Conference: Hotels, Motels and Inns : Transient Spaces of Hospitality in English-Speaking Cultures.
Location and dates: University of Toulouse. 2-3 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 20 January 2025.
Venue: University of Toulouse, Research Center CAS.
Event description
The “Hotels, Inns and Motels” International Conference in Toulouse invites scholars to reflect upon the way places of temporary hospitality have structured space and displacements in English-speaking countries and therefore reveal the stakes and forms of hospitality. From British 19th-century inns to the motel chains dotting the endless US interstate landscapes, these spaces offer a temporary home to their dwellers, and perform commercial, social, political and symbolic functions that so far have not been studied thoroughly. The aim of the conference is to explore how these places, and the people who designed them, work or live there, can reflect or create conceptions of hospitality that provide insight into a given society or a period.
The variety of temporary lodgings (from cheap inns or roadside motels to luxury hotels in capitals or resorts) offers many perspectives to be explored from historical, sociological, economic, literary and artistic viewpoints. As a literal topos, a common place, the hotel can be viewed as a metonymy of the society or area it is set in, from the corporeal to the global level. As such, hotels have been chosen as the setting of numerous creative works, be it in literature (Daphne du Maurier, Herman Melville, Henry James, Edith Wharton, E.M. Foster, Elizabeth Bowen, Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov, Stephen King, John Irving, Sam Shepard, Russell Banks, Don Delillo…), in art (Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, John Register, Robert Mapplethorpe…), or in film (Grand Hotel , Psycho, The Night Porter, The Shining, Barton Fink, Mystery Train, Lost in Translation, The Grand Budapest Hotel …). Hospitality venues are social microcosms that embed the power, gender, class and race relations of a given community. For instance, it is nowadays common to see hotels used as emergency lodgings for displaced, migrant, or homeless persons and families, transforming a temporary lodging into a permanently precarious home. Some hotel jobs are particularly gendered or racialized (innkeeper, waitress, concierge, chambermaid, bell boy…) and therefore duplicate the power structures and the spatial segregations at work. This aspect has been studied from a contemporary sociological point of view, but rarely from a historical perspective, nor within literary or film representations.
The hotel can be seen as the very locus of the Unheimlich, with its anonymous rooms which are magically appropriated by their dwellers, transformed into homes once the key worked the door open. Hotels can fascinate because of their uncanny ordinariness, and their capacity to produce intimate spaces where the customers feel at home even though they never lived there before. The liminal positioning of the hotel, on the threshold between the familiar and the strange, make them the ideal place for a fresh perspective on the quotidian, for a unique angle from which one can take in the complexity of the ordinary, as philosopher Bruce Bégout underscores in Common Place: The American Motel.
The isolation of the hotel room can also oblige its dwellers to face their own self, accentuating the ontological solipsism of individuals (see Bégout 34), and causing experiences of depersonalization, or dereliction. And as a space successively dwelled in by a multitude of guests, the hotel room is a palimpsest of ghostly presences.
The motel, contrary to the luxury hotel, seems to encompass many of the paradoxes of temporary hospitality, because of its architecture and its marginal location on roadsides. According to Bégout, motels symbolize a place in which “the center no longer holds, but has given way to a transitive and mobile space in which a connection to the world has been lost” (Common Place 12). However motels also imply the concrete, personal, and corporeal engagement of their dwellers, loaded with symbolic meaning.
Hotels also make business with intimate spaces, revealing and defining a system of norms and transgressions. The hotel is the epitome of transience and anonymity, and it henceforth allows for illicit or immoral relationships, and encourages furtive encounters that leave no trace. Owing to the poor quality of the building materials used in many hostels and motels, spaces meant to be private and intimate are made visible and audible. The hotel is thus inherently hospitable to stories of desire and death.
Hotels have also shaped, inspired and defined the topoi and characteristics of certain literary genres (the travelogue, the realistic novel, the road novel, the detective story) or cinematographic genres (the road movie, the horror film). A specific aesthetic, rooted in a dialectic of fear or horror and wonder, or disenchantment and re-enchantment, has developed over the centuries and in literature and works of art that have chosen the hotel as their setting. Many authors have written their books and artists have created their works of art in hotels (e.g. Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov, Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol …) and so have film personalities while shooting major movies.
As a privileged setting for social structures and art (narrative and figurative), conceived both as a place of passage and as a closed space, the liminal, public, anonymous and intimate space of the hotel is conducive to the exploration of
- Themes of isolation, solitude or introspection (Edward Hopper), personal narratives (Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin)
- The intersection between the outer and inner worlds
- Redefining identities, distancing, escape and psychological transformation or depersonalisation
- The hotel as a place of transit during journeys, or transitions: pivotal moments, places where artists create and authors write;
- Away-from-home encounters of characters in search of meaning
- Transgressions of social, realistic and moral norms;
- The exploration of anxiety, the blurring of reality in oppressive, ghostly atmospheres where social order and normality can break down, allowing horror to unfold
- Hotels as microcosms: at once public and intimate spaces, places that market confinement, they epitomize social tensions and human behaviour (from luxury hotels to emergency shelters).
Plenary lectures will be given by:
- Barbara Black, Skidmore College, USA, author of Hotel London. How Victorian Commercial Hospitality Shaped a Nation and Its Stories (Ohio State Press, 2019)
- Anna Despotopoulou, National University of Athens, Greece, leader of the research project ‘Hotels and the Modern Subject, 1890-1940’ (Hotels and the Modern Subject: 1890-1940).
- Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, Penn State University, USA, author of Hotel: An American History (Yale University Press, 2007).
Contact details
Proposals for papers must be submitted no later than 20 January 2025. Each proposal must include a 300-word abstract of the paper and a short biography.
Proposals should be sent to the following addresses :
(Posted 16 December 2025)
Conference: More Pride, Less Prejudice: Jane Austen at 250.
Location and dates: University of Porto, Portugal. 2-3 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 16 May 2025.
Venue: University of Porto, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Keynote Speakers
- Fiona Stafford (University of Oxford)
- John Mullan (University College London)
On Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary we invite scholars/enthusiasts to join us at the University of Porto for a two-day celebration of both her literary genius and enduring legacy. As an inescapable figure in the English literary canon, and a popular cross-generational phenomenon, Jane Austen has always been the subject of the most diverse and innovative academic approaches. Scholars have explored various aspects of her work, from the ways in which her novels negotiate femininity (Cho 2006; Steiner 2012) and subvert prevailing notions of masculinity during the Romantic era (Ailwood 2019; Woodworth 2024) to the deep psychological complexity of her characters (Mullan 2005). Additionally, research has examined Austen’s engagement with the medieval tradition of courtly love (Schubert 2023) and the significance of garden landscapes within her narratives (Bending 2024). Uncountable cinematographic and television adaptations, as well as retellings of Austen’s novels have catalyzed the development of studies concerning the intermediality of her work (Martin 2007; Cartmell 2010; Sutherland 2011; Ursa 2018). These varied lines of enquiry underscore the enduring relevance and complexity of Austen’s contributions to literature. Her works being products whose critical fortunes inevitably surpass the author’s own time and geography, it is the aim of this conference to foster new and thought-provoking (re)interpretations of the Austenian corpus – namely the novels that brought her fame – and the lenses through which it can be revisited in our day and age.
Fiona Stafford (University of Oxford)
We thus welcome papers on all aspects of the author’s life, and encourage contrasting perspectives on her oeuvre. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Afterlives: translations, adaptations, transmediations (e.g., films, TV/streaming series, retellings, video games, fanfiction, etc);
- Global Austen;
- Jane Austen’s life (family, education, juvenilia);
- The rise of the novel: books and reading practices;
- Landscape(s) and travelling;
- (Re)Defining masculinities;
- Womanhood, girlhood & rebel women (or not so much);
- Regency life: fashion, manners, sociability;
- Economy: love and the marriage market;
- Language, style and structure;
- Critical responses (early and recent);
- Literary scene: from sentimental to gothic;
- Nationalism, war and empire;
- Digital Humanities;
- Conventions and transgressions.
We welcome 250-word proposals for 20-minute presentations in English at morepridelessprejudice@letras.up.pt. Please include a short bio (max 150 words, including the author’s academic affiliation). The deadline for abstract submission is 16 May 2025.
The standard conference fee is 80 euros. A reduced fee of 30 euros is available for students. The conference will be held in person at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. All delegates are responsible for their own travel arrangements and accommodation.
More information available in due course at https://sites.google.com/view/morepridelessprejudice/.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
More Pride Less Prejudice_ Jane Austen at 250 CFP(Posted 18 January 2025)
Conference: The Politics of Emotions, 2025. Discourse – Media – Digital Spaces.
Location and dates: Lyon (France). 9 and 10 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 20 October 2024 to 15 March 2025.
An international conference organised by the Centre d’Études Linguistiques – Corpus, Discours et Sociétés (CEL) of Jean Moulin Lyon 3 Université and the Centre Interlangues: Texte, Image, Langage (TIL) of the Université de Bourgogne, as part of an annual research project entitled “La politique au prisme des émotions” (The Politics of Emotions).
Emotional dynamics are omnipresent in today’s political and social processes—from the rise of populism to the crisis of representativeness, but also within many questionable democratic innovations and the uncertain renewal of civic engagement. These dynamics underpin the crystallisation of identity building in our ever-changing societies (Cilia & Wodak, 2021). The analysis of emotional drivers is therefore necessary to explain the political phenomena that characterise the contemporary public sphere. It also represents a fruitful field of study for understanding the changes associated with the widespread use of social media platforms. Digital tools have an impact on the publicité (publicness and publicity) of political discourse and on the new repertoires of action put in place by engaged citizen groups through the creation of digital platforms, the broadcasting of videos, etc.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to reflect on the use of emotions in political discourse, be it in actual legislative assemblies, among the “chattering classes” on conventional media, or on digital platforms. The objective is to explore the discursive and visual dimensions of emotional levers that drive political dynamics and the practice of citizenship in today’s world. The ambition is to compare methodologies and corpora from different linguistic and cultural areas in order to understand, for example, the role of emotions in the emergence of new forms of protest and in the communication strategies of current forms of populism. How do emotional structures inform group identities? To what extent do they shape collective representations? What discursive and rhetorical devices are used to convey emotions in politics, and is it possible to measure their influence? These avenues for reflection invite us to also analyse the interactions between institutional and non-institutional players.
Academic studies of emotions have long emphasised the pivotal role of language, which is considered a key factor in explaining human behaviour (Coppin & Sanders, 2010). The theoretical and methodological tools of linguistics and discourse analysis, together with the contributions of political science and the sociology of social movements, provide fertile ground for studying the role of emotions in the contemporary public sphere and their impact on the construction of political ideologies. Focusing on the 21st century, several research topics can be envisaged. A non-exhaustive list would include the following:
- The role of emotions in political discourse, against the backdrop of a crisis of representativeness. What are the emotional drivers used by institutional players to persuade citizens? How are conflicting emotions incorporated into the communication strategies of populist and extremist parties? Applied linguistics is particularly relevant
- for highlighting the importance of certain markers, lexemes and morphemes traditionally associated with emotions in political communication. Proposals can also focus on rhetoric in general – and the fundamental contribution of pathos (Amossy 2016) – but also on certain emotionally-loaded research fields, such as metaphor studies
- or the narrative analysis of political storytelling. Also relevant would be a critical approach to discourse aimed at deciphering the way language is used for purposes of domination and manipulation by certain political actors.
- The emotional strategies of citizen protest or disobedience movements in contemporary public spaces. To what extent do collective emotions help build the identity of protest movements and establish new collaborative practices and forms of political engagement? Proposals could also focus on the study of the semiology of demonstrations, including the choice of slogans, symbols and set designs, as well as the demonstrators’ physical postures, which might convey emotions. One leading interrogation could be: if anger is a driver of protest, how is that anger staged?
- The role of emotions in traditional media and digital media discourse. The aim is to explore the link between emotional dynamics and the construction of identity through the analysis of the digital and visual strategies implemented by political actors and/or protest movements. What are the new emotional markers in the digital sphere – hashtags, emoticons, short messages, videos, etc.? How do they contribute to the formation of emotional communities? How can digital tools reinforce or reduce emotional polarisation? The contribution of multimodality seems fundamental, and semiotic studies – as well as studies of images and other visual representations – will be more than welcome.
Submissions should include an abstract (up to 500 words, excluding references) as well as a short biography and should be sent to:
- Alexandra Palau Alexandra. Palau@u-bourgogne.fr
- Denis Jamet Coupé denis. jamet-coupe@univ-lyon3.fr
- Alma-Pierre Bonnet. alma-pierre.bonnet@univ-lyon3.fr
Keywords: emotions; digital media; critical discourse analysis; political communication; speech; metaphors
Key dates:
- Submission: 20 October 2024 to 15 March 2025;
- Notification of acceptance: 15 May 2025;
- Registration: June 2025;
- Conference: 9 and 10 October 2025.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 22 October 2025)
The Good Life beyond Optimism and Pessimism: Philosophy –– Ideology –– Affective Materialities.
Location and dates: University of Augsburg, 9-11 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 20 December 2024.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
- Joshua Foa Dienstag (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Katrin Röder (TU Dortmund)
Presentation
Pandemics, wars, climate change, austerity, the rise of right-wing totalitarianism across the world – the present offers plenty to be pessimistic about. This sentiment seems to be confirmed by recent surveys of the outlook of today’s youth, who is often labelled as the most pessimistic generation in decades. Moreover, the seemingly widespread pessimist affect is also reflected in the continuing popularity of apocalyptic and dystopian narratives in popular culture such as the TV shows The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–), The Purge (2018-2019), Black Mirror (2011–) etc. This pessimist affect can be, in turn, connected to a distinct pessimist tradition in philosophical thought – a “nightside of thought”, which emerged as a branch of modern Western post-Enlightenment philosophy. Within the British context, in fact, the very word ‘optimism’ originated in 1759, stemming directly from Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz, in particular, his famous dictum that we are living in “the best of all possible worlds” (Essais de Theodicee, 1710). This relatively passive view of optimism, relying on the notion of a preestablished harmonical order, was accompanied by a more active conception as for instance Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings, Thomas Jefferson’s famous (active) “pursuit of happiness” and, not least, British hedonistic moral philosophy of the time (e.g., Jeremy Bentham, Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume etc.) reveal. Throughout its ongoing evolution towards the 21st century, “optimism” along with its underlying notions of “happiness” reappeared in countless manifestations in society, culture and literature. Despite their heterogenous conceptions, though, optimism and happiness largely coincide in their temporal-teleological structure; that is, a positive outlook towards a future (optimistically perceived to be) “more likely than not to materialize”. Pessimism, on the other hand, is in many ways a response to the Enlightenment inasmuch as it constitutes a “doppelganger” of progress that radically questions such teleological narratives of modernity.
In recent years, both optimism/happiness as well as pessimism have become flourishing fields of study. To the same extent that we can speak of a “happiness turn” in the humanities from the 2000s on, pessimist philosophy has likewise diversified into “micro-pessimisms”, including afropessimism, queer pessimism, ecological pessimism and antinatalism. What unites these new pessimisms is not only their particular focus on specific identities and how these constitute a being-in-the-world that can be grasped with pessimism as an epistemological perspective, but also their grappling with questions of “the good life.”
While it might seem counterintuitive to consider pessimism as a starting point for eudaemonia, pessimism indeed provides new perspectives on optimism as well as on happiness. It questions teleological narratives of collective cultural and social progress as much as narratives of individual happiness. In other words, it challenges the ideological functions of the “cultures of optimism”, which, however, appear to be crucial for the stability of the state, community and the subject. Pessimism can thus be a tool to interrogate what Lauren Berlant has called “cruel optimism” – the demand for toxic positivity and individual responsibility for one’s personal success that is at the heart of current late-capitalist ideologies. We, indeed, witness the rise of multiple forms of self-optimization embedded in a literal “happiness industry” in recent times. Thus, pessimism might certainly prove liberating for individuals tired of the demand for positive “self-actualization” – and it is an affect that results as a negative image from the “positive culture of emotions” that the sociologist Andreas Reckwitz has identified as central to the affective life of late modernity.At the same time, as philosophers like David Benatar and Mara van der Lugt have demonstrated, pessimism can account more accurately for the inevitable facets of human life often neglected in cultures of positivity and optimism: in facing suffering, pessimist philosophy offers modes of empathy and compassion (Mit-Leiden) and debunks the “promise of happiness” by articulating the position of the “affect aliens” – those left behind by narratives of the good life. Pessimism and optimism, then, are not necessarily entirely separable, but constitute complementary epistemological approaches to existential question of eudaemonia.
This conference seeks to explore the relationship between optimism and pessimism (including their implicit notions of un/happiness) by focusing on their underlying philosophical histories from Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought (from Voltaire to Schopenhauer and Adorno/Horkheimer and beyond) to the “new” pessimisms of the present (Eugene Thacker, Joshua Foa Dienstag, Sara Ahmed, Frank B. Wilderson III and others). The conference wants to scrutinize optimism and pessimism along with their potentials for cultural, literary and media studies, sociology and related subdisciplines (such as futures studies) in theory and practice.
We invite papers of 20 minutes that examine philosophical issues of optimism and pessimism as well as the cultural and aesthetic representations of these philosophies, materialities and affects. Papers can address the following aspects:
- The pessimism of optimism and the optimism of pessimism
- (Beyond) optimism and/or pessimism in (meta-)theory and practice
- Optimism/Pessimism: diachronic and synchronic perspectives
- Textual and cultural practices of optimism/pessimism (literary and cultural case studies)
- Genres of optimism and pessimism (e.g. utopia/dystopia)
- The aesthetics of optimism and pessimism
- Optimism/Pessimism and affect
- Optimism/Pessimism and materiality
- (un)happy objects
- Melancholia and optimism/pessimism
- Ideologies of optimism/pessimism
- The ethics of optimism and pessimism
- Pessimism as deconstructive force
- Optimistic and pessimistic temporalities
- Futures Studies
- …..
Abstracts (max. 300 words) for papers proposed should be accompanied by a short biographical note, plus full address and institutional affiliation.
Please send your proposals to both organisers:
- Mark Schmitt (mark.schmitt@hu-berlin.de) and
- David Kerler (david.kerler@uni-a.de)
Deadline: 20 December 2024
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 16 November 2024)
Conference: US-UK Transatlantic Crossings in the Arts and Literature from 1823 to Today.
Location and dates: Université de Lorraine (France), 16-17 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 January 2025.
Venue: CLSH, Nancy (France).
Presentation
The conference will deal with different issues (click on the website address for more details) about transatlantic crossings in the arts and literature from 1823 to today. It will therefore address, but not exclusively, the following themes:
- Myths and realities of transatlantic relations
- Cultural economics of transatlantic transfers
- Influence of transfers on American or British language
- Transfers and translation
- Aspects of mutual influence/fascination
- Why and how this fascination leads writers, poets, filmmakers, and artists from the USA or the UK to live and work in the United States or the United Kingdom (Henry James, T.S. Eliot, Scott Walker, Jacob Epstein, W.H. Auden, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, Gervese Wheeler, to name just a few) or to be influenced by one of the two countries, as illustrated in literature, with some English authors who write “American” novels (Lee Child, for example) and vice versa (we can also mention Elizabeth George (“Inspector Lynley”) or Diana Gabaldon, who writes Scottish novels like the Outlander series).
- Perceptions and receptions in transcultural exchanges
- The role and form of parody and pastiche in these transfers? For example, A Spinal Tap is an American parody of an English rock band
- In music, how American rock influences / has influenced English rock and vice versa; what about musicals? etc.
Website address
https://relationstransatlantiquescom.wordpress.com
Contact details
Proposals (in English or French; maximum 300 words) should be sent to:
- Jean-Philippe Heberlé (jean-philippe.heberle@univ-lorraine.fr),
- Claire McKeown (claire.mckeown@univ-lorraine.fr), and
- Céline Sabiron (celine.sabiron@univ-lorraine.fr
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 30 October 2024)
International conference: Layers: Physical and Cultural Constructions of Space in the English-Speaking World.
Location and dates: The University of Strasbourg, France, 16-17 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 March 2025.
Organised by SEARCH (Savoirs dans l’Espace Anglophone: Représentations, Culture, Histoire)
Keynote speakers:
- Jeremy Davies (University of Leeds)
- Laurent Olivier (Musée d’archéologie nationale de Saint-Germain-en-Laye)
Call for papers
In connection with the SEARCH research group’s focus on “Spaces, territories and landscapes in the English-speaking world”, this conference aims to explore the notion of layers as an epistemological and representational prism through which to apprehend the temporalities of human and non-human spaces, understand the physical, cultural and social processes that shape them, as well as uncover the traces of the past embedded in them, in order to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between earth sciences, geography, history, archaeology, literature and the arts.
We welcome contributions focusing on social, cultural, historical and physical processes of layering and resurfacing in the English-speaking world. While layers may be especially conceived as a means to articulate spatial and historical processes, and to reflect about the processes of construction of territories and landscapes, literary, sociological and artistic approaches to the notion are also invited. Perspectives from the environmental humanities, postcolonial studies, geocriticism and geohistory are encouraged.
Submission guidelines: please send an abstract of 200 to 250 words, as well as a short bio (max 150 words), by March 31, 2025, to:
- Sandrine Baudry (baudry@unistra.fr),
- June Misset (jmisset@unistra.fr) and
- Hélène Ibata (hibata@unistra.fr)
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 23 February 2025)
Conference: Constructions of Identity 12 – “Conflict”.
Location and dates: Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania). 16-18 October 2025.
Extended deadlines: for individual papers: 1 May 2025; for fully formed panels: 15 May 2025.
Venue: Faculty of Letters, 31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
LITERATURE
LITERARY FUTURES: CONFLICTS OF TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, AND GLOBALIZATION
In We’re Doomed. Now What?, American writer and academic Roy Scranton sees conflict as the internal force shaping the “unimaginable multitude” of ideologically informed social structures, “down to the individual human soul, in conflict with itself” (48). It is the force preventing “the entire human species [from moving] together in one direction” and making “the human way reactive, improvised, ad hoc” (48- 9). The mechanism that we have developed for coping with the instability of the world is, Scranton claims, our impressive ability of telling ourselves “the stories that we want to hear” (49). This, of course, raises a series of ethical questions regarding the narrative approaches to and representation of conflict. Coming from a different direction, narrative theorist Erin McGlothlin supports a similar thesis by examining the modes in which narratives can appear to resolve conflicts, “particularly in ways that fulfill the reader’s expectations and produce a satisfying sense of completeness” (111). While Scranton is critical of the (self-)deluding potential of creating narratives to manage conflicts, McGlothlin dismantlesthe importance of closure provided by narrative, which under scrutiny brings up its paradoxical nature. In McGlothlin’s take, narrative’s construction of its own ending produces “ideological closure,” which, while seeming to reflect the “resolution to an extant problem of conflict,” is in fact engaged in the process of producing the initial conflict (111). Following the suggestions of a phenomenological approach to the ethics of narrative, McGlothlin points to the possibility of narratives avoiding “mastery” by illuminating their own perspectival grounding and emplotment tactics. However, as perspective is first and foremost a matter of relation, this opens an avenue into investigating conflict as an unavoidable dimension of our inherent relationality, and, to put it in Judith Butler’s terms, as a form of “nonviolent” resolution.
Since conflict – in the most generous understanding of the term – affects people’s sense of self and of the world and thus contributes to shaping the way in which collective and individual identities emerge, the twelfth edition of Constructions of Identity seeks to explore its role in the configuration of the storied self and the storied world. We understand conflict as both a thematic and structural phenomenon that cuts across various temporal, cultural, and geographical contexts, a phenomenon which could yet reveal new critical understandings of the self, society, and the non-human world. Literature should and does act as a site where conflict is performed, rehearsed and (sometimes) solved, and where its strategies become both instruments and objects for interpretation. We, therefore, welcome proposals for papers and sessions addressing any aspect of our conference theme and we encourage a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches, including insights from recent developments in critical theory, world literature studies, the digital humanities, and ecocriticism.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- ideological clashes;
- the conflicts between tradition and modernity;
- tensions and struggles within identity politics;
- conflict, trauma, memory;
- tensions in and around migration, colonialism, and globalization;
- the relationship between cores, peripheries, and semiperipheries;
- conflict, protest, war, violence;
- nonviolent conflictuality and narrative as the space for debate;
- nonviolent solutions to conflict and crisis;
- environmental crises & climate degradation;
- human vs artificial intelligence conflicts.
- human vs non-human conflicts.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
- Prof. Jean-Michel Ganteau, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
- Prof. Anne Schwan, Edinburgh Napier University
- Assoc. Prof. Dragoș Ivana, University of Bucharest
LINGUISTICS
CREATING AND RESOLVING CONFLICT IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES
Conflict approached through a linguistic lens offers numerous possible levels of analysis, from language- and speaker-internal struggles to polarizing attitudes borne out of contextualized uses of language, and beyond humans, in interactions with other media such as technology, and now even more so, AI. Inquiry into both diachronic and synchronic linguistic displays, patterns, and behaviours within communication represents a challenge in itself, as the digital age increased the availability of research and scientific discourse, resulting in a divergence of perspectives on language phenomena. We thus welcome papers which foster the ground for a synergy between various disciplines and research methodologies coming from the fields of Internet linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Psycho- and Neurolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, Digital Humanities, Multilingualism and Multiculturalism, Theoretical Linguistics and more. This multi- and inter-disciplinary dialogue between specialists from a variety of fields will account for the complexity of the linguistic phenomena emerging from various conflictual situations and discourses.
We invite proposals for papers and specialty panels addressing any aspect of our conference theme.
Possible topics include:
1. Online conflicts, digital culture and communication
- digital culture, subcultures and conflictual situations;
- online identity construction and communities of practice;
- representation of conflict through multimodal communication and visual culture; human versus AI generated speech;
- hate speech in online social media and linguistic mitigation;
- conflict and online digital activism;
- digital and pragmatic practices in online conflictual situations;
- digital performance of conflict;
- conflict expressed through the use of memes, emojis, emoticons.
2. Cultural and linguistic diversity
- toxic language in various online and offline environments;
- multilingualism and language ideologies: how language unites and/or divides, linguistic discrimination;
- attitudes towards linguistic change and innovation;
- forbidden language: slang, taboos and conflict;
- linguistic trends in lavender languages;
- multilingualism and multiculturalism: migration and identity;
- diverse communities: cases of conflictual situations and mitigation.
3. Theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics
- conflict as the driving force for diachronic language change;
- inner language conflict as evolutionary pressure for meaning reassignment;
- phonological and syntactic differences of multilingual input for language acquisition in multilingual babies;
- cross-linguistic variation in morphological and syntactical structures;
- interface issues: Conceptual-Intentional to Sensory-Motor;
- language pathologies and the disruption of the intent-output continuum;
- structural disconnections in linguistic impairments.
Confirmed keynote speaker:
Prof. Martin Hilpert, Université de Neuchâtel
GENERAL INFORMATION
Conference website:
https://consid.conference.ubbcluj.ro
Proposals
- For individual 20-minute papers, 150-word abstracts and a short bio note should be submitted here: Constructions of Identity XII “Conflict” – Registration Form, by 15 March 2025.
- For tentative panels, please submit a title and a 100-word description of the topic, here: Constructions of Identity XII – “Conflict” Panel Proposal Submission, by 15 January 2025.
- For fully formed panels, 150-word abstracts for each paper, accompanied by details of the proposed topic, the chair and the speakers, should be submitted by 25 March 2025.
Contact information: for more details, please write to
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 21 December 2025. Updated 26 March 2025)
Eighth International Aldous Huxley Symposium: “Aldous Huxley in Italy: Rest Cure or/and Cultural Challenge”.
Location and dates: The International Aldous Huxley Society (AHS) and the Centre for Aldous Huxley Studies (CAHS) – Florence, 21 – 25 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 1 March 2025.
Venue: Centro Studi Ricerca e Formazione CISL, Via della Piazzuola, 71, 50133, Firenze (https://www.centrostudi.cisl.it/)
Presentation
The general theme of the conference (Aldous Huxley in Italy: Rest Cure or/and Cultural Challenge) will naturally focus on Huxley’s activities in Italy. Besides, there will certainly be room for a variety of other topics.
Website address
<https://www.uni-muenster.de/Anglistik/Huxley/>
Contact details
Prof Bernfried Nugel (<nugel@uni-muenster.de>)
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 18 November 2024)
Conference: Explicitness.
Location and dates: Université Paris-Est Créteil. 23-24 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 June 2025.
The notion of explicitness seems irremediably at the heart of a paradox. The aim of the conference is to rethink this notion, often neglected in favour of its opposite, i.e. implicitness. As Dominique Maingueneau observes, explicitness is often approached as the necessary preliminary step to implicitness: “on peut tirer d’un énoncé des contenus qui ne constituent pas en principe l’objet véritable de l’énonciation mais qui apparaissent à travers les contenus explicites. C’est le domaine de l’implicite” (“It is possible, from an utterance, to derive contents that do not in principle constitute the true object of enunciation but which appear through its explicit contents. This is the domain of implicitness.”) (Les Termes clés de l’analyse du discours, Paris: Points, 1996, 47). Texts, images and sounds appear to be valued according to how complex they are, while explicitness is always relegated to an inferior position. To say that a work is explicit implies that it is poor in meaning, that it gives itself effortlessly (but also without real gratification) to the reader/listener/viewer.
Latin etymology informs us that the primary meaning of the participle explicitus was “deployed”, “executed” or, regarding texts, “completed, finished”. It would seem, then, that explicitness is less a starting point leading to implicitness than the end result of a text’s discursive deployment, or that of a fabric whose folds have been patiently unfurled. Why does explicitness seem so poor today despite its rich etymological meaning?
As readers, spectators and listeners always engaged in interpretative reading of essentially polysemous media, we are from the outset parasitized by the question of implicitness. On the face of it, explicitness has less value than implicitness since it implies a work whose meanings can be exhausted—due to its alleged superficiality or its use of clichés—or a reader who cannot go beyond what is explicit and is unable to grasp the hidden meanings. And yet, paradoxically, the very notion of explicitness proves elusive and seems harder to grasp than its opposite. What is explicitness? If it is what unfolds, where does it stop? Can we think of what is explicit without what is implicit, or are we obliged to link both these notions?
Perceiving explicitness is subject to cultural encoding. For example, one can think of the historical roots of Shakespeare’s plays: their audiences—including their uneducated members—understood their sauciness, while we rely on footnotes. Shakespearean ribaldry is all the more obscene as it is no longer immediately accessible to us and disappears into an off scene. Yet, do we enjoy a Shakespeare play more when all its references have been explained? Similarly, the scandalous scenes in Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode are not as shocking to us as they were to his contemporaries. Is implicitness, then, just a case of forgotten explicitness?
But even when explicitness is not lost, how explicit is it after all? All forms of artistic expression, however immediate and objective they may appear, are ultimately constructions. The narrator of a novel, for example, reserves the right to mislead the reader and lead them down false paths. Even when the narrator declares they are speaking plainly, readers are invited to question such a claim to being explicit; for example, the address to the reader at the start of Moby-Dick—“Call me Ishmael”—is a formula which both issues an injunction and induces doubt. It could almost be compared to Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe. The same deceptive obviousness can be found in the visual arts: the perspective used in Renaissance paintings, for example, claimed to offer the most realistic and objective view of reality; in cinema, the camera eye creates the illusion of following an objective gaze also frequently attributed to photography, perceived as a faithful capture of reality. Yet these supposedly objective views are no less biased, and hide, in the very depths of their obviousness, the manipulative effects inherent in all representation. Their objectivity is deceptive and calls for unfolding or unfurling.
Should we then give up explicitness? Even before we read a book, or watch a film, a play, a painting or a photograph, or listen to a piece of music, their paratexts conditions their reception. When Barthes calls for the death of the author, observing, “donner un Auteur à un texte, c’est imposer à ce texte un cran d’arrêt, c’est le pourvoir d’un signifié dernier, c’est fermer l’écriture,” (“to give an Author to a text is to impose a stop to that text, it is to provide it with an ultimate signified, it is to close writing.”) he seems to be saying that explicitness lies on the side of closure, and that to reopen the text, we need to evacuate its ultimate paratext, i. e. its author (Le Bruissement de la langue, Paris: Points, 1984, 68). How, then, are we to fathom and formulate the complexities of the notion of explicitness? Topics for this conference may include but are not limited to:
- Univocity and polysemy: is explicitness necessarily univocal?
- Clichés and commonplaces
- Explicitness and intentionality
- The role of paratexts
- Speech and explicitness
- Explicitness, genre and gender
- Intertextuality
- Translation practices
- Theatre and explicitness (opening scenes, asides, stage directions…)
- Strategies of meaning in film and music
- Obscenity
- Humour and explicitness
- Materiality and explicitness
- Teaching and analysing texts in the classroom
Abstracts in English or French (300 to 500 words) should be sent with a short bio by 15 June 2025 to explicitecolloque@gmail.com
Organising committee:
- Camille Adnot, Éric Athenot, Farid Ghadami and Élisabeth Vialle (UPEC)
- Laboratoire IMAGER (Institut des Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman) – EA 3958
- Équipe Ties (Textes, Images et Sons).
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 15 March 2025)
Conference: Feeling the Limits: Censorship and Creative Freedom in Theatre, Film, and Visual Arts in the Age of Populism.
Location and dates: University of Łódź, Poland. 23-25 October 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 May 2025.
Venue details: University of Łódź, Faculty of Philology. The conference is run on-site.
Event presentation
Artistic freedom has been recognised as an international right that needs to be protected because it is threatened when artists question political ideologies, religious beliefs, and social mores. However, today the meaning of such concepts as “artistic freedom” or “freedom of expression” seems more complex and in need of greater definition. As democracies have, to a large extent, abandoned systems of censorship, new constraints have emerged to silence artists in contemporary cultural life. Censorship, as a term encompassing a wide array of mechanisms identified by Catherine O’Leary (Routledge 2016), constitutes complex processes of cancellation, voiding, erasure, or outlawing, which control the level of visibility and audibility of artistic institutions. Censoring practices influence the circulation of ideas, the condition of public debate, and the possibilities of artistic creativity in areas as diverse as museums, art galleries, universities, and the media in ways which dominate the production and interpretation of knowledge. As Paquette, Kleinfelder, and Miles claim, the current state of freedoms in the arts and culture has been shaped by earlier “culture wars” of the 1980s and 1990s, in which orthodox values clashed with the ideas of progressivism (‘Introduction’ to In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship, Bloomsbury 2022).
The aim of the conference is to reflect on the concept of limitation (from various theoretical perspectives) and to explore how productions in the fields of drama, theatre, film, television, as well as visual arts and performance are influenced by limits internally or externally applied. It is to ask about positive and negative roles played by a variety of controls imposed by states, public institutions, activism, conservative or liberal mores, or populist politics on artists and artistic independence, or by the artists themselves. Is complete lack of censorship or control a required and positive goal to strive for? Is censorship an effective method of erasure, or – to the contrary – a method of stimulating interest? The scope of the conference includes, but also extends beyond, the field of state censorship and aims at various cultural practices which experience a controlling influence over artistic life and creativity.
Censorship and other forms of public and private control, as well as self-imposed repressive mechanisms, form part of the cultural history of Western civilisation. The conference intends to rethink the presence of political, social, moral, and ideological pressures imposed on the arts in reference to the contemporary rise of populist politics. However, it is also the intention of the organisers to trace the development of censorship practices back into history in order to show the extent to which contemporary legislative activity and licensing regulations may continue the tradition of state censorship operating across cultures and the arts. The current state of artistic freedoms has been the product of complex historical circumstances. Investigating how the tension between censorship in cultural institutions and the demands for freedom of artistic expression has evolved across decades provides insights into the future of what might be a seriously compromised creative independence.
The organisers of the conference invite papers to investigate issues of artistic freedom and censorship in the contemporary world, as well as in connection to both historical development and possible projections into the future.
In an effort to map the territory of freedom and censorship in a concise way, the organisers will give priority to paper proposals concerning English-speaking territories and continental Europe. The conference will be held in English.
We invite papers addressing, among other topics, the following issues:
- Cultural censorship
- Covert and overt censorship in the arts
- Arts sponsoring
- Funding and organisational limitations in artistic institutions
- Legislation and performance
- Corporate art censorship
- Artivism, protest, and censorship
- Representing censorship in drama, theatre, film, and art
- Artistic works as challenges to censorship limitations
- Visibility, audibility, and cultural silencing in the arts
- Exhibition cultures
- Adaptation and artistic freedom
- Adaptation and cultural censorship
- Self-censorship
- Current geography of censorship in the arts
- Taboos as artistic topics
- Disability and representation in the arts
- Marginalised and silenced voices
- Hollywood/Netflix/HBO/ streaming platforms and censorship
- Censorship, democracy, and art
- Censored pasts in art
- Art vandalism and censoring practices
The event is the eleventh edition of the biennial Drama Through the Ages Conference which has been organised by the Department of English Drama, Theatre, and Film, University of Łódź.
Keynote speakers
- Anne Etienne, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Drama, University College Cork, Ireland
- Jacek Fabiszak, Professor in the Department of Studies in Culture,
- Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Abstract submission
Please submit your topic proposals and abstracts (up to 300 words), together with a short bio, to lodz.conference@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2025.
Conference website
For further information, please visit the conference website: https://dramathroughtheages.wordpress.com
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 4 February 2025)