Conference: Getting Ready for the Present: Engaging with the World and the Planet in Contemporary Dystopian and Speculative Narratives.
Location and dates: University of Bologna (Italy). 3-5 September 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 March 2025.
Organised by: Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Bologna (Italy).
Event presentation
In recent years new speculative, dystopian, and (post)apocalyptic narratives have characterised Japanese and Latin American cultural discourse in their multifaceted dialogue with Anglo-American production, as well as their socio-cultural impact on reality as multi/transmedia products that stimulate cultural, social, and political contexts, creating communities and affiliations and inspiring transversal movements, as well as new forms of counter-narratives and public engagement. These narratives are not only experiencing an unprecedented circulation, but have emerged from a restricted field to populate the most diverse artistic and media forms, often achieving a global resonance.
In the narratives of the new millennium, the “cognitive estrangement” theorised by Darko Suvin as the formal aspect of science fiction, simultaneously allowing for the recognition of the subject represented while creating an effect of defamiliarisation, appears even more estranging because it immerses the audience in situations that are already taking place, recognised rather than recognisable. Science fiction is not (anymore) prophecy but “about now” . As an effect of this temporal contraction, these narratives leave the specific field of the genre to flow into the space of the “augmented realism” where the future here is not just something that may happen but a “shore” (Deotto, 2018), an only slightly more advanced vantage point to better frame a reality in the making. This “augmented reality”, thus, acts as a lens on the present: not to predict but to make more visible what the technology of power has made invisible. If uncertainty has given way to expectation and to “a culture of the imminence of the disaster” (Virilio, 2007), the “when” it will happen invites us to envisage alternatives. Thus, the new dystopian narratives become also a form of “creative destructiveness” (Dole et al., 2015), a means to identify possible social transformations and imagine new forms of trans-national and trans-species alliances in the common vulnerability and precariousness.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together contributions that can enhance the dialogue between Japanese, Latin American, and Anglo-American productions through mutual contaminations, in a multi/interdisciplinary, and transmedial approach, also in the light of alternative forms of social, cultural, and political resistance and resilience. We encourage scholars and researchers from various disciplines to submit proposals related (but not limited) to:
- Postcolonial, Decolonial, Indigenous Studies, and Alternative Epistemologies
- Visual, Media, and Performance Studies
- Reception Studies
- Global Fiction and World Literature
- Gender, Queer, and Trans* Studies, Ecofeminism and Ecocritism
- Posthuman Studies, Post-Anthropocentrism, and Trans-Species Alliances
- Disability Studies
- Microand Infra-Political Forms of Public Engagement
Submissions are accepted in English.
Please send the abstract for your proposal (500 words max) together with a short bio-bibliographical note at lilec.dystopia-prin22@unibo.it, as subject of the e-mail: “Getting Ready for the Present”
Timeline
- Deadline for the submission of the abstracts: 31 March 2025.
- Declaration of acceptance: 15 May 2025.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 31 January 2025)
Conference: Textiles: The texture of ideas in early modern Europe (1589-1801). Textile designs, patterns and craftsmanship and the early modern imagination.
Venue and dates: Procida Island (University of Naples L’Orientale), 8-14 September 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 January 2025.

‘Conservatorio delle Orfanelle’ in Terra Murata (centre), from UniOr website.
The conference is part of a joint project made up of two joint conferences:
Conference 1: Textiles: The texture of ideas in early modern Europe (1589-1801). Designs, patterns, craftsmanship and the early modern imagination – Will be Held at Procida Island (University of Naples L’Orientale), 8-14 September 2025.
Conference 2: The circulation of textile designs, patterns, skills and representations in early modern Europe – Will be held at Université de Haute Alsace – Mulhouse, June 2026.
The Virgin’s chemise at Chartres Cathedral (9th century), the fabrics used as support for his paintings by Luca Pignatelli (1962-) or employed by Ann Hamilton (1956-) in her installations, and textile architecture are only a few examples of how fabrics can step out of their typical functions (e.g. as daily clothing, drapery, etc.) to enter the arts and the collective imagination in rather unique ways. Evidence of textile technology dates back to the Palaeolithic (Bender Jørgensen et al., 2023) and, according to Leonardo da Vinci, it was a craft ‘second [only] to the printing of letters’ and ‘more beautiful and subtle in invention’. If artifice has traditionally aimed at producing something ‘rare’ as opposed to ‘common’ (at least until the advent of plastic according to Roland Barthes [1972: 98]), textiles are among the artifacts through which the aspiration to create rarity has been best expressed throughout the centuries. The invention of weave patterns and dyeing techniques as well as printing pattern design prove that in the production of textiles — as indeed in all crafts according to Richard Sennett — “thinking and feeling are contained within the process of making” (Sennett 2008: 7).
For these joint interdisciplinary conferences we invite papers with a focus on the interaction between the material and the immaterial aspects of the craft of weaving, approached from various angles, in the early modern period. The aim is to explore aspects of the interactions between textile manufacturing and its products and the individual or collective imagination, intellectual life as well as the ‘world picture’ and mental representations in the early modern period. Those interactions, although sometimes acknowledged, appear to have been understudied so far. How did the immaterial life of ideas as well as the cultural context impact on the creation of fabric designs? And, vice versa, how did textile manufacturing, in either its pre-industrial or early industrial stage, impact on the personal or collective imagination? How were early modern textile artefacts, alongside the material conditions and early modern technologies of their production, perceived by contemporaries? Were they perceived as ‘symbolic capital’, in Pierre Bordieu’s acceptation (1979)? Can the study of representations, descriptions, references or even allusions to textiles and the textile manufacture, but also of the metaphorical usage of textile-related vocabulary in various texts – from poetry to philosophical essays – or of references to the textile world in the early modern visual arts – paintings, sketches, illustrations, plates – add to our knowledge of the early modern episteme?
The dates 1589-1801 have been chosen for their significance in the progress of textile manufacturing, but papers focusing on any period of time from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century are welcome. 1589 was the year when William Lee invented the stocking frame knitting machine in England; only a few years later, at the beginning of the 17th century in Paris, the Gobelins manufactory was established. 1801 was the year when the Jacquard loom was first introduced; Charles Babbage’s ‘difference engine’, the early calculating machine designed and partially built during the 1820s and 1830s, was inspired by the use of punched cards in the Jacquard loom (see Essinger 2004), which testifies to the potential of textile-related creativity. Could there be more, still unknown, regions of cross-fertilisation between textile manufacturing and other realms of knowledge?
We welcome interdisciplinary papers at the crossroads of, but not limited to, any ones of the following: cultural history, social history, microhistory, history of ideas or intellectual history, the history of technology, philosophy, linguistics, literary studies, material studies, visual arts studies, crafts, aesthetics, memorial studies, intermedial studies. We especially welcome papers based on archival research and adopting a microhistorical approach — recalling here Carlo Ginzburg’s statement that ‘the prefix “micro” is related to the microscope, so to an analytic approach to history’ (Carlo Ginzburg 2015). Such analytical approach we would like to extend to the study of different texts, also for a cultural analysis of the impact of the textile world on the early modern intellectual imagination. For both conferences, we therefore invite papers aiming at uncovering references to the textile world in famous and less known, or even overlooked, written texts — for example ballads, poems and emblems, plays, diaries, commonplace books, essays, philosophical texts, pamphlets and newspapers — which may be revealing of the cross-fertilisations between material and immaterial culture in the early modern period. Another space of investigation will be the visual: were there drawings, sketches or paintings representing textile manufactures and their workers as well as the manufacturing process? Were there early modern manuals or handbooks about textile production? Did they include illustrations (of the patterns, the weaving techniques, the acts and process of making fabrics)? And, if so, how much could a study of those different texts contribute to the history of early modern culture and ideas (about the human, ingenuity, nature and technology, and so on)? Could such a study be relevant in the same way as, for example, the study of plates in early modern anatomical books has proved to be? Another area of research we invite to explore is the possible connections between textiles and book-making in early modern Europe, for example the intersection between textile manufacturing and book-printing. Textile metaphors have been extensively used by philosophers and writers alike, with the textile operating at once ‘as language, concept and matter’ (Dormor 2020: 1); they have sometimes been used by critics too, who have suggested that in early modernity ‘texts could be, and were, read like tapestries’ (Olson 2013: 2). We also welcome papers that look at the dissemination and uses of textile vocabulary in the early modern intellectual and philosophical spheres, the collective imagination, the literary imagination as found in individual texts and that offer analyses of their implications for the history of ideas.
More specific questions may be: how did the workers of early modern textile manufactures relate to their activity and their products? In their humdrum routine work, was there any space for relating to it in imaginative and creative ways? Were they mere animalia laborantia, to adapt Hannah Arendt’s definition? Alternatively, assuming that thinking was involved at all levels of textile production — in actual manufacturing as well as in pattern designing and/or textile printing — are there traces left of that? Did early modern workers or designers in textile craftsmanship and the textile industry leave any impressions, thoughts (in the form of written notes or sketches or other) about their craft, or which may be related to it (either inspiring or being inspired by it)? Did any of the workers keep notebooks? Is there any way one could contribute further to the history of ideas ‘from below’ beginning with archival research and looking for extant traces left by those involved at different levels in textile production — the designers, the workers, the investors, the customers and the patrons? Taking inspiration from Ginzburg (1980), we ask: would something else, atypical with respect to our present knowledge of the times, emerge? With respect to the designs, patterns or prints in the weaving craft and the textile industry, would a study of possible points of contact between technical inventions and manufacturing processes, on the one hand, and the historical — global, local and even personal — moment, on the other, add to our knowledge of the wider ideas circulating in early modern Europe? Is there any such thing as a philosophy of textile technology and design? Our aim is to relate these material aspects of the craft with the imagination and the history of ideas.
Finally, in both conferences, a special section will be site-specific: around the same years in the second half of the eighteenth century, textile manufacturing flourished in the Belvedere of San Leucio in Caserta and in Mulhouse. The hunting Lodge of San Leucio became home to the silk factory by will of Ferdinand of Bourbon; the idea and choice of place for the factory started in the 1760s, after completion of the Royal Palace in Caserta. San Leucio has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1997 and today it hosts a museum of the textile craft of the old days. The textile industry in Mulhouse began in 1747, when the first “indiennerie” – a cotton printing manufacture – was set up. The industry flourished to such an extent that Mulhouse became known as the “French Manchester”. Today the city’s Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes (Printed Textiles Museum) bears testimony to that significant past activity. For both conferences we welcome papers on the respective local histories of textile manufacturing.
Conference 1: Textiles: The texture of ideas in early modern Europe (1589-1801). Textile designs, patterns and craftsmanship and the early modern imagination – Will be Held at Procida Island (University of Naples L’Orientale), 8-14 September 2025 (the location is the suggestive 17th-century ‘Conservatorio delle Orfanelle’ in Terra Murata, Procida: https://www.unior.it/it/valorizzazione/terza-missione/public-engagement/patrimonio-culturale/conservatorio-delle-orfanelle)
Possible topics may include but are by no means limited to:
▶ Cultural history, social history, microhistories:
- The production of textiles 1589-1801: a cultural history The issue of ‘authorship’ in pattern and printing designs Textile design and patterns in Europe
- Ends of textiles: recycling long-lasting and short-lived fabrics in early modernity Designing textiles: inventiveness and the cultural imagination in early modernity Cloth merchants and drapers’ shops in early modern Europe
- Textile workers as readers
- A cultural and/or social history of the perception of the work and its products Memoirs of textile workers 1589-1801 and object biography: fabrics, textiles, cloth Museums today and heritage tourism: the history of textiles as cultural history
▶ The literary imagination and beyond:
- Textiles, tapestries and weaving, weavers and drapers in early modern literary texts and visual arts
- Representations of early modern textiles and/or textile workers in literary texts and the visual arts
- Recurring patterns: damasquinerie, ceramic decorations and textile decorations A cultural analysis of figurative patterns in tapestries
▶ Textiles and book-making in early modern Europe: Books and textile practical knowledge
- Intersections beween textile manifacturing and book-printing The woven book: early modern printing on fabric
- Disseminating the craft: early modern books about fabrics, patterns and techniques
▶ Special section on San Leucio and Mulhouse: the impact of the textile industry on everyday life and the collective imagination:
- What impact did the textile industry have on the collective imagination? How did the workers feel about their jobs?
- Literacy among textile workers: did they (have time to) read? What kind of books or texts, if any, did they read? Practical texts? Others? Is it possible to trace a social history of reading among textile workers? Did they read more or less than other workers?
- San Leucio and Mulhouse in the literary imagination: are there references in then- contemporary literary texts – also ballads, songs, and so on – to the Bourbon experiment in San Leucio or the Mulhouse textile industry?
- The cultural impact of the decline of the textile tradition in San Leucio and Mulhouse The memory of the textile industry in San Leucio and Mulhouse today: museums, cultural activities and outreach. Is the textile industry of the past perceived as ‘cultural capital’ today?
Please send your paper proposals in English (300 words approximately) as well as a short biography to Anna Maria Cimitile (amcimitile@unior.it) and Laurent Curelly (laurent.curelly@uha.fr) by 31 January 2025.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 25 September 2024)
Conference: Exploring the Scandalous: Scandal as a Catalyst of Progress?
Location and dates: University of Vienna, Austria. 24-26 September 2025.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 March 2025.
Event description
The Greek word for the trigger-sensitive part in a trap which snaps shut when touched is “scandalon”. For any modern understanding of a scandal, not only an exploration of its triggers and mechanisms is relevant, but questions such as “Who sees what?” and “What effect does ‘being seen’ have on intersectional power relations?” are crucial as well. For a scandal to occur, a moral system against which someone offends must be in place, as well as a community/an audience that finds out about it and cares enough to feel offended by the respective breach, which usually requires some media involvement. In our scholarly engagement with the production and impact of the scandalous, we might ask ourselves: What happens to a scandal when the moral system within which it first occurred changes? What happens when the respective legal system lags behind a society’s moral code that has already changed? What happens when, in a social and cultural environment feeding on scandal, we stop caring altogether? What roles can and do the media play in informing and/or producing and/or manipulating the community that is necessary to create a scandal? It is tempting to stop at describing any given scandal, perhaps participate in the outrage it caused, or perhaps shake one’s head in incomprehension over the fact that an event caused a scandal at all. For the purpose of this conference, however, we are most interested in taking a look at the structures behind scandals in diverse Anglophone and/or German-speaking contexts of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, in order to explore their function as catalysts of change. Specifically, we would like to zoom in on their potential role as catalysts of change for ‘the better’, which of course presupposes a particular perspective that needs to be considered, perhaps exposed as biased and countered by different perspective/s.
Given that the academic publishing market is increasingly moving away from edited volumes and towards special issues in highly rated journals, we are adjusting the genre of the traditional CfP by asking for more detailed abstracts and streamlining them (as well as the potential talks and journal articles resulting from these abstracts). Thus, we aim to arrive at a coherent selection of 12 to 14 journal issue contributions (length tba).
Our conference’s temporal frame encompasses the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, whereas the transdisciplinary perspective will be limited to scandals from the Anglophone and the German-speaking cultural spheres, focusing on literary, (pop)cultural, social, political and economic contexts. We aim to approach an international, peer-reviewed journal (tba) that publishes articles in English with a plan for a special issue in which the contributions adhere to the same structure.
We would like each talk/finished article to name and/or outline the chosen scandal; mention the triggers (events, contexts etc.) that caused it; outline the participating discourses; discuss the media and/or institutions involved; characterize the relevant audience/s of the scandal; and discuss its effects and results.
This structure also determines what we are looking for in the abstracts. We expect them to answer the following questions to help us select a group that promises coherence as well as synergies: To which academic field does the proposed talk aim to contribute? What is the scandal (including key information such as dates and ‘players’, field, historical and socio-cultural context)? What is/are the key concept/s on which you will draw to theorise your chosen scandal or its underlying structures? Which discourses are central or peripheral to it? Who were the audiences of this particular scandal, and did they get involved in any form? For instance, did they form movements in the scandal’s wake? Which media and institutions created the audiences involved and sustained their attention? What changed after the chosen scandal? When did those change/s occur and within which contexts? What were the scandal’s short-term and long-term effects? While we do not expect you to answer all of these questions, please try to address as many as possible.
Please add to your abstract a brief bio-bibliographical note (100 words) and your email address, and send it as an email attachment (.doc or .pdf) to all three conference organisers:
Timeline
- Deadline for abstracts (500-750 words and a short list of references): 15th March 2025
- Selection of abstracts and notification of speakers: mid-April 2025
- Conference Warming: 24th September 2025
- Conference Dinner: 25th September 2025
- Conference Fees: full: 65 Euros; reduced (PhD students; postdocs without access to funds): 35 Euros
Website address
https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/scandal
Contact details
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 22 January 2025)