this vein during this year’s ESP conference and summer school and long after we succeed making a mountain out of ESP. After all, navigating the many unexplored tunnels beneath the ESP surface may yet become your most engaging reflection worth writing home about again and again!

Summer School and Teacher Training: 4-7 July 2017

John I. Liontas, Ph.D., will be leading the summer school and conducting teacher training for 4 days

If you dare to be different and are not afraid of taking risks, then this summer school is for YOU! From A to Z and every other letter in between, this quick-paced, hands on teacher-training summer school reveals the secrets of the ELT profession in becoming a successful ESP professional. Join internationally acclaimed thought leader, author, and practitioner in the fields of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and ESL/EFL as he unpacks in session after session the 10 principles of professional success. Understand what it means to be the ESP professional you always wanted to be. Learn the do’s and don’ts of how to write for academic audiences worldwide. Share your Cover Letter and CV and see it transformed before your very own eyes. Come in and watch yourself and others begin to “spill the beans” about the ESP profession. Contemplate the possibilities for yourself and your students. And who knows? It may not be just a field of dreams on a summer night after all.

PS: Bring your laptop/iPad, Cover Letter, and CV and let’s learn how to put your best foot forward regardless of personal preferences or ideal multimodal learning modes. Techniques for developing successful professional competencies are highlighted throughout and purposefully applied in collaborative pair-group activities. Upon completion, each participant receives a 3rd International ESP Conference and Summer School Certificate of Completion.

We would like to invite colleagues who want to improve and/or exchange teaching ideas, whether intending to present or not.

Presentation formats can be submitted as teacher training, a conference paper or a workshop.

Submissions should be concise summaries of the content of the proposed presentation and include the author’s/authors’ name(s), affiliation, contact details and a short bio note. The length of submissions is expected to be the following: for teacher training up to 1200 words, conference papers up to 800 word, and workshops up to 1000 words. All proposals will be double-blind peer reviewed.
You may send your papers to esp@junis.ni.ac.rs by 15 May 2017 (new extended deadline).
Acceptance of papers will be announced on 25 May 2017.

Publications: All accepted papers will be published as thematic proceedings in the Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, indexed in Thomson Reuters Emerging Citation Index and with DOI numbers http://espeap.junis.ni.ac.rs/. After the conference, a selection of the best papers will be included in two monograph publications, one with Cambridge Scholars Publishing and the other with Vernon Press.

Venue
The venue for ESP summer school is the rectorate building of the University of Niš, located on the right bank of the Nišava, in the city centre.

Getting to Niš:
Niš airport Constantine the Great operates low cost flights to/from Europe.
Niš is 252 km from Belgrade Nikola Tesla International Airport. From the airport you can take a bus transfer (€3) or a taxi (€20) to the main bus station. Buses depart almost every half an hour to Niš (€12). Taxi city ride in Niš is about €3.
Accommodation:

Accommodation
There are lots of excellent budget hotels offering a five night stay for even about €150. If you book your accommodation in the city centre you will be within a walking distance to the venue. Hotel prices in the city centre (3*/4*) start at €35.

Before the event, we will send out most detailed directions to our participants, as well as a phone number for assistance at any time.

(posted 16 January 2017, updated 6 April 2017))


London Calling: Lawrence and the Metropolis. The 14th International D.H. Lawrence Conference
London, UK, 3-8 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2016

London played a crucial role in Lawrence’s early life: he taught here, got his first literary breaks here, and even got married here in 1914. It was in London that he met the friends and patrons who launched his career and facilitated his travels, and whenever he and Frieda returned to England, it was to London that they came first. Lawrence visited London around fifty times – for the first time in October 1908 for his interview for a teaching position in Croydon, and for the last time in September 1926. Over those eighteen years he visited or lived in London in every single year, apart from during his travels in 1920-22.

He saw the city grow from seven to eight million people, and become the metropolis we know today, with its buses, trams, private cars, bridges, Underground stations, West End theatres, and electric street lights. He knew London as it was approaching the historical peak population; this was followed by decline, and which has only just (in 2015) been exceeded.

He knew the London of the Edwardian period, of the War, and of the jazz age. He knew middle-class outer-suburban Croydon, but also some of London’s most fashionable districts, where his friends lived: Hampstead (Edward Garnett, Dollie Radford and Catherine Carswell), St. John’s Wood (Koteliansky), Mecklenburgh Square (H.D. and Richard Aldington), and Bedford Square (Lady Ottoline Morrell).

London was the legal, as well as the literary, artistic and theatrical, centre of England. In 1913 Frieda’s divorce hearing was heard there; in 1915 Lawrence was examined for bankruptcy at its High Court; in the same year The Rainbow was tried at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court; in 1927 David was produced at the Regent Theatre; in 1928 Catherine Carswell oversaw the typing of part of Lady Chatterley’s Lover there; in 1928 Lawrence explained ‘Why I Don’t Like Living in London’ in The Evening News; and in 1929 his paintings were exhibited at the Warren Street gallery and impounded.

Given his hatred of London’s intellectualism and authoritarianism, and his objections to metropolises in general, it is not surprising that much of what Lawrence writes about London is negative. But, as he admitted in 1928, ‘It used not to be so. Twenty years ago, London was to me thrilling, thrilling, thrilling, the vast and throbbing heart of all adventure.’

For such a nodal city – the world’s biggest city, the heart of the world’s biggest empire, and a centre of international modernism – it has a peripheral place in his work and in work about him. But Lawrence could not have become the person and writer he did without having known his native capital city.

The 14th International D. H. Lawrence conference will be held in London at the College of the Humanities, Bedford Square, and nearby venues. It is authorized by the Coordinating Committee for International Lawrence Conferences (CCILC) and organized in collaboration with the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America and the D. H. Lawrence Society (UK).

The conference welcomes papers on topics including but not limited to:

  • Lawrence’s experiences of, and/or reactions to, London and its various social groups and geographical districts
  • Lawrence’s relationships with individual Londoners
  • Lawrence’s interactions with London-based journals and publishers
  • The suppression of The Rainbow
  • The premiere of David in London
  • Lawrence’s exhibition of paintings at the Warren Street Gallery
  • Works written by Lawrence while he was resident in London
  • Lawrence’s responses to and thoughts about cities in general

Papers are welcome from Lawrence scholars, graduate students, and the public.
Papers should last no longer than 20 minutes, and will be followed by 10 minutes of questions. They will be presented in a panel together with two other papers.
If you would like to contribute, please send an abstract of up to 500 words to the Executive Director, Dr. Catherine Brown: catherinelawrencelondon@gmail.com by midnight on 15th September 2016 (unless you are a graduate student who wishes to apply for a Graduate Fellowship, in which case please follow the alternative procedure described below). Submissions will be assessed by the Academic Program Committee detailed below, and responses will be issued by 31st October 2016.

The abstract should include the following information as part of the same file (in either MS Word or pdf format):

  • Your name, postal address, telephone number, and email address
  • The name of the institution (if applicable) at which you are registered
  • Your CV (1 page condensed version)
  • Please indicate if you need OHP or other such media equipment for your presentation.

The Conference Fee is expected to be approximately £280-320 for the week.
The Conference website may be found here: http://dhlawrencesociety.com/home/14th- international-d-h-lawrence-conference-london/

Graduate Fellowships
Six Graduate Fellowships are available for Graduate Fellows.
A Graduate Fellowship covers fees, and efforts will be made to make cheap accommodation available.
Graduate Fellows will be required to help with registration and other duties during the Conference.
If you would like to apply for one of these, please download the Graduate Fellowship Application form.
This competition will be assessed by the Graduate Fellowships Committee chaired by Dr. Andrew Harrison. Submissions are to be sent to lawrencegraduatefellowship@aol.com by 15th September 2016.

(posted 21 March 2016)


5th Biennial Conference on the Diachrony of English (CDBA-5)
Université François Rabelais, Tours, France, 4-6 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2016

CBDA-5 will take place in Tours from July 4th to July 6th 2017, hosted by the Université François Rabelais and organised in collaboration with the Université de Picardie Jules Verne(Amiens) and the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (Reims). The objective of the conference is to provide linguists working on the history of English, in France and abroad, with an opportunity to present their work and a forum within which to discuss current issues in English diachronic linguistics. Further information will shortly be made available on the meeting website: http://www.cbdaconference.org/

This edition of the Conference will be dedicated to the memory of Professor Xavier Dekeyser of the University of Leuven, an active supporter of CBDA since its inception in 2008, and who sadly passed away on May 23rd, 2016.

Session Papers
We invite contributors to submit session papers on all topics concerned with change and variation in the history of English (syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, morphology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language contact, lexicology, etc.), on all periods in the history of English, and even on other languages directly relevant to the study of English diachrony. Full papers will be allotted 30 minutes, including 10 minutes for discussion. If you would like to present a paper, please send an abstract (approximately 300 – 400 words), in DOC or PDF format, to both Fabienne Toupin (fabienne.toupin@univ-tours.fr[1]) and Brian Lowrey (brian.lowrey@u-picardie.fr[1]). Abstracts should reach us no later than February 28th, 2017. All submissions will be reviewed anonymously by two referees. We would therefore ask you to leave your abstract anonymous, but to cite your name and affiliation as well as the title of your paper in the e-mail.

Workshops
We also welcome workshop proposals. If you would like to organise a workshop on a specific theme, please send details of your proposal (topic, provisional list of speakers, etc.) to both Fabienne Toupin (fabienne.toupin@univ-tours.fr[1]) and Brian Lowrey (brian.lowrey@u-picardie.fr[1]) by January 31, 2017 at the latest. Workshops, ideally, should contain at least 4 or 5 slots, and need to be compatible with the main conference schedule. The general format (30 minute presentations, allowing 10 minutes for discussion) should therefore be adopted.

Plenary speaker
Our invited speaker at this year’s conference will be Marion Elenbass, of the University of Leiden.

Conference Fee
The conference fee is 40 euros (20 euros for students), and includes participation in all sessions of the conference, the conference package, and light refreshments. All participants, however, are expected to pay their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Website
For further information, please go to the conference website at:
http://www.cbdaconference.org

(posted 22 November 2016


Vulnerabilities
The Silesian Museum, Katowice, Poland, 6-8 July, 2017
Deadline for proposals: 19 February 2017

The trouble with vulnerability is its negativity. Were we to draw on etymology, we’d have to say vulnerability signals lack, deficiency, disability, impairment, mutilation and disfigurement, to name only some of its effects. Along these lines, vulnerability is a wound(ing) that makes the bodies of vulnerability susceptible to (external) intervention or exploitation. While wounding implies at least one more agent apart from the body that sustains it, vulnerability is often taken to reside within this body itself, to constitute its natural disposition, its inherent fault. This often masks the processes, practices and discourses that make bodies (animate and inanimate) and spaces vulnerable. The production of vulnerability is especially pernicious as it seems to partake of the inertia that vulnerability assumes, of the quiet and desired passivity that seems to define the vulnerable. The grammar of vulnerability seems always to render the bearers and wearers of the wounds passive receivers of external harm and injury. It also casts the vulnerable as overpowered because it articulates a ceding to an (external) power to which one (one’s body) yields, a ceding to the workings of the injurious gestures that one is unable to fend off and control. Simultaneously, it assumes beings and spaces able to withstand the pitfalls and identities of the vulnerable: to be vulnerable is already to be or to get attached to particular groups and locations (some are more vulnerable to vulnerability than others) to the extent that some of those (beings and spaces) deemed vulnerable come to be transfigured into the bodies of vulnerability.

And yet, vulnerability can also, and in spite of its negativity, lend itself to other readings and yield other effects, becoming a promising space for re-thinking what togetherness is/might be nowadays. Crudely speaking, if we are vulnerable to a threat as political and cultural subjects, we are ultimately vulnerable to each other as in-dividual and insufficient beings, which makes vulnerability a rather paradoxical metaphor of human and animal existence: as vulnerable as we all are, we somehow have an urge to appease our defect in the very name of vulnerability. May this ontological detour overcome our in-dividualised world(s) and the radical solitude we feel in? Concomitant with insufficiency and injurious conditions but still not devoid of its affirmative potential and, as a result, intertwined with openness as the condition of the relational character of every single being, vulnerability may encourage us to discuss the very character of the ties of friendship, love and community as possible ways of taking on our vulnerability in political, social and private contexts.

The disparate meanings and possible readings of vulnerability open up a richly critical horizon in which to ask about the collective and individual bodies of vulnerability and the collective and individual lives it, variously, fosters, mars, brings into being or organizes into communities of love and/or friendship. The deliberately plural form of the usually singular “vulnerability” is meant to summon up the various inflections of what is meant by the concept, its possible deployments and effects, and its political and ethical potential in the production of narratives and lives of togetherness.

The conference aims to pose the following questions:

  • Can vulnerability be theorized/imagined in ways that do not always and necessarily turn it into a call for intervention and protection(ism)?
  • Can vulnerability be salvaged from its biopolitical mantle and transcend the negative that defines it?
  • Can vulnerability work to script other kinds of narrative that subvert or sidestep the victim/saviour scenarios?
  • Can vulnerability be seen as a site of action?
  • Can vulnerability be mobilized to counter our political (and poetic) attachments to the catastrophic?
  • Can vulnerability be(come) a site for the creation and cultivation of solidarity?
  • Can vulnerability be salvaged from neoliberal economies, their pecuniary deployments and their practices of purveyance?
  • Can vulnerability be a space of affirmation?
  • Can vulnerability overcome solitude as a salient though latent feature of today’s individualised world?
  • Can vulnerability be a scene of new forms of community as being together or being with?
  • Can vulnerability be seen as an inexorable condition of human and animal existence, a condition which makes us love and/or befriend.
  • Can vulnerability inform us about non-human forms of life?
  • Finally, can vulnerability be(come) invulnerable?

We welcome papers that engage, in critical and novel ways, with any of the above questions. Please send 300-word proposals for 20-minute papers or thematically linked panels and a short bio to vulnerabilities2017@gmail.com by 19 February, 2017. Accepted speakers will be notified by 21 February, 2017.

The conference is co-organized by the Institute of Romance Languages and Translations Studies (University of Silesia, Katowice) and the Silesian Museum (Katowice).

(posted 1 February 2017)


Crisis and Poetry: Panel Proposal ACLA 2017
Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands. 6-9 July 2017
Deadline for abstracts: 23 September 2016

The financial crisis of 2008 and the Greek crisis have become central to the thematic and formal concerns of radical poetry in recent years. The proposed panel seeks papers that explore this relationship in its totality as a cultural phenomenon and its specificity through particular literary texts. The notion of community, the representation of crowds, the mimesis of protest, ideations of alternatives and tirades against economic and social oppression are some of the problems invoked in the poetry of the financial crisis. There is also a need to investigate the formal innovations that underlie these textual artefacts. Documentary poetics, mixed-medium, the block form and the long poem are some of the generic categories that require renewed attention in the light of the various historical and cultural processes that affect contemporary poetics.

Please send a paper proposal of 300 words and a short bio through the ACLA’s online portal http://www.acla.org/node/add/paper before September 23, 2017.

Any questions may be emailed to the panel organizer: Arul Benito Gerard (benitoarul@gmail.com).

Please note that the proposed panel is subject to approval/selection by the screening committee of ACLA 2017.

(posted 6 September 2016)


The transnational markets of literary and artistic nationalisms in the long 19th century. Panel Proposal ACLA 2017
Utrecht, Netherlands, 6-9 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 23 September 2016

Organizer: Levente T. Szabó (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania)
tszabo.levente@ubbcluj.ro, tszabolevente@gmail.com

Modern literary and artistic nationalism was probably one of the best-selling ideas of the long nineteenth century and its transnational spread was intimately intertwined with the rise of modern market culture. In spite of the popular belief, the rise and spread of literary nationalism was one of the most transnational phenomena of the period, one of the most enthralling and most often consumed symbolic good on the global market of ideas. The languages of nationalism and the languages of money created a highly succesful and highly contested global literary framework that is partly accountable for the modernization of the literary field, the emergence of a series of literary patterns and memorable fictional accounts.

This seminar is devoted to the multifold aspects of this entangled relationship of literature, nationalism and market culture in the long nineteenth century. We are open to a wide interpretation of this relationship from case studies to methodological interventions that may include:

  • the national as a modern literary transnational brand, the literary and artistic national as a „brand loyalty”
  • forms of economic nationalisms in the literary field
  • national authors as transnational literary celebrities
  • authors and figures of literary fiction as symbolic national commodities
  • the emerging markets of modern national classics
  • national literature as national currency, vindicative strategies
  • the transnational creation, reception and impact of the national prizes
  • the role of the states in intervening and creating literary and artistic markets
  • the transnational success of ”banal” (Michael Billig) literary nationalisms
  • contested ethnic and national markets of the „national authors”
  • overlapping and conflicting national markets of the historical novel
  • the role (”market”) of speculation in the spread of literary nationalisms
  • the nationalization of copyright / droit d’auteur, overlapping and conflicting national legislations of copyright, transnational conflict over copyright
  • financial panics and bubbles in transnational forms of literary nationalism

We invite contributions that are able to foreground how literary capitalism and literary nationalism went hand in hand in shaping one of the most powerful and global modernization process in the global literary field.

Formal submissions of paper proposals must be made to the ACLA website between September 1 and September 23, 2016. You will find the ACLA annual conference website at http://www.acla.org/annual-meeting

Please note: the posting of this call for papers on the ACLA website does not guarantee acceptance of the seminar by the conference organizers. The ACLA Program Committee will review all seminar proposals and notify seminar organizers of acceptance or rejection on or around December 1, 2016.

Should you need any further information regarding this seminar, please e-mail Levente T. Szabó at tszabo.levente@ubbcluj.ro

(posted 14 September 2016)


Islands on Sale: New Zealand  and Pacific Arts in the Global Marketplace
Regent’s University, London, UK
NEW DATES: 30 June-1 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2017

Cohosted by the University of Northampton in association with the New Zealand Studies Network

This conference will be devoted to the discussion of recent developments affecting the production and reception of New Zealand and Pacific literary, visual and performance arts in a global context. It will focus on a range of issues related to the creation, reception, study, translation and marketing of these forms of expression. Whereas on the one hand New Zealand and Pacific arts are being created and circulated as deriving from culturally specific locations, they have also been received, translated, taught and marketed as part of the more broadly defined category of ‘world’ culture. In considering the position of these works in the global cultural marketplace, we invite contributors to reflect on the extent to which national and regional labels (essential to the definition and development of New Zealand and Pacific cultural expression in the postcolonial period) are being reformulated and reconfigured to accommodate the effects of diaspora, globalization and transnationalism on literary, visual and performance arts, or alternatively in order to resist the commodifying impositions of the global marketplace.

We particularly welcome submissions that address one or more of the following questions.

  • How are New Zealand/Pacific authors, artists and playwrights negotiating their position in the global sphere by e.g. capturing new readers, viewers/ audiences and/or reconfiguring familiar genres in line with the global expectations?
  • How have global concerns affecting the Pacific (such as nuclear testing, global warming, environmental changes) been reflected in the arts of the region and their international circulation?
  • How do NZ and Pacific arts feature in university courses or academic events and what specific academic approaches contribute to institutionalize certain views of these arts and the region?
  • Is there a canon of translated New Zealand/Pacific texts? What are the most significant strategies employed in the linguistic or cultural translation of these texts?
  • What are the effects of new technologies and social media in the dissemination and publicizing of NZ/Pacific arts in the cyberspace?
  • How have prominent films and television series (like Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Piano, Whale Rider, The Tribe and Top of the Lake, etc.) influenced the internationalization and branding of New Zealand and Pacific arts?
  • What has been the impact on the dissemination and marketing of specific works and artists by signal events (such as NZ as ‘guest of honour’ at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair), prestigious awards (such as Keri Hulme’s or Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prizes) or the prominent feting of performers (such as Lemi Ponifasio’s MAU) at International arts festivals?
  • What effects have the researching, publicizing and re-branding of nationally renowned authors (such as Janet Frame and Witi Ihimaera) and performers (such as Cliff Curtis & Lorde) and sports teams (namely the All Blacks) had on the NZ’s cultural body in its relation to the global marketplace? What tensions do they point to?
  • How do literary and arts markets sanction forms of cultural appropriation, including the black American influence on NZ/Pacific aesthetics?
  • How are NZ/Pacific-oriented literary and arts markets aided by the fact that the regions’ indigenous communities are Anglophone?
  • What processes contribute to the wide mobility of NZ/Pacific visual art so that commissioned works come to rest in European museums in corporate headquarters?

Contributors may address the topic through different critical perspectives and disciplines (world literature studies, performance studies, art history, postcolonial studies, translation studies, reception studies, book history, sociology of literature, cultural studies, etc). Contributors may also choose to participate in the performance strand of the conference that will interconnect papers, film screenings and live arts.

Please submit your 200-word abstracts for a twenty-minute paper to the conference organizers:

Please submit your proposals for the performance strand to:

The deadline for all submissions is 28 February, 2017.

There will be an edited collection of essays deriving from the conference.

(posted 29 September 2016, updated 23 November 2016)


Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe
University of Tampere, Finland, 6-8 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 24 February 2017

The scientific committee of the 6th Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe network conference has now accepted over 30 sessions that explore the multidisciplinary nature of the scholarship and create dialogue between academics, activists and artists from around the world. Titles and descriptions of the accepted sessions and instructions for submissions can be found on the conference website http://www.uta.fi/yky/en/6thafroeuropeans/callforpapers.html. Proposals that do not directly deal with the topics of the accepted sessions can be submitted under the category “Other” on the electronic form.

African European Studies and Black European Studies explore social spaces and cultural practices that are characterized by a series of contemporary and historical overlaps between Africa, the African diasporas, and Europe. The sixth biennial network conference, organized by the University of Tampere and the international Afroeuropeans – Black Cultures and Identities in Europe research network, aims to contribute to the existing scholarship in Europe with a view to establish it more firmly in its several disciplinary locations. The general theme of the Afroeuropeans 2017 conference is African diaspora and European cultural heritage. The confirmed keynote speakers are:

  • Professor Paul Gilroy, American and English Literature, King’s College London
  • Professor Elisa Joy White, African American and African Studies, University of California at Davis and Vice President, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD)
  • Dr. Henry Mainsah, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
  • LL.M Domenica Ghidei Biidu, Member of European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)
  • Jani Toivola, Member of the Finnish Parliament

For more information on the conference programme and the cultural programme organized together with our collaborators, please visit the conference website https://www.uta.fi/yky/en/6thafroeuropeans/index_en.html.

For inquiries please contact: afroeuropeans2017@uta.fi 

(posted 2 December 2016)


Images and texts reproduced: XIth International IAWIS/AIERTI Conference
University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 10-14 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 August 2016

By choosing the topic of “Images and texts reproduced,” the eleventh IAWIS conference aims to explore the impact of reproduction/reproducibility on artistic and literary creation, and on the textual and visual constructions of knowledge in the humanities.

The conceptions and uses of reproduction have undergone radical changes in the last two centuries with the extension of print practices, photography, and computer techniques. During the Renaissance, the expansion of printing and engraving techniques provoked major turns in the fields of visual and textual cultures in comparison to the practice of copy in the Middle Ages.

To what extent has reproduction/reproducibility (from manuscripts to Ipads, from print to photography) transformed the production of the works, their diffusion and reception? This vast question addresses not only the history of images and texts production (artistic, scientific, religious, and so on) but also historical, theoretical, and methodological aspects of our disciplines.

“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible,” according to Walter Benjamin’s famous 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. This fundamental assertion is worth questioning today.

The full call for papers is to be found at http://wp.unil.ch/reproduction2017/

(posted 31 May 2016)


Moving texts: Mediations and Transculturations
University of Aveiro, Portugal, 12-14 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2017

Keynote speakers:

  • Jan Blommaert (Tilburg University, Netherlands)
  • Juliane House (Hamburg University, Germany)
  • Lars Jensen (Roskilde University, Denmark)

Intercultural contact has, for some decades now, offered pervasive yet complex opportunities for study. This line of work aspires to identify and understand flows of information, fashions and power relations and to lend coherence to the processes inscribed in the concepts of diffusion, influence, mediation, centre and periphery, colonized and colonizer, uniformity and heterogeneity, foreignization and domestication, originality and copy, us and others. The cultural shiftings that Romanticism linked to the Nation were reconsidered in the more cosmopolitan Modernist movement and, especially after the outbreak of WWII, were reinvented in the planetary resonances present in the ideas of universalism and, more recently, globalization.

This International Conference, Moving texts: mediations and transculturations, picks up this line of research in seeking to trigger discussion of interlinguistic and intercultural dialogues from different viewpoints, be they linguistic, cultural or literary, and to encourage the intertwining of disciplines. We anticipate that this interdisciplinarity will prove fruitful, especially since the most recent theoretical developments in this area have highlighted mobility and the sharing of concepts and methodologies.

Thus, for example, when considering texts and their trajectories, researchers have stressed the value of viewing the text as a social, cultural and historical phenomenon as well as the benefits of inquiring into recontextualizations and reconstructions of meaning. Such processes of resignification, when seen from the viewpoint of cultural and literary transpositions, arise from complex interactions amongst different languages and cultural spaces. This complexity is further accentuated by the fact that each cultural space is the result of successive hybridizations. Since the late seventies, translation studies, too, has turned to the interplay between translation and culture and to the analysis of processes of re-creation, on a path towards building interdisciplinary alliances with linguistics, literary and cultural studies. Lastly we should mention the view of translation as inseparably associated with interlinguistic and intercultural communication. Another aim of this conference is to discuss questions connected with language acquisition and/or linguistic variation in multilingual and multicultural contexts, whose theoretical and empirical underpinnings are mobilised by a complex network of linguistic, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and sociocultural areas of research/disciplines. Following the same line of thought, the poster sessions constitute an opportunity for the younger researchers and those in the initial stages of their research to showcase the results of their empirical studies and/or present their work in progress.Among the topics we wish to address at this International Conference on the flows of texts across languages and cultures, we wish to highlight the following:

  1. Cultural mobility and the crossovers of disciplines
  2. Dynamics of mediation – literature and culture
  3. Aesthetic migration: places of encounter, places of missed engagement
  4. Poetics in dialogue: intercultural constellations
  5. Studies of intercultural reception and hermeneutics
  6. Travels and images
  7. Territorial and textual mobility
  8. Readings and rereadings: intertextuality, intermediality
  9. Interdiscursivity
  10. Translation and cultural filters
  11. Translation and terminology
  12. Translation and editing
  13. Domestication and foreignization
  14. Linguistic variation
  15. Language and its speakers: language in different environments
  16. Second and third language acquisition (L2, L3, L4, Lx)
  17. Cultural hybridity and multilingualism

Paper and poster proposals should be submitted in English or Portuguese through this link: http://cllc.web.ua.pt/pm/?q=en/node/152, including the following information: name of the author, institutional affiliation, an email address, the title and synopsis of the paper or poster (no more than 300 words). Authors should indicate in which of the Above-listed 17 thematic areas they would like their proposal to be included.

Please go to http://cllc.web.ua.pt/pm/?q=en/node/116 for further information. For further questions, please contact us by e-mail at dlc-movingtexts@ua.pt.

(posted 6 January 2017)


Acting Out: The IV International Flann O’Brien Conference
Salzburg University, Austria, 17-21 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 1 February 2017

The International Flann O’Brien Society is proud to announce Acting Out: The IV International Flann O’Brien Conference, an international conference on the theme of performance, theatricality, and illusion in Flann O’Brien’s writing, hosted by the Department of English Studies at Salzburg University, 17-21 July 2017.

In recent years O’Brien’s writing has been foregrounded as an integral site for testing the rise of new modernist studies, as it troubles critical commonplaces about modernism itself by virtue of its ephemerality and parochial energies. Recent publications of out-of-print English and Irishlanguage columns, short stories, non-fiction, dramatic works for the stage, and teleplays for Raidió Teilifís Éireann have not only made O’Brien’s broader canon accessible to a new generation of scholars, but have also highlighted its importance to an understanding of modernism which ‘has grown more capacious, turning its attention to previously neglected forms’ (Rónán McDonald and Julian Murphet).

Germane to these critical projects is the recurring concern with performance, theatricality, and illusion in O’Brien’s prose, columns, plays, and TV scripts. In establishing his (highly ironised) aesthetic manifesto in At Swim-Two-Birds, the student narrator notes that ‘the novel was inferior to the play inasmuch as it lacked the outward accidents of illusion, frequently inducing the reader to be outwitted in a shabby fashion and caused to experience a real concern for the fortunes of illusory characters.’ If, as Richard Schechner claims, ‘performances mark identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, and tell stories’, then few writers better demonstrate this shaping influence and potential of the performative and the fake.

This dynamic of O’Brien’s work has become all the more visible with the marked rise of creative adaptations of his writing for the stage and beyond. Building on the precedent of pioneering O’Brien performers such as Jimmy O’Dea, David Kelly, and Eamon Morrissey, recent years have seen numerous creative engagements with O’Brien’s work for the stage (Blue Raincoat’s adaptations of O’Brien’s major novels, Arthur Riordan’s Improbable Frequency and Slattery’s Sago Saga, Ergo Phizmiz’s electronic-1920s-Vaudeville adaptation of The Third Policeman, Stephen Rea’s musical dramatic reading of same), film (Kurt Palm’s In Schwimmen-Zwei-Vögel, Park Films’ John Duffy’s Brother and The Martyr’s Crown) and the visual arts (John McCloskey’s graphic novel of An Béal Bocht, David O’Kane’s stunning O’Brien artworks). As well as demonstrating the significant weight O’Brien’s writing continues to carry in the present cultural moment, these adaptations emphasise its sustained creative dimensions and dramatic energies.

With these issues in mind, the conference aims to address the contours and concealments of performance in Flann O’Brien’s work as it relates to issues of identity, genre, pseudonymity, adaptation, and creative reception. Salzburg is the home of numerous internationally renowned and prestigious theatrical institutions and events, providing the perfect setting to this symposium, which will take place at the outset of the 2017 Salzburger Festspiele (Salzburg Music and Drama Festival).

The organisers invite proposals on any aspect of O’Nolan’s writing, but are especially interested in papers that explore questions of performance, theatricality, and illusion in O’Brien’s prose, columns, plays, correspondence, and TV scripts, including, but not limited to:

  • Becoming Other: Masks, Pseudonyms, Role-Playing in O’Brien
  • (Mis)Leading Men: Gender Performativity in O’Brien
  • Props/Performing Objects: The life of objects / Object as metaphor
  • The outward accidents of illusion: Sartorial style, costumes, & uniforms in O’Brien
  • Transmedialisation: Music, Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Illustration, Animation, Film
  • Come to your Senses: Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste in O’Brien
  • Comic & Tragic Passions: O’Brien & Genre
  • Puppets and Puppet-Masters: Agency, Post-Humanism; Author vs. The Authored
  • Creativity: Improvisation vs. learning by heart
  • Culture’s Scripts: Secular and Sacred Rituals
  • Dumb play: Playing dumb
  • O’Brien and the Theatre in Irish, European, & Modernist contexts (The Abbey, The Čapeks, Pirandello, modernist anti-theatricality, William Sayoran, etc.)
  • Creative Receptions / Adaptations of O’Brien’s work

Abstracts and Submissions
If you would like to propose a paper (not exceeding 20 minutes), or panel (maximum 3 speakers) please submit your title and an abstract of 250 words accompanied by a short biographical sketch to flannsalzburg2017@gmail.com or paul.fagan@sbg.ac.at by 1 February 2017.
Given the conference’s theme, the organisers also welcome alternative forms of presentation and dialogue, such as roundtables, workshops, debate motions (and debaters), performances, creative responses to Flann O’Brien’s writing, etc.
For more details as they emerge, including social programmes and accommodation & travel details visit our website and social media accounts:

Organising Committee: Sabine Coelsch-Foisner (Salzburg University), Paul Fagan (Salzburg University/University of Vienna), Dieter Fuchs (University of Vienna), Ruben Borg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

(posted 25 October 2016)


 Now Let Us Anatomize Shakespeare: Shakespeare-Inspired Ballets in European Ballet Companies
ESRA conference, Gdansk, Poland, 27-30 July 2017

Convenor: Adeline Chevrier-Bosseau, University of Paris-Est Créteil
In the wake of the WSC’s seminar on Shakespeare and Dance and the ongoing work of the Shakespeare and Dance Project, this panel will specifically address ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, from classical ballet productions (Kenneth Mac Millan’s Romeo and Juliet, or Rudolph Nureyev’s subsequent version, or Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) to more contemporary ones (this year’s homage to Shakespeare by the Ballet du Rhin, featuring Ophelia, Madness and Death by Douglas Lee or Fatal, a Macbeth-inspired ballet by Rui Lopes Graça). We shall examine how Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been “translated” into dance, and how this process is actually enacted: is it a translation? An adaptation? An interpretation? How does the variety of styles incorporated in the language of ballet – from character dances to group scenes, pantomime, and classic pas de deux – echo the variety of movement (fights, love scenes, dance scenes) and the diversity of the language of Shakespeare’s plays? How are the personalities of Shakespeare’s characters translated into ballet characters? Since dance is a “silent” art, where only the body speaks to music, how has Shakespeare’s text been “anatomized”, how is it performed through the body only?
We will also examine the choice of the musical score, from Prokofiev’s to Mendelssohn, Schubert or Purcell, and how it echoes the drama of the plays.
Another question will be that of the audience, and to what extent these ballets rely – or not – on previous knowledge of Shakespeare’s works: papers focusing on the librettos and their connection to Shakespeare’s works, whether didactic, or allusive, or explanatory, would also be welcome.
The panel would be interdisciplinary, opening a dialogue between Shakespeare scholars and dance scholars.
Submissions including an abstract (200-300 words), a title, a short bio and contact information can be sent via email by November 20, 2016 to AdelineChevrier-Bosseau, University of Paris-Est Créteil, at adeline.chevrier-bosseau@u-pec.fr. Chosen participants will be notified by email by December 11, 2016 at the latest.

(posted 16 October 2016)


Self-Imposed Fetters: The Productivity of Formal and Thematic Restrictions: 14th International Connotations Symposium
Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, July 30 – August 3, 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 15 October 2016

Venue: Conference Centre “Die Wolfsburg”, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany

One of the most remarkable (and, indeed, paradoxical) accounts of literary genesis consists in the appreciation of limitations and restrictions as the condition of creativity, as well as of the scope and depth of representation. Why is it that writers seek to impose restrictions upon themselves so as to set free their powers of imagination? What is it that those restrictions bring about? These questions entail a number of others, such as: Is there a relationship between formal restrictions, such as the fourteen lines of a sonnet, and thematic ones, such as Jane Austen’s focus on the domestic life of three or four gentry families, her decision to work on a “little bit (two inches wide) of ivory”?

In order to address these questions, contributions may explore, for example, paratextual and poetological statements and compare them to a writer’s creative work, or they may focus on the analysis of literary texts that expressly or implicitly (e.g. metaphorically) dwell on the effects of self-imposed or willingly accepted fetters. Texts may also foreground certain delimitations, formal and thematic, whose effect is then to be considered by the audience or reader. An example of the latter is the choice of a small island setting for the exploration of human relationships, or the adoption of a very tight form (such as the villanelle) which may produce intense effects impossible to bring about otherwise.

Please send an abstract (300 words max.) to the editors of Connotations by October 30, 2016 (new extended deadline): symposium2017@connotations.de.

(posted 4 May 2016, updated 19 October 2016)