Postcolonial Narrations Forum 2023: Queering Postcolonial Worlds
University of Bremen (Germany), 6-7 October 2023
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2023
In Queer Phenomenology (2006), Sara Ahmed explores racial and sexual orientations in the world, writing “Queer orientations are those that put within reach bodies that have been made unreachable by the lines of conventional genealogy. Queer orientations might be those that don’t line up, which by seeing the world ‘slantwise’ allow other objects to come into view” (107). To queer – to disrupt hegemonic practices – and to be queer, then, are ways of orienting oneself “slantwise” or “obliquely” within a larger frame of heteronormativity and white supremacy. Looking at how orientations allow us to situate ourselves in the world, we can begin to challenge how ostensibly postcolonial worlds intersect with queer subjectivities and the plurality of queer experiences. Such intersections are also spaces where the terminology of “postcolonial” may be problematized, challenged, reformulated, or discarded. Related yet distinct theoretical approaches such as decolonial, anticolonial, Indigenous methods of knowing, and other critical theoretical shifts highlight and problematize the Western genealogy of “postcoloniality.” Can these methods be read as ways of queering and of disrupting postcolonial worlds?
In order to engage with this topic, we propose to organize the 2023 Postcolonial Narrations Forum under the title “Queering Postcolonial Worlds.” The main objective of the conference is to probe and interrogate the overlaps and intersections between queer studies and postcolonial studies while maintaining a critical approach to disciplinary boundaries and their assumptions and limitations. In so doing, we establish continuities to the 2022 conference’s focus on “Postcolonial Matters of Life and Death” in productive ways. As Eng and Puar argue with regard to queer theory, there is a need to continue “debates about which materialities matter and how they matter under biopolitical regimes of discipline and control” (2020, 4). This includes thinking about the mortality, livability, and grievability, particularly of queer subjects throughout the world who have been affected by colonization. Here, questions of how to rethink queer studies in relation to decoloniality and how to queer postcolonial studies come together. Queer studies/western queer theory are not exempt from (re)producing exclusions that uphold “a normative queer liberal rights project” (Eng and Puar 3) and remain within the frame of the nation-state in their pursuance of rights and representation. Instead, Fatima El-Tayeb posits “queering” as a means of resisting the framework of the nation-state when she writes of “queering and destabilizing the exclusionary fictive European ethnicity” (European Others, xiii). Furthermore, queering postcolonial studies might allow for a rigorous critique and renegotiation of the discipline, addressing tensions between postcolonial theory and Indigenous studies as well as between postcolonial studies and decoloniality and decolonization. Taking inspiration from Qwo-Li Driskill et al.’s question “What does a queer decolonization of our homelands, bodies and psyches look like?” (219), we propose to explore the “center” and “periphery” of queer studies as well as the representation of queer subjectivities in cultural production.
We welcome papers both on and beyond the following topics:
- Predominant whiteness and Europeanness in western queer theory
- The interrelation of white supremacy, capitalism, and heteronormativity
- The heteronormativity of the settler colonial state
- The queer decolonial body and decolonial understandings of “queering”
- Life, death, and grievability
- Queer optimism and pessimism
- Queering power structures in the postcolonial world
- Representations of the gender non-conforming and trans* postcolonial body and consciousness in film, literature, and other media
- Religious hegemony and the vilification of queerness in the postcolonial world
- The erasure of Indigenous and Black queer epistemologies
- The aesthetics of queer Black and Indigenous resistance and survivance
- Two-Spirit epistemologies and the “sovereign erotic”
- Queer practices of worldmaking
- Queer Black and Indigenous Futurisms
- Intersections of queer and postcolonial in the digital space
Interested postgraduate students are encouraged to send abstracts for 20-minute-long presentations (ca. 300 words + 5 keywords) and a short bio note (ca. 100-150 words) to postcolonialnarrations@g-a-p-s.net by June 30, 2023. We will send out acceptance emails and further info by mid-July.
The conference, organized by Corina Wieser-Cox (Bremen), Oluwadunni Talabi (Bremen), Rita Maricocchi (Münster), and Dorit Neumann (Münster), is planned to be held in person in Bremen, following current COVID regulations, on October 6th & 7th, 2023. Single events or panels may be held in a hybrid form. In case the circumstances change, the format might switch to an online event. The conference will include a keynote-workshop by Prof. Dr. Shola Adenekan (Ghent University) and a panel on the topic: Cultivating Solidarity Networks in Academia.
Additionally, we are planning to publish select conference papers specifically pertaining to queer Indigenous and Black literatures and texts produced in the Americas, i.e., Turtle Island, Mesoamerica, Abya Yala in a special issue of the online journal AmLit – American Literatures. If you are interested in contributing your paper to the issue, please prepare to have a first draft (ca. 6000-8000 words) ready for submission by Nov. 15, 2023. We are currently exploring options for a second publication opportunity that would cater to conference papers relating to topics beyond the American Studies context.
Works Cited
- Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke UP, 2006. Driskill, Qwo-Li, et al., editors. Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature. U of Arizona P, 2011.
- El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. U of Minnesota P, 2011.
- Eng, David L. and Jasbir K. Puar. “Introduction: Left of Queer.” Social Text 145, vol. 38, no. 4, Duke UP, 2020.
Website: https://postcolonial-narrations.net/
CFP
(Posted 8 April 2023)
Liquid Stories: practices of adaptation and rewriting in contemporary theatre.
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania. 6-7 October 2023.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 30 June 2023.
Event organised by
Dana Monah, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
Rationale / Presentation of the event
In theatre and performance, the notions of adaptation and rewriting appear as particularly fluid and prolific, designating practices as diverse as transgressive translations, (trad)adaptations, adaptive performances, metatheatrical recycling or performances loosely based on former texts. Derived works are the result of complex interweavings between textual and scenic alterations, which put forward both their structural dependence on the source work and the ambition of reading it critically.
The “Liquid stories: practices of adaptation and rewriting in contemporary theatre” international conference aims to identify patterns and turns in the narrative aesthetics of this cultural practice. What texts does contemporary theatre most often engage with? When does a text become sufficiently autonomous from the staged text, so that it can be considered a new work? What is the status of the text in a stage adaptation? Is there a clear-cut line between a stage adaptation and a dramatic adaptation, or between an adaptation and a rewriting?
Topics include (without being limited to) the following areas:
Textual challenges
- Telling the story otherwise
- Re-adaptations: adaptations haunted by other rewritings or by adaptations of the same text
- The treatment of characters
Stage adaptations and rewritings
- Stage rewritings
- The role of the text in stage adaptations
- Staging rewritings
- Beyond the text: dance, music, performance in theatrical adaptations
Aesthetic and political challenges
- Adaptors and rewriters as theoreticians of their own practice
- Treating the source work as a myth
- The adaptation as a critical reading of the source text
- The spectator’s role: recognizing the source text in the secondary text
Timeline
- 30 June 2023 – proposal submission
- 15 July 2023 – notification of acceptance
- 6-7 October 2023 – conference
Website
Contact detailsdanamonah@yahoo.fr
CFP
(Posted 3 June 2023)
Borders in the English-Speaking World: Mapping and Countermapping, International conference organized by UR SEARCH.
University of Strasbourg (France), 9-10 October 2023.
Proposals: 1 May 2023.
Keynote speakers:
- Ladan Niayesh (Université Paris Cité/LARCA)
- Michael Darroch (York University) and Lee Rodney (University of Windsor) – The research-creation hub IN/TERMINUS
- Donna Akrey and Taien Ng-Chan (Artists, Hamilton Perambulatory Unit)
This conference organized by the SEARCH research group at the University of Strasbourg starts from two intellectual premises: the first consists in acknowledging the continued relevance of a reflection on the history of borders, border representations and bordering practices in the English-speaking world, and the second in asserting the importance of mapping and countermapping as powerful modes of aesthetic construction and critical thinking in relation to borders.
How do borders as spatial and geopolitical entities emerge as objects of simultaneous mapping and countermapping leading to competing or alternative discourses that reveal underlying ideologies, specific tactics of representation and creative appropriations? How do literature, art, historical discourses and material culture perform acts of mapping and countermapping in the representation of borders, alongside or against maps?
We welcome proposals that examine the representation of borders in the English-speaking world from the perspective of mapping and countermapping within a large temporal framework (from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period) and in a variety of discourses and media (literature, art, historical discourses, geographic and cartographic representations, material culture).
Maps as constructive systems are the result of imaginative and ideological processes as well as of scientific procedures. Although they may appear immutable and unalterable, they are expressions of a cartographic imagination (Tiberghien), predicated on specific contextual considerations, shaped by representational conventions, informed by given epistemologies, political agendas, cultural approaches (Lounissi, Peraldo & Trouillet). Shifting points of view and competing political frameworks often lead to distinct perspectives on maps and mapping, giving rise to phenomena of countermapping, especially in representations of tense borderland regions. The ideological dimensions of the map that have become prominent subjects of academic research over the past decades have completely changed an older paradigm that associated maps and map-making with absolute epistemological and representational accuracy and transparency. The advent of critical cartography in the 1980s consecrated the map as a “proposition about the world” and map-makers as “selective creators of a world” (Wood, 39-51). The manipulative power of the map was highlighted by geographers like James Ackerman in Decolonizing the Map or Mark Monmonier in How to Lie with Maps, which examine maps in contexts of colonialism, as well as political and commercial propaganda. However, we have recently witnessed a distinct approach in the acknowledgement of the “ambivalence” of cartography (Besse and Tiberghien, 12), which has led to the denunciation of its manipulative rhetoric and political complicity in colonial and warfare projects, but also to the celebration of its huge potential for creative and subversive appropriation in the retelling of alternative histories, in the emergence of experimental modes of representation, communal or subjective. From the “deconstruction” of cartography (Harley) we have moved towards a phase of “reconstruction” (Besse) that recognizes the creative power of the map over time, its adaptability to multiple appropriations, and its participation in the creation of hybrid forms of knowledge and aesthetic representation together with literary and artistic discourses.
After the democratization of cartography and the emergence of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cartography became “unbound” and opened up to alternative communities of map-makers who are not professional cartographers (Pinder). Counter-mapping strategies have thrived over the past decades and various community atlases have been produced which have attempted to put silenced histories, toponymies and marginalized groups on the map, reexamining centuries of history (Solnit; Bhagat and Mogel; Russert and Battle-Baptiste). All these forms of counter-mapping have reinvented the practice of cartography, making space for obliterated histories and place names.
The conference seeks to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between geography, history, literature and art within the combined thematic, theoretical and critical orientation provided by our keywords (the nexus of borders, mapping and countermapping in the English-speaking world). Our four Canadian guests will lead a “walkshop” during the conference on the Strasbourg/Kehl border which all conference participants are invited to attend.
Proposals in English or French (up to 300 words), accompanied by a short biographical notice, should be sent to
- Marianne Hillion (mhillion@unistra.fr),
- Monica Manolescu (manoles@unistra.fr) and
- Ghislain Potriquet (potriquet@unistra.fr)
by May 1st 2023.
References
- Akerman, James R., Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
- Besse, Jean-Marc, “Cartographies et pensée visuelle. Réflexions sur la schématisation visuelle,” in Laboulais, Isabelle, Les Usages des cartes, XVIIe-XIXe siècles : pour une approche pragmatique des productions cartographiques, Strasbourg : Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2008, 19-32.
- Bhagat, Alexis et Mogel, Lize, An Atlas of Radical Cartography, Los Angeles: Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2010.
- Besse, Jean-Marc et Tiberghien, Gilles (dir.), Opérations cartographiques, Arles : Actes Sud, 2017.
- Darroch, Michael and Marchassault, Janine (eds.), Cartographies of Place. Navigating the Urban, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.
- Harley, Brian, “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographica 26:2, 1989, 1-20.
- Monmonier, Mark, How to Lie with Maps, Chicago: Chicago UP, 2018 (1991).
- Lounissi, Carine, Peraldo, Emmanuelle & Trouillet, Agnès (dir.), Cartes et cartographies dans le monde anglophone au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles/Maps and Mapping in the English-Speaking World in the 17th and 18th Centuries, XVII-XVIII. Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 78/2021.
- Pinder, David, “Cartographies Unbound.” Cultural Geographies 14:3, 2007, 453-462.
- Rodney, Lee, Looking Beyond Borderlines. North America’s Frontier Imagination, London: Routledge, 2019.
- Russert, Britt, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018.
- Solnit, Rebecca, Infinite City. A San Francisco Atlas, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
- Tiberghien, Gilles, Finis Terrae. Imaginaires et imaginations cartographiques, Paris: Bayard, 2007.Wood, Denis, Rethinking the Power of Maps, New York: The Guilford Press, 2010.
(Posted 8 April 2023)
Women Staging and Restaging the Nineteenth Century II International Conference
Universitat de València (Spain), 18-20 October 2023
Deadline for submission of proposals: 5 May 2023
Event organised by: Laura Monrós-Gaspar (UV), Rosario Arias (UMA), Vicky Puchal (VIU), “Literture, Arts and Performance” Research Group, Universitat de València
Presentation of the event
Connections between contemporary theatrical productions by women who revisit and re-stage the nineteenth century, or the ways in which Victorian stage practices have informed Neo-Victorian fiction and theatre written by women were debated at the 2022 conference. As a follow-up to such discussions and funded by the GVA Research Project (AICO/2021/225), we open the Call for Papers for the Women Staging and Restaging the Nineteenth Century II international conference. The conference will be held in person at the Universitat de València with the hope that it will expand our discussion on the relation between women and the nineteenth-century stage with papers and panels that consider (but are not limited to) the following range of topics and areas of research:
- Nineteenth-century women staging the nineteenth century worldwide.
- Nineteenth-century women staging the nineteenth century from a transnational and transatlantic perspective.
- Nineteenth-century women staging the nineteenth century in the colonies.
- Classical receptions and women actresses, playwrights and managers in the nineteenth century and its afterlives.
- Neo-Victorian re-stagings of the nineteenth century by women.
- Contemporary women playwrights and artistic directors looking at the nineteenth century.
- Nineteenth-century actresses, women playwrights, and managers at present.
- Fictional recreations of (neo-) Victorian actresses, playwrights, managers, and producers in novels, in film and on the stage.
- Rewritings of nineteenth-century spectacle in (neo-) Victorian and contemporary fiction by women writers.
- Rewritings of nineteenth-century spectacle in (neo-) Victorian and contemporary theatre by women playwrights.
Keynote speakers:
- Jim Davis (University of Warwick)
- Viv Gardner (University of Manchester)
- Fiona Macintosh (University of Oxford)
- Kate Newey (University of Exeter)
- Benjamin Poore (University of York)
Advisory Board:
- Mireia Aragay (Universitat de Barcelona)
- Stefano Evangelista (University of Oxford)
- Isobel Hurst (Goldsmith, University of London)
- Begoña Lasa Álvarez (Universidade da Coruña)
- Janice Norwood (University of Hertfordshire)
- Beth Palmer (University of Surrey)
- Eugenia Perojo Arronte (Universidad de Valladolid)
- Lin Pettersson (Universidad de Málaga)
- Antonija Primorac (University of Rijeka)
Website
Contact details
(Posted 4 March 2023)
(Re)translating-Rewriting the Greek and Latin Classics in the XXIst century.
Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, 19-20 October 2023.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 May 2023.
Event organised by
- Jessica Stephens – translation studies
- Sarah Montin – literature and translation
Senior Lecturers
TRACT (Prismes EA4398)
Sorbonne-Nouvelle
Keynote speaker : Alice Oswald
Presentation of the event
The early XXIst century has witnessed a resurgence of interest in the Greek and Latin classics with new translations achieving widespread readership as well as commercial and critical success — Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of the Odyssey is a case in point, as is Seamus Heaney’s celebrated posthumous translation of book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid (2016), read on the BBC by Ian McKellen only a few days after publication. Concurrently, these same classical texts have been reacquiring, through creative translation and adaptation, a vital place in contemporary poetry and theatre, as emblematized by Simon Armitage’s Still (2016), Alice Oswald’s Memorial (2011) or Anne Carson’s An Oresteia (2009). At a time when most of their audience cannot read Greek or Latin, when “dead languages” are disappearing from academic curricula, the wealth of recent translations, “versions”, excavations or irreverent “translucence” (Oswald), imitations, tributes, adaptations and rewritings, reveals that the classical world remains, now seemingly more than ever, a source of inspiration for specialized translators, writers, poets as well as the public at large.
Contemporary trends have been marked by an increased freedom in translation processes, even in critical or academic retranslations based on philological arguments. This “creative turn” in translation practices fruitfully blurs the lines between translation, criticism and literature (as seen in Josephine Balmer’s Piecing Together the Fragments: Translating Classical Verse, Creating Contemporary Poetry where she examines the crossovers between scholarly work and creative writing) and encourages us to explore the porous zones between retranslation, rewriting, retelling, adaptation and transmutation. Are these growing practices pushing back the boundaries of translation, subverting its meaning as they renegotiate the relationship between translation and “original literature”?
Other questions arise when confronting contemporary versions of classical texts in English. Does a translator’s lack of training in Greek and Latin necessarily challenge their legitimacy and authority? What is the status of “intermediary translations” and cribs? What does the disappearance of the bilingual format, except for scholarly publications, mean? Does this give rise to a new form of invisibilization of the translator? How does this affect the relation between the original work and its translation? A current trope in translators’ preface is the enjoinder to “update/rejuvenate the classics”. Do we see instances of “smoothing over” problematic passages in order to correspond to more contemporary usages and mores? Is the classical source text transformed by contemporary strategies of domestication? Finally, the XXIst century has seen the growing importance of political issues in translation studies: how do questions of gender, ethnicity and class, postcolonial and decolonial issues, as well as new processes such as “eco-translation” affect, interrogate and revivify translation practices (as well as become effective marketing tools)? How do politically engaged retranslations allow for a critical revaluation and deconstruction of canonical texts (as for instance Emily Wilson’s Odyssey, or Femi Osofisan’s Tegonni, An African Antigone)?
Papers, focusing on XXIst century (re)translations and (re)creations, can address, but are not restricted to, the aforementioned topics. Preference will be given to proposals offering text-based analyses, close readings and stylistic commentary.
Please send a 250-word proposal and a short bio-bibliography to the organisers:
(Posted 27 April 2023)
International Symposium American Dreams, American Crises.
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon Portugal, 20-21 October 2023.
Deadline for submission of proposals 15 July 2023
Event organised by
- American Intersections Research Strand,
- CETAPS,
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
- Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal
Sixty years after Martin Luther King articulated, in his “I have a Dream” Speech, during the March on Washington, a vision of basic civic equality that, in his words, was “deeply rooted in the American Dream”, this symposium proposes to interrogate both this omnipresent construct, frequently taken for granted and assumed to be the basis of a sense of national exceptionalism, and the many ways in which contemporary social, political and cultural fractures and divisions are creating the perception of a contemporary distinctive crisis, vividly symbolized by the suspension of acquired rights in the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v Wade, and by the January 6 attack on the Capitol and support for election denialism, undermining what Tocqueville described, in Democracy in America, as “the charm of anticipated success” that has framed many American collective discourses.
The Symposium is particularly interested in scrutinizing the complex implications of that sense of interruption of a collective project, analyzing how contemporary creative and analytical voices have been reflecting on the fragility and fault lines of the concept of the American Dream and mapping the widening gaps between apparently irreconcilable Americas.
We welcome therefore contributions coming from a plurality of angles, namely literary studies, cultural studies, drama, film, media, music and visual culture studies, history, sociology and political science. Possible topics include (but are not limited) to
- American mythologies of national exceptionalism
- The many Americas (social and economic widening gaps)
- Racial and gender inequalities
- Contemporary civil rights movements
- Challenges to critical thought and school banning of books
- Closing of borders (immigration, migration and senses on non-belonging)
- Environmental threats and environmental justice movements
- Populism and radical extreme movements
- Deepfakes and new media landscapes
- American demographic maps (intergenerational and urban/ rural dissonances)
- Visions of American Futures
Keynote speakers
- Amaia Ibarraran Bigalondo – Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea /University of the Basque Country
- Gaetano Di Tommaso – Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, Middelberg.
The Symposium will accept on-line presentations which will be assembled in specific on-line panels.
Timeline
- Abstract submission July 15, 2023
- Confirmation of acceptance by July 31, 2023
- Registration opens September 10, 2023
Website https://americandreams503.wordpress.com/
Contact details for further information contact Teresa Botelho tdbs@fcsh.unl.pt and/or Isabel Oliveira imom@fcsh.unl.pt
CFP
(Posted 24 April 2023)
The Seventeenth International Conference of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS).
Harmony and Chaos: The Dialectics of Order and Disorder
Chinese Culture University, Taipei (Taiwan), 20-21 October 2023
Deadlines of submissions: January 6, 2023
Event organised by
Department of English Language and Literature, Chinese Culture University
Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS)
Presentation
The ideas of order and disorder are universal conceptual categories found across diverse disciplines and cultures. They often emerge as a pair of opposites that help humans characterize observed phenomena, experiences, and imagination. Changes in regimes, the development of societies, and the evolution of cultural trends, for instance, are sometimes comprehended through the filter of order and disorder. Representations in arts and literature may also be examined under pairs of similar attributes, such as symmetry and asymmetry, harmony and disharmony, unity and disunity, and so forth.
This conference calls for research from scholars working in art history, literature, philosophy, history, geography, religious studies, cultural studies, classical studies, anthropology, social sciences, and beyond. We also welcome studies on the cultural dialogue between East and West. Topics for consideration might include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Explorations of cosmology, creation, or world views in relation to systems and/or chaos, entropy and/or negentropy, etc.
- Analyses on art and visualization that involves symmetry, asymmetry, or elements concerning order and/or disorder
- Explorations of musical compositions in terms of harmony and/or cacophony
- Examinations on issues of religious doctrines, spirituality, heresy, or moral values with regard to unity and/or anarchy, moderation and/or excess, or other aspects in close relation to order and/or disorder.
- Critical interpretations of specific works addressing issues of concord and/or discord, discordia concors, or other related aspects
TACMRS warmly invites papers in English or Chinese that include and reach beyond the traditional chronological and disciplinary borders of Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern Studies.
Submission Guidelines
- Paper proposals for 20-minute presentations and panel proposals (with 3 speakers) are welcomed
- The deadline of submission is January 6, 2023.
- We accept online submissions only. To submit your proposal, please follow these steps:
- Email your abstract (250 words in English or 500 words in Chinese with 3-6 keywords in MS word format) to TACMRS.ccu@gmail.com.
- Fill out the contributor data form at https://forms.gle/2G9HpT9y1j4KF1wq6.
Your submission will NOT be considered without completing the above two steps.
- All abstracts will be subject to blind reviews.
- Please note, presenters generally should be members of TACMRS if they reside in Taiwan. Membership application forms can be downloaded from the TACMRS website or via email upon request.
Website
https://sites.google.com/view/tacmrs2023
Contact details
- For information about the association and membership, please visit the TACMRS website at https://tacmrs.org.tw/.
- For information about the conference, please go to the conference website at https://sites.google.com/view/tacmrs2023.
- Information about the hosting institution may be found at https://eng.pccu.edu.tw/ and https://www.pccu.edu.tw/.
- Conference organizer: TACMRS.ccu@gmail.com
Chia-Yin Huang, Associate Professor
Department of English Language and Literature, Chinese Culture University
55, Hwa-Kang Rd., Yang-Ming-Shan, Taipei, 11114, Taiwan R. O. C.
(Posted 19 November 2022)
7th International Conference of the English Department: English Language and Literature Studies: Modern Perspectives and Beyond.
University of Belgrade – Faculty of Philology, Belgrade (Serbia). 21-22 October 2023
Submission of abstracts: 15 May 2023
The English Department at the Faculty of Philology is pleased to announce its seventh international conference on English language, literature and culture studies. The aim of this event is to promote an exchange of ideas across different areas and theoretical frameworks of English linguistics and anglophone literary/cultural studies throughout a broad academic community. We invite both traditional and modern methodological approaches to English studies, as well as comparative research paradigms.
Proposals for papers and posters addressing diverse issues within the very broad theme of the conference, English Language, Literature and Culture Studies, will be considered for inclusion in the conference programme in the following fields of study:
- Theoretical Linguistics
- Applied Linguistics and ESL/EFL Language Teaching
- Literature Studies
- Culture Studies
- Translation/Interpreting Studies
Plenary speakers
- István Kecskés (Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, USA) –
- Alison Mackey (Georgetown University, USA)
- Elizabeth Archibald (Durham University, UK)
- Michael McAteer (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary)
- The official language of the conference is English.
Each paper will be allotted 20 minutes (15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for discussion).
Abstract submission guidelines
Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and should be submitted via EasyAbs on LinguistList at the following link: https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/ELLS_MPAB. Authors will be prompted to create an account, fill in the form and submit the abstract.
In case of any questions, the Organizing Team may be contacted at: ells.mpab@gmail.com.
Important dates
- Submission of abstracts for full paper presentations: May 15, 2023
- Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2023
Conference fee
The early bird conference fee is 100 Euros through July 15, 2023. After this deadline, the regular conference fee is 120 Euros. The fee includes:
- conference pack
- coffee break refreshments
PhD students will be allowed a discounted conference fee of 50 Euros through July 15, 2023, or 60 Euros after this date.
Conference website
https://ells.mpab.fil.bg.ac.rs
CFP
(Posted 4 March 2023)
FILLM 29th Congress: Languages, Literatures, and Cultures: Repositioning the Past, Innovating the Present
University of Ghana, Legon. 23-25 October 2023
Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2023
The Federation Internationale des Langues et Littératures Modernes (FILLM), in collaboration with the School of Languages, University of Ghana, invites proposals for individual papers and roundtable panels for its 29th Congress, which is themed Languages, Literatures, and Cultures: Repositioning the Past, Innovating the Present, to be held from 23rd to 25th October 2023 at University of Ghana, Legon.
The conference will address the following themes:
- Local and global perspectives
- Digital technologies and literature of the future
- Language, literature, film
- Human and environmental issues
- Communicational ethics: Language, literature, translation
- Education and internationalization
- African languages and literature in international contexts
All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper categories are welcome:
Panel Proposals
Panels should fall within the broad theme of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures: Repositioning the Past, Innovating the Present. Apart from that, it is up to the panel organizer(s) to decide on the format (roundtable, normal individual paper presentation, etc.). FILLM would like to encourage its member associations to propose panels that address their area of study, but within the broad area of the conference theme. Panels will be categorized into the following streams, for which individual proposals of abstracts may be submitted.
Panels should have two co-conveners (panel organizers) from different institutions.
At least one of the convenors should attend face-to-face, and have a PhD degree.
Delegates’ participation is limited to one panel per person. However, panelists may also convene one plenary session, roundtable or be a discussant in another panel/plenary session/ roundtable.
Networks (AHP) (ASAA) (GHANA STUDIES) etc., panels should be submitted by respective network conveners. The network name must be appended to the title of the proposed panel in square brackets.
Panel submissions from individuals from Africa or the African diaspora are specifically encouraged.
Each panel (proposal) should appoint one main organizer/convener/chair who will be responsible for compiling the submitted proposals/abstracts and communication with the congress organizers. Panel proposals should include the following:
- Title for the panel
- A 300-word abstract describing the topic
- A brief description of the format (e.g., roundtable)
- Title and brief descriptions of each panel participants’ contribution (150 words)
- Contact and affiliation details for the main panel organizer
- Contact and affiliation details for each of the panel participants
Panel proposals should be submitted on EasyAbs at http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/29FillmCongress
Paper Submission
Individual papers must address the theme of the congress. Before you propose a paper or roundtable contribution, please read the theme of the congress, the information below, and then browse the list of panels. Please note that an individual must not make more than one single-authored paper proposal or roundtable contribution (although they may also convene one panel/roundtable; or be a discussant or chair in one panel).
Submissions for individual papers should include the following:
- Full name of author(s)
- Professional affiliation and address
- Title of the proposed paper
- Abstract of not more than 250 words
- Name of the sub-theme to which the paper is intended as a contribution
Individual abstracts should be submitted on EasyAbs at http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/29FillmCongress
Deadline for all submissions: March 31st, 2023
Please send all queries to fillmcongress29@ug.edu.gh.
(Posted 1 April 2023)
Williams/Levertov, Levertov/Williams 1923-2023: Confluences.
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 26-27 October 2023.
Abstract submission: 21 July 2023.
This hybrid conference (an online and onsite event) celebrates the relationship between two influential American poets, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) and Denise Levertov (1923-1997). It aims to explore the shared views, poetics, and engagement with history and social reality in the works of Williams and Levertov, as well as their differences and divergences.
William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov were both crucial figures during Modernism, on the transition to Objectivism, the 1950s poetry and beyond. The year 1923 marks the publication of Williams’s Spring and All, and the birth of Levertov. This centennial celebration is also sixty years since William’s passing. Both poets’ works feature a commitment to precise and concrete language, a concern with social and political issues, and an exploration of the intersections between poetry and other forms of cultural expression.
This conference welcomes papers on a wide range of topics related to Williams and Levertov’s poetry, including but not limited to:
- Williams and Levertov: their legacies and influence on US poetry
- The Objectivist Poets and their dialogue with Williams and Levertov
- The role of politics and activism in their poetry
- Form and structure in their works
- The importance of place and locality in their poetry
- The influence of other writers on their work
- The relationship between their poetry and other forms of cultural expression, such as visual art and music
We invite submissions from scholars working in all areas of literary and cultural studies, including poetry, modernism, poetic groups, gender studies, spirituality and testimony.
Deadline:
Please submit a 400-word abstract and a brief bio (150 words) to the organizing committee by July 21, 2023. Accepted participants will be notified by July 31, 2023.
Organizing committee:
- Cristina M. Gamez Fernandez (UCO): cristina.gamez@uco.es;
- Jose Manuel Rodriguez Herrera (ULPGC): jose.rodriguez@ulpgc.es
- Esther Sanchez-Pardo (UCM): esanchez_pardo@filol.ucm.es
Venue:
The conference, jointly organized by Universidad de Cordoba, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Universidad Complutense, will take place at Universidad Complutense on October 26-27, 2023.
We are also exploring the possibility of publishing a volume of selected papers from the conference.
Registration fees:
- Regular presenters (onsite and online): 80 euros (100 euro after August 10)
- Student presenters (onsite and online): 40 euro (50 euro after August 10)
- All non-presenting onsite and online participants: free
CFP
(Posted 6 July 2023)
Hardy and Heritage Conference
Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, Paris. 26-28 October 2023.
Deadline for submitting proposals: 3 July 2023
This international conference aims to examine notions of heritage and legacy in Thomas Hardy’s writings, career and influence.
Part of the conference will focus in particular on the links between Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.
Organised by FATHOM, the French Association for Thomas Hardy studies, with support from CY Cergy Paris University (UMR 9022 “Héritage”), Sorbonne Nouvelle University (PRISMES EA 4398) and Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 University (EMMA research team)
From the antiquary’s fortuitous discovery of Tess’s prestigious ancestors to the complex trans-generational transmission process in The Well Beloved, questions of genealogy, filiation, and transmission appear in all of Thomas Hardy’s novels, whether from a genetic, material, financial or even purely legal perspective (through the transmission of money, objects, property or values, as well as misappropriation, dispossession etc.). Traces of the past – whether historical, familial or even personal – run deep in the novels’ diegesis, raising questions of inheritance, legitimate or illegitimate transmission and continuity as well as historical ruptures.
Heritage-making, or “heritagization”, is both a symbolic and very concrete process. One may think of how, with Wessex, Hardy created his own spatial and architectural heritage, kept a record of the local dialect (both following in William Barnes’s footsteps and breaking away from him) and mapped its territory through an interplay of tradition and transposed reality, both giving new importance to historical sites and integrating them into his own fictional geography (e.g. Stonehenge).
The real-life places themselves have retained the trace of Hardy’s fictional geography, as evidenced by another level of heritagization which can be seen in the craze for literary tourism around Hardy’s Wessex, in the upgrading of Hardy’s birth cottage thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund award about ten years ago, or else in the English Heritage blue plaque scheme. Worth noting is the impact of cultural heritage policies on Hardy’s literary heritage, as is the role of the National Trust and of other local cultural endeavours such as exhibitions, monuments and statues, commemorations and anniversaries. Such strategies of appropriation and re-appropriation of the author as a national figure have been successful in creating an official Hardyan literary heritage, in particular thanks to the dissemination and study of Hardy’s works both locally and nationally.
Understanding Hardy’s heritage also implies considering the context of Victorian publishing history which presided over the publication of his writings (e.g. the role of Leslie Stephen and the Cornhill Magazine) and how Hardy’s own works were often composed as palimpsests intended to circumvent censorship.
Equally important is the examination of how Hardy designed his own heritage, intent on entering literary history as he recorded his own personal (his)story for posterity by writing his (auto)biography while attributing its authorship to his second wife. The digitization of Hardy’s correspondence is precisely at the heart of the “Hardy and Heritage” project currently underway in England in partnership with the Dorset Museum.Last but not least, what may be considered as central to the question of heritage is also the reception of Hardy’s writings, first of all in his own lifetime, then by later readers as his works were re-written, adapted and celebrated by others. Among the novelists and poets most centrally influenced by Hardy is D. H. Lawrence, whose “Study of Thomas Hardy” (1936) was written as a thorough critique of his predecessor’s oeuvre. As it turned out, the posthumously published essay became one of the most fundamental pieces in Lawrence’s philosophy, a proper reflection on his art and, in his own words, “a sort of Confessions of [his] Heart” (letter to Amy Lowell, Nov 1914; Lawrence xxiii). To this day, the piece, which constitutes a literary bridge from Hardy’s art to Lawrence’s heart, serves as a testimony of the younger author’s deep respect for a writer who both influenced his fiction and inspired him to find his own path. The connection between the two authors is therefore well-known and quite often mentioned in passing in essays dedicated to the study of one or the other. However, the specificities that characterise this particular literary (af)filiation, as well as the links between Hardy and other writers, are yet to be explored. Is there any proper Hardyan heritage in Lawrence’s writing, or in the works of other authors from the 20th and 21st centuries, and if so, which particular aspects of these writings can demonstrate such a heritage?
Suggested topics for this conference:
- Transmission (vs acquisition), heritage, inheritance, succession, social reproduction, patrimonial / matrimonial strategies, dispossession, misappropriation, squandering
- Family history, filiation, descent, pedigree, family ties, inter-generational transfers, genealogy, genetics, heredity
- Primitivism, evolution, Darwinism
- Cultural memory, memorial undertakings, writing and reinterpreting history, prehistory / archaeology / traces of ancient civilisations, relics and remains
- Historical heritage, restoration /preservation, literary tourism
- Cultural institutions, archives, museums, monuments, commemorations, celebrations
- Publishing history, editorial lines, reeditions, dissemination and transmission of writings
- (Auto)biography, correspondence, notebooks (dissemination and transmission)
- Authorship, textual and intermedial adaptations, literary tributes, celebrations
- Influences (e.g. influence of the Romantics; influence on other writers)
Suggested topics for proposals on Hardy and D. H. Lawrence:
- Hardy, Lawrence and the Romantics
- Traces of Past Civilisations in Hardy and Lawrence
- Heredity and Inheritance in Hardy and Lawrence
- Victorian heritage in Lawrence’s writing
- Heritage vs. acquisition in Hardy and Lawrence
- Selected references
- Apaydin, Veysel (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage, UCL, 2020.
- Beer, Gillian, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1983), 3rd ed., Cambridge UP, 2009.
- Benton, Tim (ed.), Understanding Heritage and Memory, Manchester UP, 2010.
- Bourdieu, Pierre & Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, trans. R. Nice, 2nd ed., Sage Publications, 1990.
- Beatty, C. J., Thomas Hardy’s Career in Architecture, Dorset Natural History & Archeological Society, 1978.
- Bullen, J. B., Thomas Hardy: The World of his Novels, Frances Lincoln Ltd, 2013.
- Casagrande, Peter J., Hardy’s Influence on the Modern Novel, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987.
- Cox, R. G. (ed.), Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
- Hardy, Thomas, “Memories of Church Restoration”, in Michael Millgate (ed.), Thomas Hardy’s Public Voice: The Essays, Speeches, and Miscellaneous Prose. Oxford UP, 2001, 239–253.
- Harrison, Rodney, Heritage: Critical Approaches, Routledge, 2012.
- Lawrence, D. H., Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, Cambridge UP, 2002.
- Lea, Hermann, Hardy’s Wessex, Macmillan, 1913.
- Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge UP, 1985.
- Mallett, Phillip, “Hardy and the Biographers”, in Rosemarie Morgan (ed.), Ashgate Companion to Thomas Hardy, 2010, 565–583.
- Mayr, Ernst, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance, Harvard UP, 1982.
- Meloni, Maurizio, Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
- Müller-Wille, Staffan and Christina Brandt (eds), Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850–1930, MIT Press, 2016.
- Nora, Pierre (ed.), Realms of Memory: Conflicts and Divisions, trans. L. D. Kritzman, Columbia UP, 1996.
- Rattenbury, Kester, The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect, Lund Humphries, 2018.
- Richardson, Angelique, “Heredity”, in Phillip Mallett (ed.), Thomas Hardy in Context, Cambridge UP, 2013, 328–338.
- Ricœur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Chicago UP, 2004.
- Sanders, Andrew, In the Olden Time: Victorians and the British Past, Yale UP, 2013.
- Smith, Laurajane, Uses of Heritage, Routledge, 2007.
- Sumner, Rosemary, A Route to Modernism: Hardy, Lawrence, Woolf, Macmillan, 2000.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations in English. Selected proceedings from the conference will be published in the FATHOM journal.
Please send proposals (max. 500 words) along with a brief bio/bibliographical note (max. 500 words) to Laurence Estanove laurence.estanove@gmail.com by 3 July 2023. Authors will be notified by the end of July.
- Organising committee:
- Dr Peggy Blin-Cordon, CY Cergy Paris Université
- Prof. Isabelle Gadoin, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
- Marie Bertrand, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3
- Dr Fiona Fleming, Université Paris Nanterre
- Dr Laurence Estanove, University of Strathclyde
Event name: Hardy and Heritage
Dates: 26-28 October 2023
Venue: Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, Paris
Language: English
Deadline for submitting proposals: 3 July 2023
Notification of acceptance: 31 July 2023Contact: laurence.estanove@gmail.com
CFP
(Posted 11 June 2023)
Language, Literature and Cultural Policies (LLCP): The Geography of Memory.
University of Craiova, 27-29 October 2023.
Proposals: 10 September 2023.
The 22nd International Conference on LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES (LLCP): THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEMORY is orgnised by
The Department of British, American and German Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, Romania,
in partnership with
- Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy;
- English Language and Internationalisation Network (ELINET), University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK;
- The Romanian Society for English and American Studies;
- The European Society for the Study of English
Conference dates
27-29 October 2023
Deadlines
Proposals (maximum 200 words) for 20-minute papers, included in the Registration form attached to this call, can be sent to the organisers at llcpconference2023@gmail.com by 10 September 2023
Keynote speakers
- Elisabetta Marino, Tor Vergata University of Rome (Italy)
- Nicola Galloway, University of Glasgow (UK)
- Małgorzata Karczewska, University of Zielona Góra (Poland)
- Lilijana Burcar, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Conference venue
University of Craiova Main Building, 13 A.I. Cuza Street
Conference website
https://litere.ucv.ro/litere/ro/content/llcp-home
Contact details
CFP
The Aesthetics of Contamination: Oceanic Environments, Identities, Intermedial Research-Creation.
Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. 27-29 October 2023.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 August 2023.
Event organised by
Nancy Pedri, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) & André Dodeman, University of Grenoble Alpes (France)
Presentation of the event
In close collaboration with the University of Grenoble Alpes, Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, is organizing an international conference on October 27-29, 2023, on the oceanic environment with a focus on research creation and scholarship.
This three-day international conference seeks to examine the aesthetics of contamination through a blue ecocritical lens to explore how the ocean has shaped cultural identities and histories, as well as speculative futures in the face of the global refugee crisis, colonialism, climate crisis, and devastating effects of resource extraction. This conference also aims to enact the linkages between the study of literature, art, and other media and artistic practice as they intersect with blue ecocritical concerns and methods of research. It will look to intermodal practices, scholarship, and research-creation and across disciplines – oceanic literature, visual art, performative art, dance, theory, and criticism – to address the urgent need to examine and curb human impact on our oceanic environments.
The conference is organized around three thematic threads:
- Oceanic Environments: An Ecocritical Perspective.
- Cultural Identities: A Cultural Perspective.
- Artistic Contaminations: An Artistic Perspective.
The keynote speakers who have confirmed their presence at the conference are:
- Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea, Director Intermedia Research Studio and Kule Scholar of Climate Resilience, University of Alberta (Canada)
- Dr. Gretchen Schiller, Director Interdisciplinary Performance Laboratory, University of Grenoble-Alpes (France)
- Dr. Claire Omhovère, Director Intermedial Cultural Geography Research Group, University of Montpellier (France)
The organizers invite scholars and art practitioners working from a wide range of disciplines, perspectives, and research practices to propose papers or panels on topics that intersect with these three threads.
Timeline
Deadline for abstracts (250 words) and short bio (100 words): 31 August 2023.
Website
In preparation
Contact details
- André Dodeman: andre.dodeman@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
- Nancy Pedri: englishhead@mun.ca
(Posted 13 July 2023)