Books and special issues of journals – Deadlines April to June 2022

“Textual Negotiation of Online Identities” – Special Issue 4/2022 of Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia
Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Proposal submission deadline: 1 May 2022

Textual Negotiation of Online Identities
Special Issue 4/2022
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia
studia.philologia@lett.ubbcluj.ro

Guest Editors:

Dr. Diana Cotrău, diana.cotrau@ubbcluj.ro
Dr. Alexandra Cotoc, alexandra.cotoc@ubbcluj.ro
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Communicating via, generically speaking, computers has lately come to represent a routine, ritual and, arguably, necessary activity in the modern age on both personal and professional levels. Under the umbrella term known as computer-mediated communication, multimodal par excellence, several sociocultural acts are performed. From among them scholars have been particularly interested in the textual (text, here, in its broader meaning of language, discourse and semiotic architecture) process of negotiating individual or group identities, be they situated or permanent, on the fixed-fluid spectrum (Danet and Herring, 2007; Jenkins 2014; Turkle, 1997; Van Dijk, J. 2006, West & Zimmerman, 2008). Whether a matter of establishing and regulating interpersonal relations (Baym, 2005), or of forming communities of practice, prompted by mutual goals and interests, in turn grounded in ideological affiliations and reciprocity, the construction of identities on social network sites is a subtle, finely calibrated, liminal process.

This paradigm is congenial to a cultural sociolinguistic approach, with a focus on the manner in which users, the multiliterate actors of a participatory culture, relate to the other. The discursive membership of a medium displaying engaged sociocultural dynamics in the age of globalization, by a critical mass of people, is undeniably a phenomenon. Empirical and theoretical studies are trying to keep pace with the radical and accelerated shifts triggered by the regular use of online sites. Thus, today, the focus has become the way in which, by and large, group identities become hybrid, nebulous, fluid, tribal, particularly under the impact of integrated digital actions, inside increasingly ideologized virtual communities. Within the given context, social network sites can be scrutinized as generators of echo-chambers, affording the expression of foregrounded affiliations developed and reinforced by certain patterns of discourse. Through technology affordances, they enable individuals to explore, exercise and express their identity repertoires in a threefold capacity: online content users, consumers and creators. Consequently, it is natural that all of these aspects should lend themselves to a multidisciplinary approach that must include by necessity elements of semantics, pragmatics, semiotics and social psychology.

This issue will host papers falling under the joint or specific scientific approaches of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, applied linguistics multilingual and intercultural communication, or language policies, etc. From among the textual topics and phenomena of phatic or online communication today, marked by lingua-cultural (super)diversity, multiliteracy, hyperconnectivity, we suggest the tackling of the following:

  • building self- and group identity
  • defining and representing the other
  • social and political activism and echo chambers
  • normativity in online communication
  • online multilingualism and plurilingualism
  • conviviality and phatic communication
  • intercultural and multicultural aspects
  • ideologies and polarization
  • phatic communication vs. communion
  • digital limits, constraints and affordances
  • multimodal expression of emotion and affectivity
  • the private-public divide
  • politeness, solidarity and social distance
  • online communication in pandemic times

Indicative Bibliography:

Antaki, Charles and Sue Widdicombe (eds.) Identities in Talk. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008.
Baym, Nancy. Personal Connections in the Digital Age., 2nd edition. Polity Press, 2015. Crystal, David. Internet Linguistics: A Student Guide. Routledge, 2011.
Danet, Brenda, Herring, Susan C. The Multilingual Internet. Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Jenkins, Richard. Social Identity. 4th ed. Routledge, 2014.
McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. Riverhead Books, 2019.
Papacharissi, Z. (ed.) Networked Self. Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2011.
Tannen, Deborah, Trester, Anna Marie. Discourse 2.0. Language and New Media. Georgetown University Press, 2008.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the screen: identity in the internet age. Touchstone, 1997.
Urbanski, Heather. Writing and the Digital Generation. Essays on the New Media Rhetoric. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010.
Van Dijk, J. The Network Society. Social Aspects of New Media. SAGE Publications Ltd., 2006.

Timeline:

  • 1 May 2022 – proposal submission deadline (200-word abstract, 7 keywords, 5 theoretical references, 150-word author’s bio-note)
  • 15 May 2022 – notification about acceptance
  • 1 August 2022 – submission of full papers Instructions for authors regarding formatting rules and style sheets can be found on the journal’s webpage: http://studia.ubbcluj.ro/serii/philologia/pdf/Instructions_En.pdf)

cfp_subbphilologia_4_2022_en (1)

(Posted 31 January 2022)


Damon Galgut – collection of essays on the writer and his work.
Abstract submissions: 1 May 2022.

Invitation to submit paper proposals to a collection of essays on the works of Damon Galgut

In her 2001 essay “The Dwelling Place of Words” Nadine Gordimer argued that colonialism and apartheid are part of the collective consciousness in African writers, irrespective of their race and social background. Gordimer and her late works are a convincing testimony to this truth, and the same can be said of her compatriot Damon Galgut, who, since his literary debut forty years ago, has explored the legacy of apartheid while remaining alert to the challenges faced by contemporary South Africans. As a writer whose works map the continuities and disruptions between his country’s past and present, Galgut has made it clear that his role as a writer is to draw inspiration from earlier authors while searching for new ways of literary expression: in a 2010 interview for The Paris Review he spoke about his need – shared by other South African writers, as he believes – to “break free from the past” by departing from what has become derivative and uninspiring. In Galgut’s view, rejecting repetitions and clichés in literary narratives is a gesture of reaching out into the future: “In this sense, imaginative freedom is a way of finding the future, though it isn’t so easy to do.” The fact that Galgut’s impulse towards artistic innovation has political resonances is reflected in all his works, including his 2021 novel The Promise, in which he sought to overcome some of the confines of third-person narration by using narrative modes originating from theatrical and cinematic conventions. Drawing inspiration from his career in the theatre and his experience as a screenwriter, Galgut is also outspoken about the impact of other authors on his works, both South African, including Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Dan Jacobson, Zakes Mda, Zoë Wicomb, and international, like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Patrick White, Albert Camus, W.G. Sebald, and others.

While the critical interest in Galgut has been growing steadily over the past ten years, so far no study has been published that is devoted entirely to his works. Recognising this critical lacuna, the editors of this volume invite scholars to contribute to a book that would reflect the richness and diversity of Galgut’s literary inspirations, and capture the political and artistic dimension of his drive towards artistic innovation. This invitation is extended not only to scholars specializing in South African and postcolonial studies, but also to researchers interested in reading Galgut’s works from other critical perspectives, including, but not limited to, gender, queer, ecocriticism and travel studies. The authors are invited to submit 300 word proposals and short biographical notes (of up to 150 words) to dgalgut.monograph2022@gmail.com

Proposals may address the following themes:

  • Colonial inheritance
  • Racial tensions in Galgut’s novels and plays
  • Travel; travelling bodies; thresholds and borders
  • Queer bodies/spaces/places
  • Inter- and metatextuality
  • Galgut’s novels as examples of post-liberal fiction
  • Ecocritical approaches to Galgut’s fiction
  • The trope of locality in Galgut’s works
  • Galgut as a chronicler of “the past that has only just happened”
  • Galgut’s use of language

The deadline for abstract submissions is May 1st, 2022; all authors will be contacted individually within the following 3 weeks; full-length papers will be required by January 2023 (more details will follow in due course). We expect a late 2023/early 2024 publication in one of the top-tier academic publishers.

Galgut_call for papers

(Posted 10 February 2022)


Feminist Spaces, Summer 2022 Issue
Deadline for submissions: 6 May 2022

Accepting general submissions for Summer 2022
Issue Deadline for submissions: Friday, May 6, 2022

Feminist Spaces welcomes work across genres and disciplines and invites students, faculty, artists, activists, and independent scholars to submit academic papers, creative writing, and artistic pieces that address topics in feminist, gender, sexuality or women’s studies. Articles may originate or enter into dialogue with current feminist discourse or present historical research. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

  • Feminism in politics and/or political discourse
  • Feminist theory, practice, and politics
  • History and analysis of feminist movements
  • Historiographies of individual women
  • Intersectionality and politics of diversity in feminism
  • Women’s and feminist contributions to/effects on industrial or labor fields
  • Feminist ethics/philosophies
  • LGBTQ+ topics

Please ensure that all written submissions adhere to the guidelines and conventions set forth by the Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition. Standard essays must be emailed in .rtf, .doc, or .docx form and should be single-spaced at a 12 pt. font. All artistic submissions must be submitted electronically in universally compatible formats and should include a written statement to contextualize the work.

The deadline for submission is Friday May 6, 2022, with a tentative release date scheduled for the end of July. All submissions must be forwarded to feministspacesjournal@gmail.com. Be sure to include your full name and email address on the first page of text, label the file using your last name and first name (e.g. “Doe, Jane”), and write “submission” in the email subject line. 

For any questions or inquiries, contact the editorial team at feministspacesjournal@gmail.com or visit feministspacesjournal.org. 

About Feminist Spaces: Feminist Spaces is an international journal of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies that invites students, faculty, artists, activists, and independent scholars from institutions worldwide to submit formal essays, creative writing, and multimodal artistic pieces per our annual Call for Works. The online journal is published by the Department of English at the University of West Florida and designed by the Department of Art and Design at the University of West Florida.

Feminist Spaces CFP_2022 Summer

(Posted 1 April 2022)


ELOPE Autumn special issue: “English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries”
Manuscript submission deadline: 15 May 2022

English in Central Europe

With its international prominence in today’s world, English is in contact (to greater or lesser degrees) with most languages and societies around the globe, with the results of that contact varying from location to location, depending on both the linguistic and the socio-cultural factors of the particular local context. This special issue of ELOPE to be published in December 2022 focuses on the presence of English specifically in Central Europe and its interaction with the languages and societies of the region.

Central Europe may be a concept that is difficult to pin down geographically and politically, since it is in some cases defined by historical roots (despite differences in 20th-century social and political developments), while other conceptualisations build specifically on more recent commonalities of experience (in the last 50-100 years). At the same time the concept remains in use precisely because it is a useful one, in that it captures an area with some common socio-cultural traditions that in many ways create a recognizable milieu and a feeling of familiarity. This can extend to the manner in which English is received and welcomed, as a means not only of communication but also of participation in the global culture.

For this special issue of ELOPE on English in Central Europe, we invite research that examines all aspects of English language use in Central European contexts across all fields of linguistic investigation (historical, sociolinguistic, structural, acquisitional, etc.) including, but not limited to, the following areas:
● variation and change in linguistic structures of local language(s) induced by contact with English;
● contact varieties of English developed through contact with local language(s);
● history of English language use in local context(s);
● English in competition with local language(s) across societal domains of use;
● societal reception of the use of English in local context(s);
● English as a lingua franca in Central European context(s);
● acquisition of English and acquired societal bilingualism;
● and many more areas…

Manuscript submission deadline: 15 May 2022.

General submission guidelines:
● The language of contributions is English.
● Manuscripts should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words in length, with a short abstract of no more
than 150 words.
● All submitted papers must follow the ELOPE Author Guidelines:
https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/elope/about/submissions
● Manuscripts should be submitted for blind review in digital form using the Faculty of Arts (University of Ljubljana) OJS platform:
https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/elope/information/authors

Please direct all inquiries to the guest editors of this special issue:
● Monika Kavalir (monika.kavalir@ff.uni-lj.si)
● Mark Richard Lauersdorf (lauersdorf@uky.edu)

Articles published in ELOPE are indexed/reviewed in: Scopus; ERIH PLUS; MLA International Bibliography; OCLC WorldCat; CNKI; DOAJ; Google Scholar; COBISS.si; dLib.si.

(Posted 21 December 2022)


Clio Reflects. XXI Historical Fiction by Women and about Women – Call for Chapters.
Abstract submission: 20 May 2022

Call for Chapters
Clio Reflects. XXI Historical Fiction by Women and about Women
(tentatively by Bloomsbury) 

In many literary genres as well as other modes of expression, such as cinematography, performing arts, and games, explorations of past women’s lives have become increasingly  popular and evolved into a body of intellectual, psychological, and social experimentation. This  movement is mirrored in the broad spectrum of genres making some claim for historicity or  historical verisimilitude, such as historical novels; alternate histories; fictional biographies;  historical fantasies, family sagas, mysteries, and romances; children’s and YA historical fiction;  historical comic and graphic novels; and historiographic metafiction.  

In such broadly-defined historical fiction, we find authors experimenting with the characters of  women larger than life or obsessed with power. Rebecca F. Kuang’s female version of Mao  Zedong, whose madness we experience in The Poppy War trilogy, and the women  overachievers populating the oeuvre of Philippa Gregory, are prominent examples of this trend.  Contemporary historical fiction also capitalises on retelling popular stories and legends.  Interestingly, in it we might also find prospective solutions to the limitations placed on women  by the patriarchal world – as in Madeline Miller’s Circe – or alternatives to concepts coined by  male intellectuals – as in the case of Hillary Mantel’s take on hauntology. Female perspectives  in the subgenres of historical fiction have also redefined the “paths” already explored mostly  by men, such as Kate Moses’s fictional biography Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath, or  generated new typological categories, such as medical historical novels, and historical sisters in-arms works (for example, The Help and The Hidden Figures). 

We invite authors and researchers working in various academic disciplines to submit chapter  proposals that look at post-2000 historical fiction, whether literary, visual and performing art,  e.g., film and television series, or in games, and explore questions such as: what do women look  for and, more importantly, find in the past? For what purposes and with what effects do female  authors intersect historical fiction and reality? How does female historical fiction situate itself  with regard to history? What insights does female historical fiction contribute to our current  state of knowledge? 

Proposals of chapters could include, but are not limited to the following topics: social and literary influences on and of contemporary female historical fiction historical fiction’s critical diagnoses of the present and engagement in current social  problems 

  • female ways of reimagining the past in various media – from historical novels to  strategic games and beyond 
  • reshaping, blurring, and transgressing the limits of the historical fiction subgenres  changing representations of female historical figures (especially women in power)
  • female wisdom – views and concepts non-existent within or alternative to male views  and concepts 
  • female perspectives on the dominant discourse on history 
  • female historical truth and ways of knowing the past  
  • female participation in the construction of history 
  • entanglements of female historical knowledge with politics of memory, epistemic  authorities, historical turns, and paradigm shifts 
  • female configurations of subjectivity and forms of community and individuality  social, psychological, and intellectual mechanisms employed by women to protect  themselves and fight against imposed patriarchal constraints 
  • female reshapings of the patriarchal language forms 

The book editors – Michael Joseph (Rutgers University, USA, https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 8117-5739) and Alicja Bemben (University of Silesia, Poland, https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 7342-7748) – will be happy to consider relevant proposals from both experienced scholars and  young academics at the start of their careers, as well as doctoral and graduate students. We  strongly encourage contributions focusing on works from Asia and nations usefully referred to  as The Global South. Only previously unpublished texts will be considered. 

Submit titles, abstracts (about 600 words), and biographical notes (about 50 words) by 20 May 2022 to mjoseph@emeritus.rutgers.edu and alicja.bemben@us.edu.pl. Please, make sure that  the abstract explicitly states your proposed thesis, research methods and techniques, and the  prospective structure of your chapter. 

Timeline: 

  •  Abstract submission: 20 May 2022 
  •  Acceptance notice: 30 May 2022 
  •  Draft chapter submission: 20 October 2022 
  •  Final chapter submission: 20 December 2022 (5000-7000 words, all-inclusive) No payment from the authors is required.

Clio Reflects – Call for Chapters

(Posted 28 February 2022)


Depictions of Pestilence in Literature, Media, And Art
Deadline for submissions: 22 May 2022

Depictions Of Pestilence In Literature, Media, And Art
Editor: Kübra Baysal
Contact Email: kbaysal@ybu.edu.tr / kubrabaysal17@gmail.com

Description:

This book aims to fill in a gap in studies of literature, media, culture, and art by exploring depictions  of  contagious  diseases  in  different  genres  since  the  dawn  of  humanity  and compiling   a   history   of   such   representations   of   pestilence   from   a   post-human   and environmental perspective. Indulging in humankind’s struggle with calamities throughout history, the collection will discuss several media that portray real or imagined futures based on past and present facts. In today’s world, which is stricken with global warming and the COVID-19 pandemic, these narratives, termed ‘plague literature’, hold a crucial position in guiding humanity towards a greater ecological awareness. The book will appeal to scholars, students, organisations, and individuals who are interested in studies of literature, history, media, art, and environmental humanities.

What Should the Submitted Chapters Consider?

Contributions are welcome on following topics:

  • Literary studies;
  • Environmental studies;
  • Cultural studies;
  • Media studies;
  • Art studies;
  • Discourse studies;
  • Literary theories;
  • Gender studies;
  • Animal studies;
  • History;
  • Philosophy.

About the Editor:

Dr  Kübra  Baysal  holds  PhD,  MA,  and  BA  degrees  in  English  Literature  and  works  as  a Lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages of Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey. Her main fields of interest are climate fiction, apocalypse fiction, Doris Lessing, feminism, environmental studies, the Victorian novel, and the contemporary novel. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters, and is the editor of the book Apocalyptic Visions in the Anthropocene and the Rise of Climate Fiction (2021).

Submission Requirements:

Chapters  should  be  between  4000  and  6000  words,  with  a  100-150-word  abstract,  and should be original and previously unpublished. If the work has already been published (as a   journal   article,   or   in   conference   proceedings,   for   example),   Cambridge   Scholars Publishing will require evidence that permission to be re-published has been granted.

All submissions should conform to the grammar and formatting guidelines provided by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, which can be viewed here: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/pages/forms-guidelines.

Unless agreed with the Editor prior to submission, referencing should be in Chicago style.

Any work submitted for publication should be free of copyright restrictions, and a statement should be submitted in support of this.

Contributions should be scholarly based, rather than anecdotal or unverifiable.

Contributions must be wholly in English, excluding footnotes, appendices, and short extracts for translation.

While we will perform pre-press evaluations on the collection, we do not provide full copyediting services, so we ask that works are submitted to us in their final, ‘ready-to-go’ form.

How to Submit?

You should submit to the Editor a completed proposal form, alongside a copy of your work for her review. This submission should be made directly to the email addresses at the top of this page. Please note that incomplete submissions or submissions with language, citation or formatting issues will not be considered for the book.

If you have any questions about the collection, prior to your submission, please contact the Editor.

Timeline:

  • Full chapters, accompanied by completed submission forms, should be sent to the Editor no later than May 22, 2022.
  • The feedback for submissions will be provided by the Editor by July 2022.

All works should be submitted to the Editor, at the addresses provided at the top of this document.

The Editor will review these personally to consider their inclusion in the work. Should the Editor approve the chapters, you will then be asked to complete an agreement for the publication of these chapters. It is essential that this agreement is completed in order for your work to be printed.

Once the Editor has approved the chapter, and has received your contributor agreement, these will then be sent to Cambridge Scholars as a complete collection for pre-press reviews and publication. As such, it is essential that the work you submit to the Editor is finalised and has been thoroughly proofread.

You can view all open projects at the links below:

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/pages/University-Showcase 
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/pages/guest-edited-collections

Depictions-of-Pestilence-in-Literature-Media-And-Art-CFP

(Posted 13 April 2022)


Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies on “Myths, Archetypes and the Literary Arts”
Extended deadline for submissions: 31 August 2022

Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies (ISSN 2791-6553) invites submissions for a special issue of the journal on Myths, Archetypes and the Literary Arts

Ever since humans came into being, stories have been our constant companions. Be it the orally transmitted tales of our early ancestors or the physically enacted, handwritten, printed, and now digitalized modes of storytelling; if there are some things that haven’t changed over the course of human history, one is our enchantment with stories. As cognition grew in humans and led to the birth of civilizations, stray stories assumed the form of myths, often rooted in folklore and religion, and continue to offer meaning, purpose, guidance and solace to peoples from different cultures around the world. Regardless of the temporal, geographical and ethnic diversity in the stories created by humans, recurring tropes and motifs abound and are often summed under the term “archetype”. Drawing from areas such as theology, anthropology, psychology and literature, the concept of archetypes is timeless, universal and has remained ingrained in human consciousness since archaic times. An archetype can be: a recurring trope or motif in mythology, literature or art; a universally present thought, idea or image residing in the collective unconscious of individuals; a Platonic idea referring to pure fundamental forms which every other art form tends to imitate; or a prototype that serves as the original model for objects to copy. Treatises on the subject of archetypes can be traced back to Plato, who described ideas or “eidos” as pure constructs of the human mind that were an inherent part of the soul since before it was born into the world. All worldly things, in Plato’s opinion, are imperfect copies. Twentieth-century analytical psychology studies archetypes as “primordial images” or “archaic remnants,” phrases coined by Carl Jung who in his Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1968) identifies the collective unconscious of the human mind as the abode of archetypes that are more or less similar in all individuals. Primordial images, Jung believes, are born during the initial stages of human evolution and have been part of the collective unconscious ever since. It is through these images that archetypes are experienced universally and more importantly, that the unconscious reveals itself. Jung contends that the mind of every human contains these inherent unconscious understandings of the human condition and the collective knowledge of humankind in the collective unconscious. The anthropological origins of archetypal criticism date back to Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915), the first influential text dealing with cultural mythologies, wherein Frazer studies and compares primitive and modern religions and brings out the beliefs and practices inherent and common to all religions. Joseph Campbell, the twentieth-century comparative mythologist, lectured in a similar vein in his seminal text The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and in several volumes on mythologies from across cultures, inspiring popular imagination and expression including George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise. 

The massive ontological and epistemological changes since the world wars, the decline of European colonies, the rise of global capitalism, the internet revolution, and more recently the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have forever altered our notions of truth and knowledge, not sparing art and literature in their wake as the very concepts of genre, narrative and meaning are blurred in a world of multiple truths and realities. Notwithstanding the supposed collapse of grand narratives, myths and archetypes abound and stay topical in contemporary experience and expression, lurking both in plain sight and at times in the unlikeliest of places, as in—the monomyth (or the hero quest) narrative in the works of postmodern writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon and Tom Robbins; the Biblical allusions in the discographies of Scandinavian metal bands; the creation myths and cosmogonies modelled on religion in superhero comics and cinema (most recently Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Marvel’s Eternals); and video games inspired from myth and folklore, to name a few instances. 

The special issue of the journal aims to examine how myths and archetypes, originating from our collective unconscious, in turn shape our collective consciousness and with it our collective knowledge, and leave imprints (both advertently and inadvertently) in our creative expression such as literature, theatre, film, graphic novels and comics, music, video games, and more. 

Possible lines of thought may include but are not limited to:

  • Locating myths and archetypes in works considered devoid of them
  • Refuting and/or redefining existing studies on the subject
  • Employing archetypal and myth criticism to explain seemingly unrelated works
  • Understanding contemporary events and popular culture with myths and archetypes
  • Reassessing the relevance of myths and archetypes in life and the literary arts 

Authors are invited to email 4000-8000 word papers (prepared as per MLA guidelines) in an anonymous document along with the paper title, abstract, keywords, author name(s), author affiliation(s) and bio-note in a separate document to araj@hs.iitr.ac.in and essencecritiquejournal@gmail.com with the subject line “[author name(s)] – E&C Special Issue Submission” before August 31st, 2022. The issue will be published in early 2023

Special Issue Editor: Ankit Raj, Department of English, Government College Gharaunda (Karnal) / Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. Email: araj@hs.iitr.ac.in 

Journal Information: Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies (ISSN 2791-6553), Bingöl University, Turkey http://journalofcritique.com/ 

(Posted 25 January 2022, Re-posted 13 May 2022)


The Polish Journal of English Studies, issue “Reading old age, the ageing body and memory in British and American literature and texts of culture”
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1st June 2022

Reading old age, the ageing body and memory in British and American literature and texts of culture
The Polish Journal of English Studies 

Age studies point to all life stages as culturally and historically idiosyncratic, and complicated even more by various intersectional perspectives. Within this age(s)-focused field of analysis, humanistic and critical gerontologists as well as historians of old age issued an ardent call to redefine old age as equally ephemeral and multi-layered as any other life stage. Addressing the existing studies of the formative and foundational quality of youth and adulthood, gerontologists of various subdisciplines objected to seeing old age as simply the end of life, and to defining it as a precise point in time rather than a nebulous period with no exact opening temporal bracket. Thane (2000) in particular stressed the difficulty in defining old age in term of chronology only, proposing to view it as a functional and cultural category as well. More precisely, scholars noted, one is sooner made (to feel) old by culture and society than one perceives oneself as being such. Consequently, even if it is an essentially intimate and embodied lived experience, old age must be seen as an experience with a set of socio-cultural prescriptive and proscriptive rules of conduct and decorum as well as social sanctions and rewards.  

Addressing all of said emerging conceptual recalibrations, Gullette claimed that indeed age “could be the next analytic and hermeneutic concept to make cutting-edge difference” (2004: 106) in humanist research. . Having specifically worked on middle and old age in her research, she further noted that, just like with other necessary intersectionalities, to talk about ageing is to keep unravelling and disentangling “the din of representations, unseen internalizations, [and] unthinking practices” (Gullette 2004: 27). Old age can then be seen as simultaneously ”the culmination or the dreary denouement of life’s drama” (Cole 2006: xx), written as somatic and mental narratives of decline (Gullette 1997) as well as the most meaningful moment of human existence, “a time for recapitulating, connecting part to part, re-membering” (Carson 1987: xii), leading to wisdom only allowed to the members of this in group. From such a dialectic other questions are engendered: Do we with age become the embodied repositories of knowledge and guardians of traditions? Do we need to properly perform old age as the various gerontideologies socialize us to do (Mangan 2013)? Are we our ageing bodies? How do our auto/self-narratives change with age? Can we “read the beginning in the end and the end in the beginning” (Baars 2016: 82)? 

This themed volume aims to critically address and further identify the meaning(s) behind and potentialities of old age and ageing. As growing and/or being old are not only subjective and embodied experiences but also socio-cultural phenomena, the points of departure in this collection are the three fundamentals in gerontological research: 1) old age, 2) the (ageing) body and 3) memory, the latter understood not only as recollecting one’s spatio temporal past but, in particular, re-membering one’s somatic “past-ness”. Such intertwining of old age with memory inevitably invites studies of nostalgia, seen as both positive and negative approaches to and perceptions of one’s embodied past. We thus welcome papers that engage

in age and gerontological readings within British and American literature and paraliterary texts of culture (i.e. ego-documents, conduct texts, philosophical tracts, etc.) across all historical periods. Book reviews within the field of literary age studies or literary gerontology are welcome as well. 

Please send a 150-200-word abstract (titled Surname_PJES_Old age) together with a short biographical note to kbronkk@amu.edu.pl The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1st June 2022. Notifications about proposal acceptance will be sent by 20th June 2022. The deadline for submission of completed papers is 1st November 2022. Planned publication: 2023. 

Bibliography 

Baars, Jan. 2016. “Concepts of age and aging”, in Geoffrey Scarre (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 69-86. 
Carson, Ronald A. 1987. ‘Foreword’, in Thomas R. Cole and Sally Gadow (eds.), What does it mean to grow old? Reflections from the humanities. Durham: Duke UP, xi–xiv. Cole, Thomas R. 2006. The journey of life: A cultural history of aging in America. Cambridge: CUP. 
Gullette, Margaret M. Declining to decline: Cultural combat and the politics of the midlife. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997. 
Gullette, Margaret M. 2004. Aged by culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cole, Thomas R., and Sally Gadow, eds. What does it mean to grown old? Reflections from the humanities. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. 
Mangan, Michael. Staging ageing: Theatre, performance, and the narrative of decline. Bristol: Intellect, 2013.

(Posted 24 February 2022)


InterArtes, n° 2, 2022 – “HyBrid”
Deadline for articles: 15 June 2022

InterArtes, n° 2, 2022
Edited by: Laura Brignoli, Silvia Zangrandi
Department of “Humanistic Studies”
Università IULM – Milan

Hybrid

Hybrid conferences, hybrid museum spaces, hybrid uses of materials… the notion of hybrid seems to be the driving force of contemporary life. If in the past hybrid carried with it negative connotations due to the presence of heterogeneous elements considered ill-matched and lacking in harmony, today hybrid has taken on a neutral value and indicates the existence of two or more models that intersect, contaminating and appropriating different discourses and levels of writing, reworking them. Each element, be it a complete text or a fragment of language, must be considered in its capacity to entertain relations with other elements: Bakhtin reminds us that literary language is a linguistic hybrid (cf. Aesthetics and the Novel, 1975). The question of heterogeneity is thus read in terms of a creation on multiple levels that requires a multidisciplinary vision, and that crosses genres that are different from each other: literature hybridises with cinema and vice versa, painting contaminates music… Hybridity removes the barriers between genres; time and space become porous elements that intersect, and this process of hybridisation gives rise to new products capable of incorporating different techniques, contents and styles – hybrids! In the television sector, these hybrids can be seen more strongly, such as docufiction, infotainment, but also narrative reportage, with its hybrids between literature and journalistic reporting (from Goethe to Truman Capote to Tiziano Terzani). There are also less apparent hybrids, such as the one proposed in the 1930s by Massimo Bontempelli, whose 522. Romanzo di una giornata (1932) is an example of hybridisation between literature and advertising. The technology push seems to have accelerated the possibilities of hybridisation, and the very concept of hybridisation is becoming a key to examining objects and practices and reflecting on the principles of categorisation (cf. Jean-Jacques Wünenberger, “Pratiques artistiques post-modernes et hybridité” in L. Gwiazdzinski, L’hybridation des mondes. Territoires et organisations à l’épreuve de l’hybridation, Seyssinet-Pariset, Elya Éditions, 2016).

Several studies offer a methodological and theoretical approach (see, among many others, Georges Barski, Yves Demarly, Simone Gilgenkrantz, “Hybridation”, Encyclopædia Universalishttps://www.universalis. fr/encyclopedie/hybridation/; Dominique Budor, Walter Geerts, Le Texte hybride, Paris, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2004; Guido Gallerani, ‘The Hybrid Essay in Europe in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century’, Comparaison: An International Journal of Comparative Literature, ‘Narration and Reflection’, Christy Wampole and Stefano Ercolino (eds. ), 33, 2015); however, the notion of hybrid still opens up vast possibilities for analysis and interpretation due to the multitude of practices and subjects. If the first issue of the journal dealt with the permeability of borders – the very sign of topicality – as a condition that supports an aesthetics of the hybrid, the second issue of InterArtes intends to ask how this process of hybridisation of different genres, content, themes, styles and languages changes the nature and structure of the text, what the final product born from this interaction is and whether it can give rise to multiple levels of reading generated by the presence of different expressive means. But it also opens up to the investigation of the very limits of hybridisation and the new horizons that this concept brings with it. The intersections between different arts (literature, photography, cinema, comics, painting, dance, music…) are possible in many directions that do not necessarily have to favour literature as a comparative perspective.

In this second issue, InterArtes opens up the possibility of taking an ontological viewpoint or a pragmatic or analytical perspective, with the ultimate aim of exploring a field of investigation that continues to offer broadening perspectives.

Methods of submission

The texts proposed, which will have a theoretical or analytical framework with theoretical premises, must be unpublished and written in Word, in compliance with the journal’s editorial rules published on the website, and will be subject to double-blind evaluation.

Languages accepted: Italian, English, French.

Articles should be sent, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical note, by 15 June 2022 to: interartes@iulm.it

call interartes 2 ENG_131221

(Posted 14 February 2022)


FOCUS: Papers in English Literary and Cultural Studies. 2022 issue: “Interwar Modernisms in Context; Their Predecessors and Legacy”
Deadline for contributions: 15 June 2022

We invite contributions to the 2022 issue of our departmental journal FOCUS: Papers in English Literary and Cultural Studies, which is a peer-reviewed, biennial forum. From this year on, the journal will be published in Open Access format under a new ISSN number. For more information see:  http://ies.btk.pte.hu/

2022 marks the centenary of the publication of significant modernist works, primarily T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age. 1922 was also the year when Ireland regained its independence after centuries of British colonial rule. Inspired by these anniversaries, the broad theme of the 2022 issue of FOCUS will be 

“Interwar Modernisms in Context; Their Predecessors and Legacy”   

Contributions related to this theme are welcome. We expect titles and short abstracts by June 15, 2022 and inform authors about their acceptance or rejection within the week after this date. Conforming to the MLA style 7th ed. with inside references keyed to a Works Cited section, the papers using Word 12 (of 5,000-8,000 words in length) should be sent to the issue editors and the editor-in-chief by August 31, 2022. In accordance with the policy of the journal, the papers will be read by external referees in the process of deciding about their quality and acceptance or rejection for publication. Reviews of scholarly books (of 1,000-2,000 words in length) about Anglophone literary or cultural subjects and published not earlier than 2019, are also welcome. 

Issue Editors: 

Gabriella Vöő (voo.gabriella@pte.hu), Mária Kurdi (kurdi.maria@pte.hu), Bence Gábor Kvéder (kveder.bence@gmail.com

Editor-in-chief: 

Mária Kurdi (kurdi.maria@pte.hu)

Address:

University of Pécs
Faculty of Humanities
Department of English Literatures and Cultures
Institute of English Studies 
Ifjúság útja 6.
7624 Pécs, Hungary

(Posted 13 May 2022)


Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia 3/2022 – Miscellanea Section
Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2022

Call for Papers
Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia 3/2022
Miscellanea Section

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia, a refereed quarterly journal published by the Faculty of Letters in Cluj, Romania (indexed Web of Science – Emerging Sources Citation Index, ERIH PLUS, Index Copernicus, EBSCO, PROQUEST, CEEOL, Gale MLA), invites submissions of original manuscripts in the form of scientific articles to be included in the Miscellanea section of issue 3 (2022).

The journal seeks submissions on a wide range of topics within the following fields and subfields: literary studies, literary history and theory, comparative literature, cultural studies, gender studies, digital humanities, ecocriticism, theoretical and applied linguistics, semiotics, pragmatics, translation studies, foreign language teaching, and new educational technologies.

The articles may be written in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Instructions for authors can be found on the journal’s webpage: http://studia.ubbcluj.ro/serii/philologia/pdf/Instructions_En.pdf. All submissions will be evaluated by way of a double-blind peer-review process and the authors will receive the evaluation reports.

Please email your articles (5,000-7,000 words), abstracts (250 words, in English and Romanian), 5-6 keywords and a short biographical note to studia.philologia@lett.ubbcluj.ro. Foreign authors may request the journal editors’ assistance in translating the title, abstract and keywords into Romanian.

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2022.

(Posted 20 April 2022)