Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in March 2020

Trauma and Nightmare: the 3rd International Interdisciplinary Conference
Gdańsk, Poland, 5-6 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 10 January 2020

Conference website: https://traumanightmare.ug.edu.pl/

Contact email address: traumanightmare@gmail.com and nightmareoffice@tlen.pl

Organizer: InMind Support

Scientific Committee:

  • Professor Wojciech Owczarski -University of Gdańsk (Poland)
  • Professor Paulo Endo – University of São Paulo (Brazil)

“Trauma” and “nightmare” have become the most popular metaphors of evil in our times. The old philosophical discussion about “the nature (or mystery) of Evil” has been replaced by modern (and postmodern) studies on trauma. Nightmare is a more and more frequent phenomenon, and it is being studied by dream and sleep researchers. However, nightmare means not only bad dream – today this term describes also a variety of unpleasant experiences, memories, emotions, so it deserves special attention as an important factor which characterizes human condition.

Keeping this in mind, during our conference we would like to ask how the discourse on trauma and nightmare helps us to understand our contemporary world. In order to answer this general question, we will have to concentrate on many particular issues. Thus, we are interested in all aspects of traumatic experiences, in their individual and collective dimensions, in the past and in the present-day world. We would like to describe the phenomena of nightmare and trauma in their multifarious manifestations: psychological, social, historical, cultural, philosophical, religious, economic, political, and many others. We also want to devote considerable attention to how these phenomena appear in artistic practices: literature, film, theatre or visual arts.

That is why we invite researchers representing various academic disciplines: anthropology, history, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, politics, philosophy, economics, law, memory studies, consciousness studies, dream studies, sleep studies, literary studies, theatre studies, film studies, migration studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, medical sciences, cognitive sciences, and urban studies, to name w few.

Different forms of presentations are encouraged, including case studies, theoretical inqueries, problem-oriented arguments or comparative analyses.

We will be happy to hear from both experienced scholars and young academics at the start of their careers, as well as doctoral and graduate students. We also invite all persons interested in participating in the conference as listeners, without giving a presentation.

Our repertoire of suggested topics includes but is not restricted to:

I. Individual experiences

  • –  Trauma and childhood memories
  • –  Trauma and child abuse
  • –  Trauma and women abuse
  • –  Trauma and domestic violence
  • –  Trauma and old age
  • –  Trauma and love
  • –  Trauma and death
  • –  Trauma and mourning
  • –  Trauma and crime
  • –  Trauma and neurosis
  • –  Trauma and psychosis
  • –  Secondary traumatization
  • –  Life after trauma
  • –  Trauma and psychotherapy
  • –  Help for traumatized people

II. Collective experiences

  • –  Trauma and war
  • –  Trauma and genocide
  • –  Trauma and terrorism
  • –  Trauma and natural disasters
  • –  Trauma and post-memory
  • –  Traumatized nations
  • –  Traumatized minorities
  • –  Traumatized generations
  • –  Traumatized social classes
  • –  Trauma of victims
  • –  Trauma of witnesses
  • –  Trauma of bystanders
  • –  Trauma of perpetrators
  • –  Trauma and oblivion
  • –  Trauma and forgiveness

III. Dream experiences:

  • –  Nightmare after trauma
  • –  Nightmare and post-traumatic stress disorder
  • –  Nightmare and life cycle
  • –  Nightmare and physical illness
  • –  Nightmare and suicide
  • –  Nightmare and threat simulation theory
  • –  Nightmare and dream recall
  • –  Therapy of nightmares
  • –  Nightmare and lucid dreaming
  • –  Nightmare and paranormal dream experiences

IV. Philosophical questions

  • –  Nightmare and trauma as Evil
  • –  Nightmare and trauma as metaphors
  • –  Nightmare in everyday life
  • –  Life as a nightmare
  • –  Nightmare and beauty
  • –  Attractiveness of nightmare and trauma
  • –  Attractiveness of trauma studies

V. Representation of trauma and nightmare

  • –  Bearing witness of trauma
  • –  Testimonies and memories
  • –  Trauma and narrative
  • –  Trauma and fiction
  • –  Nightmare and horror
  • –  Trauma in literature
  • –  Trauma in film
  • –  Trauma in theatre
  • –  Trauma in visual arts
  • –  Traumatized authors
  • –  Traumatized readers/spectators
  • –  Writing as a traumatic experience
  • –  Writing as recovery from trauma
  • –  Trauma and creativeness

VI. Institutionalization

  • –  Trauma and law
  • –  Trauma and politics
  • –  Trauma and religion
  • –  Trauma and medical treatment
  • –  Trauma and management
  • –  Trauma and punishment systems
  • –  Trauma and army
  • –  Trauma and school
  • –  Trauma and memory places
  • –  Trauma and museums

Please submit abstracts (no longer than 300 words) of your proposed 20-minute presentations, together with a short biographical note, by 10 January 2020 both to: traumanightmare@gmail.com and nightmareoffice@tlen.pl

(posted 7 November 2019)

Exile
The English Department, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Sousse, Tunisia, 5-6 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 31 December 2019

Conference Venue: Adonis room, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, University of Sousse.

“I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here.
I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages.
I forget which of them I dream in.”
Mahmoud Darwish

Exile as a broad term denotes a force of (un)voluntary escape from one’s land to a foreign space and it connotes a sense of estrangement and nostalgia. Exile in literature, culture studies and linguistics is more problematized as it takes different forms and orientations. Indeed, “Exile” negotiates complex issues related to historical events that have marked human existence such as the Industrial Revolution, the two world wars etc…

The ongoing processes of border-crossing and diasporic displacement, coupled with the world’s colonial and imperial charting of political and cultural borders have further complicated the situation. More often than not, this aporia leads to a state of constant transformation, compelling and luring certain exiled individuals or groups to inhabit interstitial spaces of dislocation and alienation; thus, fostering the need to negotiate an ambivalent sense of (un)belonging.

The notion of ‘exile’ is highly relevant as it is linked to identity formation, generating visions of resistance, empowerment and self-redefinition. Likewise, postmodernist theories further stress the concept of ‘exile’ from a linguistic, cultural, aesthetic and psychological perspectives.

It is within this framework that the steering committee welcomes individual and panel proposals related (but not limited) to the following topics:

  • Exile and punishment
  • Physical exile
  • Psychological exile
  • Self exile
  • Social exile
  • Deliberate/imposed exile
  • Exile and memory
  • Exile and gender
  • Exile and space
  • Exile and politics
  • Exile and language
  • Exile and teaching
  • Exile and media
  • Exile and arts
  • Exile, identity and subjectivity.
  • Exile and culture
  • Ex-patriates / exiled subjects / refugees
  • Exile and globalization
  • Exile and
  • Exile and Cosmopolitanism
  • Exile in/and discourse
  • Exile in translation
  • Exile and religion
  • Exile and psychoanalysis
  • Representations of exile
  • Classical – Modern and Contemporary exile

Abstract Submission:

The Conference Steering Committee is delighted to invite contributors to submit abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short bio-note to the following email address: exilesousse2020@yahoo.com

The deadline for submission of proposals is December 31st 2019.

Notification of acceptance/rejection will be communicated by January 7th 2020. Contributors will have the possibility to have their articles published in Conference proceedings.

Organizing committee: Dr. Zied Ben Amor, Dr. Khaled Rjiba, Dr. Radhia Flah Gaiech, Dr. Kamel Abdaoui, Dr. Ines Latiri, Dr. Chiraz Mkhinini, Dr. Mourad Romdhani, Dr. Wiem Krifa, Dr. Faouzi Makni

(posted 4 December 2019)

International Conference on Children’s Studies
London, UK, 7 March 2020
Deadline for propsals: 20 October 2019

Conference website: https://childrens-studies.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Childhood is a crucial stage in the formation of personality, value orientations, self-image and ideas about the world. However, the subject of childhood has become the target of research relatively recently. A wide range of problems and an interdisciplinary approach to this phenomenon have extended the boundaries of the academic and professional research interests. Nowadays, the study of children and childhood is an integral part of the humanities and social sciences. We invite psychologists, educators, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural and literary scholars, historians, art experts, lawyers, linguists and specialists in other fields to participate in the conference.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • Childhood Psychology
  • Anthropology of Children and Childhood
  • Sociology of Children and Childhood
  • Children and Childhood in Art and Culture
  • Children and Childhood in the System of Law
  • Ethics and Methodology of Child-Centered Studies
  • Contemporary Children’s Culture
  • Children’s Literature. Literature about Children and Childhood
  • Children and Human Rights
  • Historical Research about Children and Childhood
  • Early Childhood Education
  • Children and Media. Children’s Media. Media about Children and Childhood
  • Children’s Play
  • Children in the System of Formal and Non-Formal Education
  • Children and Parenthood

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 20 October 2019 to: childrens-studies@lcir.co.uk
Please download the Paper proposal form from the Confence website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London  WC1E 7HX

(posted 24 September 2019)

Shades of Hope in 20th- and 21st Century Literature: the 2nd NEWstories Conference
Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, 7 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 17 January 2020

“I am still alive then. That may come in useful.”
Samuel  Beckett, Molloy

The 2nd NEWstories Conference, a Student-Doctoral Conference, planned to be held on 7 March 2020 at the Institute of English Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland), aims to  bring  together both undergraduate and postgraduate literary scholars to share their experience  and research results on all aspects of hope in 20th- and 21st-century literature. It also provides    an interdisciplinary platform for those interested in politics, ecology and psychology. Participants are invited to present papers on historical representations of hope and ways of kindling it as well as to discuss what we currently hope for and how we envision it.

Having debated on crisis during the 1st NEWstories conference, we are now  shifting  the  focus to the opposite and, following Anne Frank, we no longer want to “think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains”. Since we have observed that the 20th- and 21st-century literature encompasses various problematic issues – concerning identity, migration or apocalypse, to name but a few – we are now wondering what is on the other side of the coin: how people manage to endure the difficult times, how they tackle obstacles and what they wish for the future. Interested not only in prose but also in drama and poetry, we are seeking to discuss where writers find hope and how they incorporate it into their works.

Of equal importance is readers’ response and the question of ways in which literature can be    a source of hope. The scope of interest of our conference ranges from the analyses of 20th- century literature concerned with searching for hope during the two World Wars, the Great Depression and other historical circumstances to examinations of hope in contemporary literature revolving around economy, ecology, globalization, etc. Besides, the metafictional perspective envisioning hope for narrative, authorship and form will be welcomed.

“We do not wish to suggest that all postmodern tendencies are over and done with. But we    do believe many of them are taking another shape, and, more importantly, a new sens, a new meaning and direction” contend Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker in “Notes on Metamodernism”. As the second decade of the 21st century is about to close, it is crucial to reflect on how we imagine the coming eight in literature: what tendencies we are leaving behind and what new shapes, meanings and directions should be.

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations in English by PhD, MA and BA students on 20th- and 21st-century literature dealing with the theme of hope or exemplifying it. Original texts could be written in any language. Abstracts (250-300 words) and a brief biographical note should be sent by 17 January 2020 to newstories.conference.uj@gmail.com.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following themes:

  • hope and literature (genre / form / style / authorship)
  • hope and politics
  • hope and  economy
  • hope and ecology
  • hope and nuclear matters
  • hope and migration
  • hope and technology
  • hope and existence
  • hope and identity
  • hope and values
  • hope and communication
  • hope and representation.

Plenary speaker: Dr Nonia Williams (University of East Anglia).

There is no conference fee.

We are planning to publish selected papers presented at the conference.

Organizers: mgr Katarzyna Biela (UJ) | mgr Aleksandra Kamińska (UJ) | mgr Alicja Lasak (UJ) mgr Kinga Latała (UJ) | mgr Sabina Sosin (UJ)

(posted 9 December 2019)

Simon Armitage: Probation Officer to Poet Laureate
Université de Lille, France, 12-13 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2019

Keynote speaker: Terry Gifford

With a reading by Simon Armitage, an exhibition of the poet’s works, and an exhibition of students’ artworks

Organisation Committee: Claire Hélie (Senior Lecturer, Lille), Samuel Trainor (Senior Lecturer, Lille), Marc Porée (Professor, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris), Carole Birkan Berz (Senior Lecturer, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3), Juliette Utard (Senior Lecturer, Sorbonne, Paris 4), David Creuze (PhD student, Lille)

Website : https://conferencearmitage.wixsite.com/france

The biographical note accompanying one of the first poems Simon Armitage ever published, read simply: “SIMON ARMITAGE was born in Marsden, Huddersfield in 1963, he is now a post-graduate at Manchester University” (Iron Magazine 1986).

Today Simon Armitage’s list of publications boasts over 20 collections of poetry, from Human Geography (Smith/Doorstop Books 1986) to Sandette Light Vessel Automatic (Faber 2019), as well as a number of plays and radio dramas, two novels, two travel books, a collection of essays, his memoirs, literary anthologies, film poems, poetry documentaries for television, and innumerable conferences and public appearances. He has also been the recipient of a vast number of literary prizes and awards.

On the 10th of May 2019, towards the end of his time as Oxford Professor of Poetry, he was appointed as the UK’s Poet Laureate, succeeding Carol Anne Duffy for a fixed term of ten years. His appointment to one of the most prestigious roles in English poetry makes this an opportune moment to look back on the poetic career of a man who was still working as a probation officer during the publication of his first four major collections (Zoom!, 1989 to Book of Matches, 1993). The analysis of his career might focus on concepts of emergence, legitimisation and canonisation. Participants might consider contributions based on the following, non-exhaustive, list of themes and questions:

  • Armitage as an example of exchanges between margin and centre
  • Armitage’s relationship with classic literature and traditional literary forms (translations, re-dramatisations, formal constraints etc.)
  • Armitage in translation (Paul Bensimon in French, Jan Wagner in German, Erminia Passannanti and Bocchiola in Italian…)
  • the reception of Armitage’s poetry beyond the UK and in non-anglophone countries
  • Armitage and anthologies (both those he has edited and those in which his work is included)
  • Armitage’s relationship with other poets of his generation (both those in the so-called “New Generation” and those not included in this list)
  • Armitage’s relationship with poets that have inspired him (e.g. Ted Hughes) and with new or younger poets
  • Armitage as performer (poetry readings, conferences, television and radio broadcasts)
  • Armitage’s humour
  • representations of Armitage and his poetry in the press and via social media
  • Armitage and literary prizes (as recipient and jury member)
  • The Simon Armitage Archives at Leeds University
  • Armitage on the GCSE curriculum
  • the reception of Armitage beyond poetry circles (e.g. controversy surrounding the Stanza Stones)
  • Armitage in relation to ‘Englishness’ and Northern English identity and culture
  • Armitage and the political context of Brexit and the absence of English devolution
  • Armitage’s appointment as Poet Laureate

Abstracts of 500 words max (preferably in English), accompanied by a biography/bibliography of 150 words max, should be sent to conferencearmitagefrance@gmail.com by 30 September 2019. The results of the committee’s selection process will be sent out in November.

(posted 2 August 2019, updated 19 September 2019)

Illumination:  Perspectives on the Way of Light
London, UK, 14 March 2020
Deadline for proposals : 30 September 2019

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Conference website: https://illumination.lcir.co.uk/

The origin myths of multiple cultures describe a primordial order of life which emerges from the subterranean world into an upper world of light and growth.  In recent eras, light has come to serve as a metaphor for learning and technological advancement.  The term “enlightenment” continues to portray humankind as both the embodiment of spiritual growth and an historic era in which science and the humanities grew intertwined.  Like moths, we are drawn to the light—everything from the sun to gilded manuscripts to the screens of our own computers.  This conference examines the way light has and continues to reveal significant aspects of the human condition.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • Biographical or Personal Transformation as Reflected in Literature, Music, Visual Arts, Dance, or Theatre
  • Light in Art
  • Epiphany as Mental Process
  • Light as Mythological Context in Literature and the Visual or Performing Arts
  • Light and Technological Art Processes Such as Photography
  • Objects of Light or Tools for Calendric Measurement
  • Daily, Nightly, or Seasonal Rituals
  • Stories of Historical, Cultural, or Personal Emergence, Rebirth, or Transformation
  • Light as Religious Concept or Aspect of Sacredness
  • Nations and People—Customs Surrounding Sun, Moon, Nightfall, or Daybreak
  • The “Enlightenment” as Regional Historical Movement
  • Effects of Education on Individuals or Underserved Peoples
  • Humanistic Response to the Loss of the Nighttime Skies in 21st-Century Arts and Literature
  • Elements of Light in Theatric or Dance Performance
  • Ceremonial Fire

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 30 September 2019 to: illumination@lcir.co.uk

Please download the Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, London

(posted 20 September 2019)

International Conference Oxford on Medical Humanities
St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, UK,  14-15 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2019

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research and Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, School of Applied Social Studies, University of Bedfordshire

Confeence website: https://medhumconf.lcir.co.uk

 “Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity” – Hippocrates

The conference will explore the social, historical and cultural dimensions of medicine. It will promote an interdisciplinary perspective on health, illness, health care and the body. The conference will also focus on the issues relevant to medical knowledge, public health policy, the experience of being ill and of caring for those who are ill.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • history of medicine
  • medical anthropology
  • bioethics
  • sociology of medicine
  • medicine in literature and cultural studies
  • medicine and art
  • medicine and philosophy
  • health geography
  • medical education

We also welcome poster proposals on one of the conference themes.

The conference is addressed to academics, researchers and professionals with a particular interest related to the Medical Humanities. Proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 15 October 2019 to: medhumconf@lcir.co.uk
Download Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Standard registration fee – 180 GBP
Student registration fee – 160 GBP

(posted 23 September 2019)

Troubling Usurpations: Imposture in the literature, cinema and the arts of the English-speaking world
University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France, 19-20 March 2020
Deadline for proposals of papers or of panels: 20 Septembe 2019

Please send 400-500-word proposals, in English or French, along with a short bio-bibliographical note, to: usurpationtoulouseconference@gmail.com by 20 September 2019.

Please note that panel proposals (3-4 papers) are welcome.

This international conference aims to question the representations of usurpation and imposture in the literature, cinema and the arts of the English-speaking world, from the Renaissance to the present day. 

As Roland Gori argues, impostors are powerful tools to reveal how a given culture and period works: indeed usurpers will mimic the rituals, signs and masks through which power, authority and even identities are usually established in a given society, so that the impostor’s unruly or irregular use of such codes is a way of highlighting them. Impostors reveal established definitions of authority, their underlying principles and concealed contradictions: as a liberal vision of individual freedom expands across the English-speaking world, as the individual per se is increasingly seen as the “author” of his or her own life, narratives centered on forged identities bring to light the limits of individualism (e.g. James Gatz in The Great Gatsby). In gothic fiction, both the usurpers bent on overthrowing legitimate leaders and the Promethean or Epimethean figures who seem to usurp a position of divine power – from Manfred to Victor Frankenstein – tend to disclose theological as well as political issues. In sensation fiction, identity theft – whether through bigamy or assumed identities (Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne) – lays bare the contradictions of marriage law in the Victorian era.

In anonymous, impersonal places where social control has loosened its grip, usurpation is in full bloom. In Samuel Clemens’s and Herman Melville’s works, the Mississippi river in the middle of the nineteenth century is an in-between zone where any stranger may appear as a potential usurper of someone else’s identity (Melville, The Confidence Man; Clemens, Huckleberry Finn). In periods of fast-growing urbanization, large cities become labyrinthine, anonymous spaces where various forgeries may be given free play:  the upwardly mobile trajectory of the upstart, racial passing in the United States, cross-dressing, all seem to point to ambiguous quests for emancipation which blur the conventional boundary between conformism and the transgression of accepted norms.

When represented on screen, many forms of usurpation tend to disrupt preconceived ideas about collective or individual identity (linked to race, gender, or to the human as opposed to the non-human or trans-human); these troubling usurpations question any firm distinction between different facets of the self  or the frontier between the self and one’s social personae (Mad Men, Vertigo, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ready Player One). When masks, avatars or doubles do embody a definite part of the self, it is not always easy to draw the line between the “genuine” identity and the “fabricated” one. When new channels and modes of communication are seen to thrive, notably on social media, the theme of usurpation in literature and the visual arts keeps drawing our attention toward a persistent problem: do usurpations point to an inherently theatrical character of social life which should be embraced as an inevitable, and even enjoyable, aspect of human existence (as can be seen in virtual communities where “catfishing” is an aspect of social life) or do they point to a philosophical and political aporia, to the lack of any firm foundation for any social contract?

When texts, plays or films represent unsettling modes of usurpation, those fictions also call for a critical debate on what constitutes an authoritative position. How is identity theft repressed or punished? Who is supposed to put the usurper back in his or her place? And may the authority of the avenging or righteous figure be considered as yet another form of power abuse?

Usurpation may also be tackled from a semiotic angle when the usurper seems to be nothing but a persona, a “sheer” signifier with no substantial signified, coming across psychologically as devoid of any inner life and being reduced, therefore, to his or her surface appearance. We also invite reflections on the metafictional, poetic and aesthetic dimensions of imposture in particular works of fiction, when the impersonator may be seen as symbolising the powers of fiction itself, notably in the case of unreliable narrators.

We welcome any study of the following topics (please note that the list is indicative and by no means comprehensive):

– Representations of legitimate and illegitimate rulers, usurpers of political or religious authority, the virtuous, educational use of mimicry and imposture;

-Representations of upstarts, cross-dressers, bigamists, racial passing, medical doctors and simulators, usurped professional, sexual, or national identities in biographies/autobiographies/ biopics/ artistic performances;

  • – New forms of the performance of identity in contemporary media: the use and misuse of avatars;
  • – Usurpation, social control and social unrest;
  • – Counterfeited signs, counterfeited evidence: semiotic, legal, medical perspectives on the illegitimate or irregular use of signs;
  • – Imposture and metafiction; illusionism, realism and trompe-l’œil in literature, the cinema and the arts;
  • – Usurpers in spy fiction, in detective fiction, in satirical texts, films or cartoons;
  • – Psychoanalytical and/or philosophical perspectives on imposture; imposture and ontological or political dead-ends.

Download a select bibliography.

(posted 24 May 2019)

New Perspectives in Science Education International Conference, 9th edition
Florence, Italy, 19-20 March 2020
New extended deadline for proposals: 13 January 2020

The 9th edition of the New Perspectives in Science Education Conference will take place in Florence, Italy, on 19 – 20 March 2020.

The objective of the Conference is to promote transnational cooperation and share good practice in the field of innovation for science education. The Conference is also an excellent opportunity for the presentation of previous and current projects in the science field.

The Call for Papers is addressed to teachers, researchers and experts in the field of science education as well as to coordinators of science and training projects. Experts in the field of science teaching and learning are therefore invited to submit an abstract of a paper to be presented during the conference.

Important dates:

  • 13 Januay 2020: Last extended Deadline for submitting abstracts
  • 17 January 2020: Notification of abstracts’ acceptance / rejection
  • 20 January 2020: Deadline for papers’ submission
  • 19-20 March 2020: Conference days

There will be three presentation modalities: oral, poster and virtual presentations.

All accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by FilodirittoEditore with ISBN and ISSN codes. This publication will be sent to be reviewed for inclusion in Conference Proceedings Citation Index by Thomson Reuters (ISI-Clarivate). The publication will also be included in Academia.edu and indexed in Google Scholar.

For further information, please contact us at the following address: science@pixel-online.net or visit the New Perspectives in Science Education conference website http://conference.pixel-online.net/NPSE

(posted 25 July 2019, updated 28 October 2019, updated 21 November 2019, updated 23 December 2019)

The issue of specialised varieties of language in Applied Languages: the case of English and other language: GERAS 41st International Conference
Université de Nantes, France, 19-21 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 10 January 2019

CANCELLED

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and LEA (Applied Languages) have been linked for many decades. Indeed, many ESP colleagues teach in Applied Languages and Applied Languages departments look to recruit ESP profiles as much as LANSOD (Languages for Students of Other Disciplines) departments do. However, this tangible professional convergence has not yet resulted in a scientific dialogue between the two types of foreign language training programmes, despite the many attempts made by colleagues involved in both areas.

The 41st GERAS International conference will take place in 2020 at the University of Nantes, which has a strong and vibrant LEA department. The scientific committee sees this as an excellent opportunity to reopen up the debate on the issue of specialised varieties of language in LEA in order to highlight not only the professional convergence between ESP and LEA, but also the convergence between linguistic content and pedagogical approaches.

In this context, the first issue that arises concerns the scientific divergences and convergences between the terms “applied language” and “specialised language”. Apparently, ESP and LEA are not exempt from the “contradiction” highlighted by Elisabeth Crosnier, who observed that the professional world and the academic context are “two culturally opposed worlds” (2002: 158-159). On the contrary, “specialisation” and “application” both refer to dimensions outside of the language, which are professionalising and/or disciplinary in nature and thus seem to belong to the same “functional” cultural world. What theoretical and practical differences differentiate them? What factors oppose them and/or place them in a position of complementarity? In this regard, Applied Linguistics approaches can offer insights for exploring possible answers.

A second issue concerns the role that language specialisation can play in LEA. This issue can be approached from many different perspectives, but three in particular come to mind. The first is driven by the increasingly widespread trend to steer the LEA cursus from a multidisciplinary approach towards greater specialisation and professional training. In other words, from a multidisciplinary base of subjects at the undergraduate level including economics, law and management, the courses lead to a wide range of specialisations at master’s level covering: international marketing, international logistics, international business, management of humanitarian, cultural or international projects, sustainable development design and planning, corporate social responsibility, fair trade, digital documentation, catering and tourism, wine economics, oenology and gastronomy among others… These specialisations seem difficult to implement without a parallel specialisation of language skills. So how should we go about this?  What lessons have been learned in this area? These questions renew the recurring debate about the absence of relations between languages and vocational subjects, as summed up by E. Crosnier – “the notion of ‘applied language’ has not been widely implemented”. She went on to say “with this general training, students have perfected their knowledge of the language, but without really having access to specialised fields with a view to applying them” (2002: 160). However, this view has been challenged in recent years by a growing number of LEA courses, which place language learning and their application to specialist subjects at the heart of their curriculum.

One way to approach the problem could be to look at the different specialised genres whether they be open, hybrid, evolutionary, transversal or hyper-genre in nature etc. The aim would be to make LEA students aware that genres reflect messages specific to a professional culture and setting and help them to achieve particular goals in particular situations. Genre analysis – particularly contrastive genre analysis – could make LEA students more aware of the notion of specialisation and the tools it provides to serve its purposes.

A second approach is specialised translation, which is included in many LEA courses and can take various forms (professional, business, legal, corporate, scientific and technical translation, etc.). It questions the relationship between language and a specialty and the optimal degree of specialisation that can be offered according to the nature of the course (Crosnier 2002: 161-162). This offers the opportunity to examine the extent to which Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), designed as complex “language-discourse-culture” sets, can go beyond a level of specialised granularity limited to the lexicon or terminology.

A third way to address the problem is through civilisation classes. These modules generally account for many hours in LEA course schedules. Gilles Leydier points out that “the multidisciplinary and vocational nature [of LEA] with its multiple career opportunities” places heavy demands on civilisation courses, but that “civilisation programmes in LEA often resemble an endless inventory” (2004b : 136). In fact, very generalist modules, often directly imported from the LLCE (Languages and Literature) department, can often be found alongside more vocationally oriented modules. The author also highlights the convergence between LSPs and civilisation since “it is difficult to design studies on specialised language without taking into account the surrounding civilisational and cultural context” (2004a: 18-19). With this in mind, Michel Van der Yeught examines the conditions under which specialised language can serve civilisation in LEA: “specialist domains and languages are an important vector for promoting and studying civilisation” (2006: 258). There are, therefore, a number of avenues to explore in LEA between civilisation and LSP.

The need to ensure consistency between the aforementioned specialist linguistic content and the professional skills that LEA students need for their future career raises questions about pedagogical methods. As Marie-Françoise Narcy-Combes (2008: 133) points out, LEA students must “be able to carry out a project as part of a team, conduct research and report on it in one or more languages, be able to be autonomous and take responsibility”. In this regard, action-oriented approaches such as task-based language learning and teaching, project-based learning and other innovative pedagogical methods including technology mediated learning help to reduce the distance between the academic context and the business world.

A third issue concerns the relationship between English and the other languages taught in LEA (often referred to as “Language B”). LEA programmes are bilingual with English often designated as the compulsory Language A combined with a varying selection of Languages B, ranging from four to twelve depending on the university. Even though GERAS conferences focus on issues related to English, it is difficult to imagine discussing specialisation in terms of English in LEA without taking into account its impact on other languages. Even if ESP were to become fully integrated into LEA, would it make sense to include it as the only specialised language in the programme? It seems not and in any case ESP would certainly benefit from a general increase in linguistic specialisation, which would act as a unifying force to the benefit of all LSPs.

In a sense, the rapid development of LEA challenges traditional monolingual perspectives and suggests that there is an urgent need to open up the debate. The rapid growth and increasing success of trilingual programmes (which often include specialist translation modules), as well as the emergence of quadrilingual and multilingual programmes, offer a clear demonstration of this trend. To ensure the inner consistency of these types of programmes, linguistic specialisation cannot be limited to one or two languages, but rather should apply to all languages. In this respect, GERAS has a wealth of experience in exchanging with the members of other research groups like GERES (Groupe d’étude et de recherche en espagnol de spécialité) and GERALS (Groupe d’étude et de recherche en allemand de spécialité). This could be used to develop greater specialisation of other languages frequently offered in LEA including Italian, Portuguese, Arabe, Russian… Colleagues teaching these languages could help guide the overall thinking on these issues in ways that the organising committee will have to determine. This last set of questions clearly paves the way for contrastive approaches between languages and proposals in contrastive linguistics are likely to advance reflection within the wider community of linguists.

There is every indication that the issues surrounding the specialisation of languages in LEA touch on a considerable number of subjects which are vital to the ESP field of research: culture and civilisation (and therefore diachrony and specialised communities), translation (and therefore lexicology, terminology, discourse and genre analysis, work on corpora), didactics, dialogue with other LSPs and their culture…We welcome papers on any of these topics and on related subjects.

Submission guidelines. Please submit your abstract according to the guidelines below.

Languages: French or English
Word limit: 300
Deadline: 10 January 2020
Send to: isabelle.richard@univ-nantes.fr ; sophie.belan@univ-nantes.fr

(posted 20 September 2019, updated 16 March 2020)

“Faces of War” International Conference
London, UK, 21 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2019

Conference website: https://warstudies.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

The twentieth century, violent and brutal, offers a wide spectrum of material that deserves further analysis. The Great War introduced the first aspects of modern warfare; the Second World War, even more devastating in its atrocities, advanced war further. The Cold War introduced modern society to new methods and technological advancements of warfare, beyond anything our species had seen. The thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Iron Curtain in 1989 altered the balance of global power yet again. Global terrorist attacks and the introduction of electronic warfare have shown us that despite the painful experiences of the past, our world still relies on war and violence to address many of its problems in an endless geopolitical game.

Our conference wishes to explore the ways warfare has affected the political, cultural, social and economic realities in our quest to understand individual and national identity. We invite scholars from various fields including but not limited to philosophy, religion, theology, sociology, anthropology, history, literature, art, economics, geography, cultural and political studies to contribute to the discussion and explore topics within interdisciplinary war sudies.

Conference presentations will be related, but not limited, to:

  • Theorizing the war: types, roots, methods, strategies, theories
  • The finances of war and financing a war
  • Economic wars and geopolitics
  • War and ethics and ethical wars
  • Cultural wars and the culture of war
  • War and religion and religious wars
  • Terrorism and counterterrorism
  • Experimenting in war (e.g. electronic warfare, weapons, medicine, communications, aviation)
  • Politicizing wars and the politics of war
  • Social and Cultural impacts of war
  • War representation in literature, architecture and arts (e.g. music, painting, sculpture)
  • Wartime fashion: impact and legacy
  • Propaganda: now and then (social media, press, TV, posters)
  • Top secret documents in public: value, use and interpretation
  • War and the shaping of political and individual identities
  • Oral history and the remembrance of war
  • Trauma and psychological and psychiatric approaches (e.g. African Children Fighters, War veterans, women abuse)
  • War and narcotics
  • Cinematic representation of war (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan)
  • Civil Wars and their legacy (e.g. Africa, Europe and Latin America)
  • The Wall between us: Case studies of divided countries (e.g. Germany, Ireland, Cyprus, Korea)
  • Legacies and aftermath of wars (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Israel, Cuba)

Paper proposals should be sent by 1 December 2019 to: warstudies@lcir.co.uk. Please download thePaper proposal form from the Conference website.

Registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1E 7HX

(posted 27 September 2019)

Katherine Mansfield: Germany and Beyond
Bad Wörishofen, Germany, 21-22 March 2020
NEW EXTENDED deadline for proposals: 23 January 2020

POSTPONED

An international conference organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society
Hosted by the Bad Wörishofen Mayorality and Tourist and Spa Bureau

Keynote Speaker: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Professor Claire Davison will sadly not be able to join us, and so Dr Gerri Kimber, Chair of the KMS, will replace her.

Conference website: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/bad-worishofen-2020

It is well known that Katherine Mansfield’s first book of stories, In a German Pension (1911), was inspired by her eight months’ stay in the Bavarian spa town of Wörishofen in 1909 at the age of 21, but the importance of Germany and all things German in her writing has not been explored in any depth until recently. Although Mansfield did not return to Germany in the same way as she kept visiting France, her spiritual home in Europe, Germany continued to hold a fascination for her long after her 1909 sojourn, and myriad associations can be traced in her fiction as well as her notebooks and letters.

This two-day conference aims to open up to new scrutiny the impact of Germany on Mansfield’s work and life: its language, peoples and cultures. These range from the setting in Munich of her story ‘The Little Governess’, to her passion for music by composers such as Beethoven, Bruch, and Wagner, her love of the poetry of Heinrich Heine, and literary influences such as the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Indeed, her longing for her German classes at Queen’s College in Harley Street because of the dashing Professor Walter Rippmann, reveals her early devotion. Another influence on her love of German and Germany is the writing of her cousin, the writer Elizabeth von Arnim, widow of Graf Henning von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a member of the Prussian aristocracy, and her friendship with Elizabeth, which developed during her stay in Montana, Switzerland in the last two years of her life.

It is entirely fitting that this conference will be held in Bad Wörishofen, a Bavarian spa town that honours Mansfield as one of its most famous residents and a significant cultural icon, in fostering local civic pride and identity. Last year, on the occasion of her 130th birthday, a specially commissioned statue of Katherine Mansfield gazing out over the Iceberg Pond in the Spa Park, was unveiled.

The Katherine Mansfield Society is therefore delighted to host, together with the Bad Wörishofen Mayorality and Tourist and Spa Bureau, a conference that aims to explore and celebrate what Germany meant to Mansfield and what it points to in her vision of the world.

Suggested topics for papers might include (but are not limited to):

  • Wörishofen and artistic inspiration: Mansfield’s In a German Pension
  • Bavaria and the German Pension stories: nationality, gender and satire
  • German poetry in the works of Mansfield (e.g. Heinrich Heine)
  • German music: classical and modernist
  • German art, architecture and visual culture in Mansfield’s writing
  • German/Prussian family connections: Elizabeth von Arnim
  • Mansfield, travel, Germany and ‘beyond’
  • Mansfield and fairy tales
  • The gothic and fantastic: Germanic sources and influences
  • The legacy of Mansfield in German writing today
  • The German reception of Mansfield’s works
  • German influences in Mansfield’s education (e.g. Walter Rippmann)
  • Translating into German / German translations of Mansfield’s work
  • Teaching and studying Mansfield in Germany today
  • Mansfield, Sebastian Kneipp, naturopathy and other holistic therapies
  • The Germans and Germany as sources for Mansfield’s imagination
  • Mansfield and Frieda von Richthofen (wife of D. H. Lawrence)
  • Mansfield as icon and inspiration for German cultural production

NB: All other topics will be considered

Abstracts of 200 words, together with a 50-word bio-sketch, should be sent to the conference organisers:

  • Dr Delia da Sousa Correa (Open University, UK),
  • Dr Gerri Kimber (University of Northampton, UK),
  • Monika Sobotta (Open University, UK)
  • and Professor Janet Wilson (University of Northampton, UK)

at kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org
New extended submission deadline: 23 January 2020

Conference Venue: The magnificent conference venue is at the theatre, and is very centrally located, about 10 min. away from Bad Wörishofen Station.
Address: Kurhaus Hauptstraße 16 (Main Street), 86825 Bad Wörishofen

Download the Conference leaflet.

(posted 11 December 2019, updated 5 January 2020)

Living Together in the United Kingdom in 2020
Toulouse Jean-Jaurès University, France, 26-27 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2019

As part of the preoccupations of CAS-Axis 3 (“Construction of the Individual and of the Collective”), this international conference will attempt to produce a comprehensive update on living together in the UK at a time when cohesion, both national and social, seems increasingly questioned and jeopardised.

The outcome of the referendum over continued EU membership held on 23 June 2016 revealed and indeed exacerbated substantial divides within the UK, between on the one hand England and Wales, favourable to exiting the European Union, and on the other hand Northern Ireland and above all Scotland, which largely voted ‘Remain’; between urban and rural Britain; between generations; between the various social classes etc.

The very future of the Union seems to be at stake, as the possibility of a new referendum on Scotland’s independence or the prospect of a reunited Ireland have been revived.

Other cleavages were brought to light in the weeks that followed the referendum, notably in the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report entitled Healing a Divided Britain, which portrayed a fragmented society, where racism, discrimination and prejudice remain widespread, British pro-activeness being affected by various obstacles, not least the austerity policies deployed by successive governments in the past decades. In September 2018 a report by the Social Metrics Commission emphasised a worsening of poverty and of social marginalisation: 14.2 million poor people, and among them, 4.5 million children. Many other examples could be listed. Among the themes relevant to this conference, papers could consider the following:

  • political crises and partisan reconfigurations
  • the future of the Union (Scotland’s, Wales’s and Northern Ireland’s place within the Union)
  • regional disparities
  • migration, asylum and diversity
  • social marginalisation and relegation
  • EU citizens in a post-Brexit UK
  • housing policy, in the private and public sectors
  • Health and the NHS
  • Gender and sexual minorities
  • Disability
  • political engagement, trade unions, local democracy
  • intergenerational relations

Speaker: Simon Ushewood (University of Surrey, https://www.simonusherwood.com/); provisional titl: “The new (and not-so-new) cleavages in the UK today”.

Venue : Centre de Ressources des Langues de l’Université Toulouse- Jean Jaurès

Fees: 40 €; 25 € for PhD students. The fees include lunches by participants.

250-word proposals should be sent, in English or in French, with a short biographical notice, at the latest on 15th November 2019 to the organisers: Vincent Latour (vincent.latour@univ-tlse2.fr) et  Nathalie Duclos (nathalie.duclos@univ-tlse2.fr).

A selection of papers will be published in a special issus of the journal l’Observatoire de la Société Britannique.

(posted 16 October 2019)

Revisiting Dystopia in Literature and the Visual Arts: 2nd Interdisciplinary Conference on Liteature and Image
UCAM, Universidad Católica de Murcia, Spain, 26-27 March 2020
Deadline for submissions: 15 Januay 2020

After a first edition devoted to the gothic genre, the 2nd Interdisciplinary Conference on Literature and Image will address and analyse -from a variety of perspectives- the transformations experienced by dystopian fiction since 1948 up to today within the fields of literature, cinema, TV series and other manifestations of popular culture.

Built around topics such as post-apocalyptic cataclysm, the conflict between ‘appearances’ and ‘reality’ in seemingly stable societies, the risk of ideological manipulation, or overwhelming fear of increasing dehumanization, these works of fiction provide valuable answers to the anxieties and uncertainties in contemporary society (the boundaries of technological development, the threat of politico-ideological conflicts, abrupt changes in ethical values, the shadow of biased mass-media, the obstacles for the construction of one’s identity, etc.). Oftentimes, the discovery of ‘hidden’ truths or the disintegration of social structures force the protagonists in these stories to undergo traumatic situations of crisis and hostility, propelling them to run away from the people and places they knew. Their previously ‘ideal’ society turns into a predatory force, chasing those who dare help others escape from the lie they live in: the lifting of the veil between ‘appearances’ and ‘reality’ reveals the image of an oppressive society that fosters the destruction of human dignity and individual freedom. A sense of spatial and temporal distance enables these literary and visual works to utter heartfelt pleas and warnings against the instances of dehumanization, injustice, inequality or destruction of ethical values perceived in the actual societies in which they were created.

Our conference will therefore put a substantial emphasis on the analysis of dystopian fiction as a window opened onto situations of crisis, conflict or destruction which carry the promise of a new beginning and (either implicitly or explicitly) advocate for the healing rediscovery of human values and an orderly reconstruction of society (in accordance with the basis of humanistic philosophy and the practice of democracy, civic commitment, sociability and ethics). In this sense, these works ultimately provide a trusting outlook towards the possibilities of human beings against a backdrop of oppression, exploitation or self- destruction. The Organizing Committee welcomes proposals for twenty-minute papers dealing with any of the topics listed below (see next page). Please note that this is a non-exhaustive list and that alternative related topics may also be sent for consideration. Similarly, the literary and visual works show between brackets should be taken as suggestions -other dystopian works are also welcome. The papers selected for the conference will serve as examples of the relevance and strength of this genre in contemporary society, while also inviting us to reflect on its shapeshifting possibilities and enduring fascination.

The Plenary Conference will be delivered by Prof. María Teresa Gibert Maceda (Department of Foreign Philologies and their Linguistics, UNED – National Distance Education University).

Contributions may be sent in English or Spanish. The deadline for submission is January the 15th, 2020. Selected papers will be published in an edited book or journal. Abstracts (between 300 and 400 words) stating the name, address and institutional affiliation of the participant(s) should be sent via e-mail, together with a separate 150-word biographical note, to bfilhol@ucam.edu

The conference fee is 80€ for participants: it includes admission to all sessions, plus coffee & meal tickets. One fee per participant will be charged. The student fee is 30€ (it includes coffee tickets). The conference dinner is not included in this fee and will have to be booked as a supplementary option. Conference booking opens in late January 2020: a registration link will be available via the conference webpage, which will be fully operative in forthcoming weeks. Any conference updates, the conference programme plus further details concerning accommodation and transport will be gradually available online.

Thematic areas

  • Resistance against Institutionalized Corruption, Repressive Violence and Mass-Media Manipulation (1984, Black Mirror, V for Vendetta, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, The Trial, THX 1138, Minority Report…).
  • Technological Advances. The Rise of Synthetic Identities (Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, Tron, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A .I. Artificial Intelligence, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ghost in the Shell…).
  • Running Away: The Rediscovery of Society and One’s Self (Logan’s Run, The Running Man, In Time, The Giver, Divergent, The Maze Runner…).
  • Power Relations. The Effects of Transgression on Our Selves, Interpersonal Bonds and the Social Tissue (The Handmaid’s Tale, Parable of the Sower, The Hunger Games, The Power, Shatter Me, Cazadores de luz,…).
  • Reconstruction Processes: Restoring One’s Identity and Transforming Society (Dune, Lágrimas en la lluvia, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Drowned World, City of Ember, Y: The Last Man, Alas, Babylon…).
  • Moral/Ethical Challenges and Responsibility –Eugenics, Cloning, Genetic Engineering, Trans-Humanism, etc (Gattaca, The Island, Atlas Shrugged, Never Let Me Go, The City of Lost Children, Las hijas de Tara, Abre los ojos /Vanilla Sky…).
  • Hope in the Wake of Adversity (Illness, Inequality, Stigmatization, Social Degradation…) (The Children of Men, Blindness, Equilibrium, The Stand, Wall-E, Elysium…).
  • Re-Assessing the Possibilities of Humans in the Wake of Collective Crisis (I am Legend, The Omega Man, Mad Max, When the Wind Blows, The Day of the Triffids, The Road, Fist of the North Star, Soylent Green…).
  • Virtual or Alternative Realities. Mind-Programming Routines (The Man in the High Castle, Total Recall, Dark City, Neuromancer, Ender’s Game, Ready Player One, Planet of the Apes, Matrix…).

Organizing Committee: President: Antonio José Miralles Pérez / Secretary: Benoît Filhol /Treasurer: José María Mesa Villar / Vocals: Ana González-Rivas Fernández (UAM) Mª del Mar Jiménez-Cervantes Arnao and María Inmaculada Parra Martínez

Scientific Committee: Antonio José Miralles Pérez, Benoît Filhol, José María Mesa Villar, Ana González-Rivas Fernández (UAM), Ignacio Segarra Taús, María Inmaculada Parra Martínez

(posted 23 December 2019)

D.H.Lawrence and the People: 34th International D.H.Lawrence Conference
Université Paris Nanterre, France, 26-28 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 10 November 2019

A conference organised by Centre de recherches anglophones, Université Paris Nanterre

The people is a more or less discreet or threatening presence in Lawrence’s fiction, a kind of collective character with its psychology and narrative function, or a topic for discussion between protagonists. It is also an important theme in the author’s non-fiction, “the political problem of the collective soul” as Gilles Deleuze puts it in his introduction to “Apocalypse.” One immediately thinks of the essay “Education of the People,” but the focus should not be exclusively on this controversial text. “The people,” that of the contemporary working class, is a theme of speculation from Lawrence’s first writings to the last. Even where Lawrence is tempted to romanticise exotic, primitive, or past peoples untouched by industrialization and modernity, we may perceive oblique references to his own people.

What people in Lawrence? And who does he write for? Both the polysemy of the term and the fact that the writer was himself “of the people” or “from this people” makes for complexity and probably renders these questions to which he responded with characteristic ambivalence more interesting ones.

The following is a non-exclusive list of possible topics of inquiry: Lawrence as a commentator of contemporary social theories, the will of the people, the people and the law, the social structure of primitive and modern societies, ethics and politics, leadership, the sense of superiority, colonized peoples, patriotism, intellectual influences and antagonisms;

The deadline for proposals is 10 November 2019. Priority will be given to proposals received before the deadline, but we will continue to accept proposals until 20 November 2019.

Please send a 200 word abstract to

Ginette Roy, ginette.katz.roy@gmail.com
and
Cornelius Crowley cornelius.crowley@parisnanterre.fr

Link to our journal Etudes Lawrenciennes : http://www.revues.org/10111

(posted 17 June 2019)

41st APEAA Meeting
Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Aveiro, Portugal, 26-28 March 2020
NEW extended deadline for proposals: 17 Febuary 2020

The Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Aveiro is very pleased to announce the 41st Conference of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies, which will take place between 26 and 28 March 2020.

Proposals for papers, panels and roundtables are welcome on a wide range of topics that fall within the field of English Studies (literary and cultural studies, postcolonial studies, performance, film and theatre studies, gender and sexuality studies, translation studies, linguistics, language teaching and methodology).

Although the conference programme will take into consideration a plethora of themes and issues anchored in the domain of English Studies, the conference invites proposals imbued with the spirit of the 1920s and the 2020s – inaugural  decades launching a series of social, economic, cultural, scientific, artistic and literary changes shaping the world.

1920s

  • ‘The Lost Generation’: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The (Post)Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Rights
  • The modernist novel and modernist poetry: Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound
  • New Woman Fiction
  • The Bloomsbury Group
  • Eugenics and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
  • The Immigration Acts of 1917-1924 in the USA
  • Prohibition: The Progressive Era
  • Race, Class and Gender
  • The Influence of Psychoanalysis
  • Social Darwinism

2020s

  • Brexit and Ireland: Could the Troubles return?
  • The Post-Brexit Imagination
  • Post-Brexit Literature
  • The Era of “Make America Great Again”

Keynote speakers to be confirmed

Book Presentations: APEAA members are also invited to present their own recently published academic books and/or translations (2018-2020).

Submissions and queries should be sent by e-mail to:

dlc-apeaameetingaveiro2020@ua.pt

Please include the following information with your proposal:

  • the full title of your paper / panel / roundtable;
  • a 250-300 word description of your paper / panel / roundtable;
  • your name, postal address and e-mail address;
  • your institutional affiliation and position;
  • a short bionote;
  • AV requirements (if any)

Working languages: English and Portuguese

Conference webpage: http://apeaameetingaveiro2020.web.ua.pt

New extended deadline for submissions: 17 February 2020
Notification of acceptance: 21 February 2020
Deadline for registration: 29 February 2020

Registration Fee (APEAA, SAAS and HELAAS members): 60 Euros
Registration Fee (non-members): 90 Euros
Student fee (APEAA, SAAS and HELAAS members): 30 Euros
Student fee (non-members): 45 Euros

Registration payment details: 
Name of the Payee: Universidade de Aveiro
NIB: 0035 0836 0000 1785 2307 0
IBAN: PT 50 0035 0836 0000 1785 2307 0
SWIFT / BIC: CGDIPTPL
Bank: Caixa Geral de Depósitos

Organising Committee:
Reinaldo Silva (reinaldosilva@ua.pt)
Aline Ferreira (aline@ua.pt)

(posted 16 October 2019, updated 26 January 2020)

Over the Horizon: Comparative Perspectives on Literature
London, UK, 28 March 2020
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2019

Conference website: https://comparativeliterature.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

As Sarah Lawall stated in her essay, the world-literature perspective is not one, but multiple. By looking at literature comparatively, we can enrich our understanding of the historical and cultural context of the literary works, to look over the horizon of our own tradition and to see how cultures interact.

The conference will consider the theory and the practice of comparative literature and will discuss the transformations and travels of literary genres and texts across time and space. It will explore the connections of literature with history, philosophy, politics, and literary theory, and study the intersections of literature with other cultural forms such as film, visual arts, music and media.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • World literatures
  • Postcolonial literature
  • History of literature
  • Multilingualism in literature
  • Translations, adaptations, screenings
  • Literature and politics
  • Literature and philosophy
  • Literature and psychoanalysis
  • Literature and music
  • Literature and art
  • Literature and sciences
  • Literature and gender
  • Children’s literature
  • Travel literature
  • Intertextuality and hypertextuality
  • Reception and transmission
  • Teaching literature

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 31 October 2019 to: comparative.literature@lcir.co.uk.
Please download paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Full registration fee – 100 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX

(posted 23 September 2019)

International Conference on Food Studies “Culinary Evolutions”
London, UK, 28-29 March 2020
Deadine for proposals: 20 November 2019

Conference website: https://food.lcir.co.uk/

Organised by London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

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

This conference will explore food as a complex cultural product, an indicator of social, religious and political identity. It will focus on people’s relationship with food and discuss how food choices are determined by historical period, region, class, gender, kinship and/or ethnicity.

The conference will approach the study of food across a range of disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, culture studies, politics, economics, medicine, biology, psychology, etc.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

  • Food systems and diets
  • Eating/drinking habits and etiquettes
  • Food and rituals
  • Cooking/eating spaces
  • Culinary professions
  • Food and health
  • Food and power
  • Hunger, starvation, and malnutrition
  • Dangerous foods and poisons
  • Cookbooks and food magazines
  • Culinary festivals and TV shows
  • Food in social media
  • Food as pleasure
  • Gastronomic tourism
  • Food, biodiversity and sustainability
  • Agriculture and food technology
  • Food safety and quality

Paper proposals up to 250 words and a brief biographical note should be sent by 20 November 2019 to: food@lcir.co.uk. Please download the Paper proposal form from the Conference website.

Standard registration fee – 180 GBP
Student registration fee – 160 GBP

Provisional conference venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX

(posted 27 September 2019)