Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in June 2017

Reges quondam regesque futuri’: Various Aspects of Royal Power in Medieval and Modern Fantasy Literature: Medieval Fantasy Symposium
Unieście, Poland, 1-4 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 14 February 2017

You are cordially invited to the fifth Medieval Fantasy Symposium, organised by Koszalin University of Technology, which will be held in Unieście between 1 and 4 June 2017. Medieval Fantasy Symposia aim at bringing together specialists in the areas of medieval and fantasy literature, in particular those who seek to find cultural connections between the numerous supernatural elements in the literary output of the Middle Ages (e.g. Beowulf, Norse and Celtic mythologies, Arthurian cycle) and modern tales in the fantasy genre which are set in different quasi-medieval worlds (as in The Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire). The scope of the symposia is not, however, strictly limited to the world of literature, as it also embraces the many fields of artistic expression including the fine and cinematic arts.

Medieval kingship is a complex, multi-layered cultural construct. On the one hand, in its primary sense, it lays emphasis upon the numerous royal duties (moral, political, military etc.) which arise from the very fact of being a king. Hence, despite being a sovereign, he is, at the same time, a person who is, first of all, subject to the law of his realm, one who should use his power solely for the benefit of its inhabitants. Indeed, a “king is he that can hold his own, or else his title is in vain”, claims the elvish prince Maedhros in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion. On the other hand, though, there are numerous examples of medieval rulers who often transgress their royal duties to satisfy their exuberant egos. They are the reges horrendi of the biblical Book of Wisdom, the rois maudits from the historical novels of Maurice Druon.

The conference will focus exclusively upon various aspects (cultural, religious, political, intellectual etc.) traditionally associated with kingship. The thematic scope will cover all sorts of texts of undisputedly medieval origin (poems, sagas, chronicles etc.) as well as post-medieval fantasy (including historical fantasy) works written by, amongst others, William Shakespeare, J.R.R. Tolkien, Maurice Druon, George R.R. Martin and Elżbieta Cherezińska. The main themes will include:

  1. king-making and images of kingship.
  2. ideology and sacrality of kingship.
  3. warrior-kings and their knights.
  4. royal bynames, their significance and meaning.
  5. noble kings and their accursed counterparts.
  6. symbolism of crowns, swords and other royal insignia.

Individual papers on any topic within the abovementioned areas should take 20 minutes, followed by 10-minute discussion. Participants are invited to submit their proposals in the form of 200-word abstracts by 14 February 2017. Notices of acceptance will be sent in early March. Selected papers will be published in a conference proceedings volume.

In addition to two plenary lectures, a number of sessions, a field trip and panel discussions are planned.

The conference will be held in the beautiful seaside resort of Unieście, situated right between the Baltic Sea and Lake Jamno. All the rooms are equipped with audio-visual facilities, including data projectors and laptop computers.

The conference fee – covering the cost of participation, accommodation, food and drink, conference materials, coffee breaks, evening reception, and future publication – will be about 110 EUR/470 PLN (90 EUR/370 PLN for PhD students).

Koszalin University of Technology
Department of Humanities
ul. Eugeniusza Kwiatkowskiego 6E
75-343 Koszalin, Poland

For more information on MFS please visit our website: http://www.medieval-fantasy.pl where you will find information on our past and present events.
We are also on Facebook – give us a like and share with your friends.

Conference Coordinators:
dr Izabela Dixon (izabela_dixon@medieval-fantasy.pl)
dr Łukasz Neubauer (lukasz_neubauer@medieval-fantasy.pl)

(posted 14 November 2016)


Pynchon’s New Worlds: International Pynchon Week
La Rochelle, France, 5-9 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2017

Convenors: Gilles Chamerois (Université de Brest) and Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd (Université de Poitiers)

The 2017 International Pynchon Week will be held on the French Atlantic coast in the old harbor of La Rochelle, from which a number of Europeans set sail for the New World. The conference will be hosted by the Musée du Nouveau Monde, among its collection of Allegories of America. The conveners hope this liminal space on the margins of Europe will inspire Pynchon scholars to sail out towards yet unexplored territories, following some of the leads below or picking up any related or unrelated Pynchonian line.

Literary new worlds
Pynchon’s early fiction was published under the auspices of “new worlds:” “Low-Lands” was issued by New World Writing, a paperback magazine (volume 17, 1960); speculative fiction writer Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine ran “Entropy” in 1969. How “new” were and still are Pynchon’s fictional worlds? How do old and new interweave in the fabric of his texts – intertextuality, syntactic and lexical archaisms, variation and invention?  Is Pynchon a belated modernist, a post-modernist, or a post-post-modernist? Is he forever striding in-between worlds?

A New World inhabited by the Old
Pynchon’s novels cast half-nostalgic, half-ironic glances back at America’s history – from the most remote to the most recent – and both conjure up and challenge visions of the New World as an earthly paradise. Is the new, revolutionary world of Mason & Dixon ‘the elder World turned Upside Down’ (M&D 263)? Or is it reclaimed by melancholy as its ‘Borderlands’ are gradually included into ‘the bare mortal World that is our home, and our despair’ (M&D 345)? And to what extent is the Puritan heritage of its founders, so pervasive in the earlier works, still at work in Pynchon’s most recent America, in Gordita Beach or post-9/11 Manhattan?
Phantoms from the old world haunt America, just as its songs and music haunt Pynchon’s texts; to wit, the resilience in America’s most native expressions of the oldest European musical modes, the songs of Europe carried across to the bars and stages of the New World and the modern avatars of the ancient mixolydian mode – the most bluesy / jazzy /funky mode, a sound made flesh in the person of Fergus Mixolydian in chapter 2 of V. What distant echoes from the old world can still be heard through the “surf music” beating in Mason & Dixon or in the Californian trilogy?

America Revisiting the Old World
Pynchon’s fictions also foray with characteristic ubiquity – bilocation applying both to characters and texts – into European history, from the Mediterranean’s most ancient shores (V.) to the waste lands of WWII (Gravity’s Rainbow). The Old World is an archival trove for American figures wandering in search of elusive roots, roaming free regardless of historical and geographical boundaries (Benny Profane, Tyrone Slothrop, but also Against the Day’s Chums of Chance). Can it be argued that Pynchon’s writings, from the very beginning (starting with “Under the Rose”), have been composing an alternative, de-centered narrative of European history, a series of Baedeker guides gone rogue?

Fantasized new worlds
At their most utopian or dystopian, balancing as they do between social, revolutionary or anarchist forms of idealism and post-modern nihilism, the novels of Thomas Pynchon offer pictures of “America as it might be in visions America’s wardens could not tolerate” (ATD, 51). Do parallel worlds – other worlds ‘humming along out there’ (Slow Learner) – underworlds, the ghostly presence of Thanatoids and other Preterites offer alternatives, if but fleetingly, to an impossible “New” World? Under the cover of novelty, is scientific and technological progress the mere re-combination of the old?  Is the virtual Deep Web of Bleeding Edge a new world, or the continuation of the old by other means?

Following the democratic tradition of IPW, the whole conference will be held in plenary mode. Individual contributions as well as full-panel proposals will be welcome. For individual papers, please send 500-word abstracts for twenty-minute presentations; for full panels bringing three or more papers under one common heading, please provide an overall statement of the panel’s aims as well as the contributors’ abstracts (1000 to 1500 words in all). The notification of acceptance for both individual paper submissions and panel/roundtable submissions will go out by mid to late November.

Please send your proposals to ipw2017larochelle@gmail.com by September 30, 2016.

(posted 6 April 2016)


What’s in a Century? Biannual Conference for Scholars of English in Finland, FINSSE-8
University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Finland, 7-9 June 2017,
Deadline for proposals: 9 January 2017

In celebration of the fact that 2017 marks the centenary of Finland’s independence and the fifth centenary of the Reformation, the FINSSE-8 conference will open up avenues for discussing these landmark events, as well as other aspects of periodization within English Studies. English Studies in Finland began as early as 1830 with the appointment of John Wellmer as a lecturer in the University of Helsinki, but it was Uno Lindelöf, the holder of the first Anglicist PhD in Finland (1890), who consolidated the subject’s position: taking on the post of Professor extraordinary in English in the same institution in 1907 and occupying the first Chair when it was established in 1921. Since then, English Departments have been created in eight universities in Finland, with 2016 marking the 70th anniversary of Y.M. Biese’s appointment as the first Professor of English Language in the University of Turku and 2017 falling 80 years after the establishment of Finland’s second Professorship in the subject: the J.O.E. Donner Chair in English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, held first by H.W. Donner.

The eighth FINSSE conference is organized jointly by the two English Departments in Turku (UTU and ÅAU), and it is open to members of the Finnish Society for the Study of English and other interested individuals. We welcome papers that approach the theme of the conference understood in a broad sense as well as other topics involving the study of English.

Possible topics could include rethinking the roles of different historical periods, theories and practices of periodization within specific areas of the subject as well as their resonance within English Studies in Finland and developments in particular fields: such as linguistics, literary studies, translation studies and cultural studies.

300-word (max.) abstracts should be sent to the conference organizers by 9 January 2017 at: Finsse8@gmail.com.

Selected papers will be considered for a refereed publication. Abstracts are invited for:

  • Individual papers (20 min + 5 min discussion)
  • Workshop sessions of three papers on a specific topic. Suggestions should include abstracts for each paper.
  • Poster presentations which are especially recommended for graduate students.

Keynote speakers:
Lynne Pearce (University of Lancaster, UK)
Nike Pokorn (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Erzsébet Barát (University of Szeged, Hungary)

The regular participation fee is 70 € and 40 € for graduate/postgraduate students. The fee includes two lunches and coffees/teas.  On Thursday, a Conference Dinner (payable on registration) will be served. Graduate students, researchers and higher education teachers of English are warmly recommended to join FINSSE, and other researchers may also apply (see the FINSSE homepages at http://web.abo.fi/fak/hf/enge/finsse).

Organizing committee: Joel Kuortti, FINSSE president (UTU), Jason Finch (ÅAU), Anthony Johnson (ÅAU), Sirkku Ruokkeinen (UTU), Elina Valovirta (UTU), Mari-Liisa Varila (UTU), NN (ÅAU).

Further information: joel.kuortti@utu.fi.

(posted 24 November 2016)


EAP and Positioning : NFEAP Summer Conference 2017
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway, 8-9 June 2017
Deadline for proopsals: 17 February 2017

Following our tenth anniversary conference last year, the Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes leaps into its second decade!

We are pleased to announce the  11th annual NFEAP summer conference, which will take place on Thursday the 8th   and Friday the 9th  of June 2017 at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus), Oslo, Norway.

The theme for the 2017 conference is EAP and Positioning. We welcome work that addresses the concept of positioning in relation to EAP theory and practice. This may include, for example, rhetorical and argumentative position, the positioning of a reader, political positions (explicit or covert), the relationship between voice and position, how the idea of positioning is effected by technology, and so forth. But it might also open questions of geographical position, and what EAP could mean in a particular place – a continent, a country, a city, a building, even. Indeed, there is no reason why these broad categories of position should be treated as separate (and if one bridges the gap between two ideas – is this bridge not also a position?). “Positioning”, in other words, can be understood broadly.

We invite proposals that explore positioning in connection with  EAP concepts; EAP training methods, principles, practices and research; needs analysis, syllabus and materials design, teaching strategies and methodological issues; group/interdisciplinary teaching; critical EAP; e-learning and technology; academic identities; academic literacies; any other relevant topics.

Plenary speakers:

  • Charles Bazerman, Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US
  • Ursula Wingate, Senior Lecturer in Language in Education, Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication, King’s College, London, UK
  • Lesley Gourlay‎, Reader in Education and Technology, Institute of Education, University College, London, UK

Submission guidelines:
Please submit your abstract of no more than 300 words and a biography of no more than 50 words by February 17th, 2017 using the link below. The standard length for presentations is 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation, plus 10 minutes for discussion). You will be notified of the outcome of the review process by March 17th, 2017.

Please use this link to submit your proposal.

The Ann Torday Gulden Scholarship
Ann Torday Gulden has been, for many years, a tireless and vital advocate for EAP in Norway, and this scholarship is named in her honour. This annual scholarship contributes up to 5000 NOK to the expenses of an EAP teacher or researcher to come to the conference and present their work. We seek to support work that is distinctive and original and that exemplifies innovative approaches to EAP theory and practice. It is open to all – please check the box provided in the proposal submission form if you would like to be considered for the scholarship.

Important dates:

  • Registration opens: December 2016
  • Deadline for abstracts: 17 February 2017
  • Notification of acceptance: 17 March 2017
  • Deadline for registration: 19 May 2017
  • Conference programme available: 1 April 2017
  • NFEAP conference 2017: 8-9 June 2017

Registration:
The 1700 NOK conference registration fee includes refreshments and lunch for both days of the conference and the conference dinner on Thursday evening.
Please note that the NFEAP is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to assist with conference travel or subsistence.
We would like to thank you in advance for your contribution to the 11th NFEAP summer conference and look forward to having the opportunity to discuss and disseminate your work.

(posted 12 November 2016)


The Future of Education International Conference, 7th edition
Florence, Italy, 8-9 June 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 20 March 2017

1606-FOELecturers, teachers, researchers and experts in the field of education as well as coordinators of education and training projects are invited to submit papers for the seventh edition of the International Conference The Future of Education which will take place in .

New extended deadline for submitting abstracts:  20 March 2017

The Future of Education International Conference has the aim to promote transnational cooperation and share good practice in the field of innovation for education. The conference is also an excellent opportunity for the presentation of previous and current educational projects.

All accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by LibreriaUniversitaria with ISBN and ISSN codes. This publication will be sent to be reviewed for inclusion in  SCOPUS (https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus). Papers will also be included in ACADEMIA.EDU (https://www.academia.edu/) and indexed in Google Scholar.

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

For further information, please see: http://conference.pixel-online.net/FOE/

(posted 6 December 2016, updated 2 February 2017, updated 28 February 2017)


The Discourse of Identity: II International Conference
University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 8-9 June 2017
Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 1 April 2017

The Competitive Reference Research Group Discourse and Identity and the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) host the II International Conference “The Discourse of Identity” to be held at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) from 8 to 9 June, 2017.
We aim at an interdisciplinary approach that explores the intersections among disciplines such as literature, linguistics, sociology, psychology, history, cultural and gender studies, among others, in order to scrutinise the ways in which these discourses shape identity. This second edition of the Conference is particularly interested in the analysis of how contemporary gendered discourses (either linguistic, literary or cultural ones) reformulate identity constructions.
Scholars working on any aspect related to this theme are invited to submit abstracts for twenty-minute presentations. We are particularly interested in papers dealing with both theoretical and methodological issues, as well as case studies on the discourse(s) of private and public identities from a literary, linguistic, pragmatic or social perspective, focusing on texts in English and other cultural manifestations from any period.
Topics may include, but are not restricted to:
● Discourse analysis and identity
● Sociolinguistics and identity
● Literature and identity
● Cultural practice and identity
● Gender and identity
● Ecocriticism and identity
● Religious discourses and identity
● Political theory and identity
● Ethnicity and identity
● Gender, genre and identity
● Contemporary Discourses on Ageing
● Alternative Discourse Models of Masculinity
● The Evolution of Ecocritical and Ecofeminist Discourses
● The Discourses of Memory and Trauma
● Disability Studies

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

  • Roman Bartosch (University of Cologne, Germany). Bartosch is Senior Lecturer in Anglophone literature, literary and cultural theory and the author of ground-breaking studies on the role of literature in the re-evaluation of nature and animality. His thought-provoking contributions to current debates on ecocriticism, environmentalism and animal studies delve into the challenges that literariness poses to other dominant discourses on nature.
  • Veronika Koller (Lancaster University, United Kingdom). Koller is Reader in Discourse Studies. She is interested in socio-cognitive approaches within critical discourse studies, specifically the role of metaphor in constructing identities and communicating ideologies. Koller’s areas of expertise are health communication, corporate discourse, and language and sexuality, and her research includes work on metaphor and gender in business media discourse, images of community in lesbian discourses, the discourse of corporate branding, metaphor in end-of-life care as well as, most recently, the discourse of cancer charities.
  • Ewa Luczak (Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland). Luczak is Associate Professor of American Literature and a specialist in Social Darwinism and eugenics in American literature 1900-1940, humour in American literature and culture, 20th century African American literature, Latino/a literature, American literature of ethnic minorities, theory of the novel, poststructuralism, postcolonial theory, theories of race and Contemporary Canadian fiction.
  • Sara Wasson (Lancaster University, United Kingdom). Wasson is Senior Lecturer in Gothic Studies and a specialist in the Second World War Gothic of the British home front and in twenty-first century Gothic approached through a medical humanities lens. Both strands of her research are concerned with ethical witness in response to individual and collective suffering.

We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers written in English. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 1 April, 2017. Notification of acceptance will occur by mid-April 2017.
Please, send your proposal (250 words including references + up to 6 key words) and a brief BIO Note (150 words) to the electronic address congreso.discurso.identidad@usc.es. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.discursoeidentidade.com, or contact Dr Laura Lojo Rodríguez (laura.lojo@usc.es) or Dr Noemí Pereira Ares (noemi.pereira@usc.es).

VENUE: Facultade de Filoloxía, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

REGISTRATION FEES:
EARLY REGISTRATION (from 15 April to 15 May, 2017): ● Graduate and Postgraduate Students: 30€ ● General Registration: 70€
LATE REGISTRATION (from 16 May to 2 June, 2017) ● Graduate and Postgraduate Students: 50€ ● General Registration: 90€

Organising Committee: Margarita Estévez Saá, Susana Mª Jiménez Placer, Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez, Manuela Palacios González, Noemí Pereira Ares, Jorge Sacido Romero, Mª Teresa Sánchez Roura
Scientific Committee: Anne Besnault-Levita (U of Rouen, France), Fred Botting (Kingston College, UK), Barbara Korte (U of Freiburg, Germany), Margarita Estévez Saá (University of Santiago de Compostela), Susana Mª Jiménez Placer (University of Santiago de Compostela), Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez (University of Santiago de Compostela), Manuela Palacios González (University of Santiago de Compostela), Noemí Pereira Ares (University of Santiago de Compostela), Jorge Sacido Romero (University of Santiago de Compostela), Mª Teresa Sánchez Roura (University of Santiago de Compostela)

In collaboration with

  • Oficina de Igualdade de Xénero, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
  • Eco-fictions: Emergent Discourses on Woman and Nature in Galicia and Ireland (FEM2015-66937-P). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, FEDER
  • “Women’s Tales”: The Short Fiction of Contemporary British Writers, 1974-2013 (FEM2013-41977-P). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
  • The Construction of Discourse as Social Interaction: Contrastive Implications and Applications (FFI2013-40517-P). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
  • Women’s Autobiography in the US South: ‘Genre’, ‘Gender’, ‘Race’, ‘Region’ (FFI2013-44747-P). Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
  • Grupo de Innovación Docente en Identidade e Estudios de Xénero na Cultura e Literatura nos Países Anglófonos (IDENXEN GID-75). Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

(posted 15 February 2017)


English and I: Literary and Cultural Encounters
Vlore, Albania, 8-10 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2017

The Fourth ASSE International Conference on British and American Studies isganized in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Vlora “Ismail Qemali”

“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”
Walt Whitman

In today’s world flooded by globalization, internationalization, interculturalisation and other related concepts and social approaches, English has become a necessity that often conditions our work, lifestyle and even our way of thinking. Although it would be curious enough to trace back the beginnings of such influence of English upon other languages and cultures, it would be even more interesting to investigate the ways in which English has interacted with them over the years and centuries. Occurring inside and outside the UK and at a multi-layered level of cultural exchange, that is, between English and Welsh or English and Irish, between English and the former colonies, between English and the European and American worlds, these encounters have been far from easy ones. The historical perspective of these encounters is indeed important to understand why English has acquired such linguistic, cultural and literary dominance not only among the English-speaking countries but also worldwide, but it is even more important to investigate the outcome(s) of these encounters, resulting most notably from conflict, migration, mixed marriage, (mis)communication etc.

What is more, in the recent decades, the advances of technology at large and of information technology in particular have given English a special status as the language of communication technology.

Although the influence of English upon other languages and cultures is enormous, the conference seeks to particularly inspire versatile and challenging responses to the way and extent to which contact with English, the language, culture and literature(s), has influenced users of English (teachers, writers, speakers, immigrants or simply people) by informing and reshaping their mindset, attitude to things, lifestyle or even identity.

We invite scholars to join us in the reconsideration of past and present relations and encounters of English with other languages and cultures as represented in literature, cultural studies and other related areas of study.

Some possible topics the conference aims at addressing include:

  • Historical encounters of English with other languages and cultures
  • Representations of English(es) in language, literature, and culture
  • The role of English in a world of technology
  • Identit(ies) in the making
  • How English is transforming and shaping language, literature, and culture
  • The influence of English in human communication
  • Literary representations of cultural encounters
  • English, globalization and internationalization: Issues and trends
  • English, migration, integration and mobility
  • English and a world on the move
  • English, media and the social media
  • Discursive constructions of cultural encounters
  • English Language Teaching and educational technologies

Papers are welcomed from but are not limited to:

  • British and Commonwealth Literature
  • American Literature
  • Literary Theory
  • Literary Criticism
  • Cultural Studies
  • Intercultural Communication
  • Communication Studies
  • Media Studies
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Pragmatics
  • Linguistics
  • Semiotics
  • Translation Studies
  • Applied Linguistics
  • ESP

The conference language is English. Please send your abstracts (about 250 words) for papers (20 min) as an MS word attachment to the following Email-address by 31 March 2017: asse2017@assenglish.org.

Please follow the template to be found at http://www.assenglish.org/eandi/abstracts/ for abstract submission.

A selection of papers will be published in the journal in esse: English Studies in Albania, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2.

For more information, please visit the conference website, http://www.assenglish.org/eandi/

(posted 10 February 2017)


Transient Bodies in Anglophone Literature and Culture
University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Koblenz, Germany, 9 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 15 December 2016

Throughout history, the human body has always been a controversial and much debated topic and constantly had to negotiate its place between glorification and vilification. Whereas the beauty and strength of people’s physical structure was praised and positively emphasised, the body’s diseases, flaws and frailties functioned as a constant reminder of human imperfection and the inevitability of natural decay. Despite the fact that the concept of the “body” has been discussed in academic research in recent years, the representation of the transient body – a body located at the intersections of significant phases of life – has not been given the attention it deserves. Against the background of declining fertility rates and ageing populations in Western societies as well as in the context of new paradigms in interdisciplinary research, such as the medical humanities, intersectionality and ageing studies, the high complexity of cultural attitudes towards the body and its metaphorical relevance are currently gaining more public awareness and challenge us to ask new questions. How are bodily rites-de-passage, such as birth, death, disease and decay represented in Anglophone literature, culture and media? Which narrative, aesthetic and medial strategies are employed to represent and document bodily transitions from one stage of life to another?
The one-day symposium aims at discussing these questions and related topics in the context of English and American Studies and invites papers addressing the transience of the human body as represented in Anglophone literature and culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. We invite contributions from the fields of literary and cultural studies, media studies, art history, history of ideas, ageing studies and medical humanities. Topics for papers could include, but are not limited to:

  • the representation of transient bodies/bodies in progress in Anglophone literature, culture and media (e.g. photography, film, music)
  • the life cycle; identity and human development over the different stages of life; bodies in transition/bodies in waiting (pregnancy, birth, disease, death)
  • (paradoxical) conceptions of beauty
  • idealized youthful bodies vs. natural bodily flaws and decay
  • the ageing body; the ageing process and the social stigma of ageing
  • illness and disease, e.g. cardiovascular diseases, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer etc.
  • coping with the imminence of death; coping with separation and loss; euthanasia
  • human efforts at transcending bodily limits, e.g. through religious or spiritual beliefs, meditation exercises, drug abuse, necrophilia etc.
  • cultural discourses on the transient body, e.g. intersectional or feminist perspectives on social constructions of meaning, medical humanities, ageing studies etc.

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words for 20-minute presentations and a brief bio-note in a Word document or PDF file to both conference organisers by 15th December 2016.
Conference organisers:
Sarah Schäfer-Althaus (University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Koblenz), salthaus@uni-koblenz.de
Sara Strauss (University of Paderborn), sara.strauss@uni-paderborn.de

(posted 26 October 2016)


AICED-19: 19th Annual International Conference of the English Department
University of Bucharest, Romania, 8-10 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 19 March 2017

The English Department of the University of Bucharest will hold its 19th Annual International Conference from 8–10 June, 2017.

The Conference will be organized in two sections:

THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS. Papers are invited in:

  • General Linguistics
  • Linguistic Theories
  • Theoretical Linguistics (syntax, phonology, semantics and the interfaces)
  • Language acquisition
  • Applied Linguistics
  • Translation Studies

LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

General theme: “Birth, Death, and Rebirth: (Re)Generation as Text”

Confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Prof. Vera M. Kutzinski (Vanderbilt University, Nashville)
  • Prof. Thomas Leitch (University of Delaware, Newark)<
  • Dr Chris Louttit (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
  • Prof. Nicolas Tredell (University of Sussex & Palgrave Macmillan)
  • Dr Daniela Zaharia (University of Bucharest)

Papers are invited in:

  • British, Irish and Commonwealth Literatures
  • American Literature
  • World and Comparative Literature
  • Cultural Studies
  • Intellectual and Cultural History
  • Art History and Visual Culture
  • Literary Theory
  • Translation Studies

Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts in Word format.* Proposals should also include name and institutional affiliation, a short bio (no more than 100 words), and e-mail address. The deadline for proposals is 19 March 2017.

Conference fee: 50 euro or 200 lei (covering lunches and refreshments during the conference, but not evening meals)

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in University of Bucharest Review ISSN 2069–8658; listed on Scopus, EBSCO (Literary Reference Centre Plus), CEEOL and Ulrichsweb; CNCS category B) and in Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics (ISSN 2069–9239; listed on EBSCO, CEEOL, Ulrichsweb, Cascadilla and DOAJ; CNCS category B).

Please send proposals (and enquiries) to the following e-mail addresses:
For the Linguistics section: conf.eng.ling@lls.unibuc.ro
For the Literature and Cultural Studies section: conf.eng.litcult@lls.unibuc.ro

Further details about the Conference will be posted at http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php
and, for the Literature and Cultural Studies Section, https://acedbucharest.wordpress.com

* Abstracts for the Literature and Cultural Studies Section should be of maximum 200 words. Abstracts for the Linguistics section should be between one and two A4 pages, Times New Roman 12, single spaced.

(posted 27 December 2016, updated 6 February 2017)


Transcending Borders and Binaries : New Insights into Language, Literature, and Culture
Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 9-10 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 20 January 2017

3rd International Conference of the University of Banja Luka (BiH) in cooperation with the University of Opole (Poland) and the University of Central Oklahoma (USA)

CELLS – Conference on English Language and Literary Studies

The Department of English, at the Faculty of Philology, University of Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina), in cooperation with the School of English and American Studies, University of Opole (Poland) and the College of Liberal Arts, University of Central Oklahoma (USA) are pleased to announce the third conference on English language and literary studies CELLS: Transcending Borders and Binaries: New Insights into Language, Literature, and Culture.

The aim of the conference is to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences across the fields of English language and literary studies, with particular emphasis on cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary issues raised in the fields of literature, culture, linguistics, translation studies and applied linguistics.  Topics might include (but are not limited to):

  • Transcending borders and boundaries in language and literature
  • Linguistic, literary, and cultural identities lost and reclaimed in translation
  • Representations of (transgressive) human bodies in literature and cultural studies
  • Deconstructing binaries in linguistic, literary, and cultural studies
  • Diasporic and migrant (non-)fictional narratives composed in another language
  • Representations of gender in local, global, (trans)national, and cosmopolitan contexts
  • Linguistic and literary representations of travelling subjects and (post-)memory in historical, social, and cultural contexts
  • Considerations of (neo)nomadism, exile and changing of cultural habitat in language and literary studies
  • Stereotypes, otherness, norms, and new approaches to literary studies and foreign language teaching
  • Concepts and contexts of liminality, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation
  • Deterritorialisation and border writing / heterotopia / people in hyperspace
  • Thirdspace: real and imagined places
  • Transgressing oppositions in journalism and media studies between quality/tabloid, objective/advocacy, professional/amateur, coverage etc.;
  • Pure vs. hybrid forms/genres in media and journalistic expression;
  • Problematic representations of “us” and “them”, or unity and diversity in public discourses;
  • Rhetorical and linguistic strategies that perpetuate/mitigate binaries and symbolic borderlines

The official language of the conference is English.

Confirmed plenary speakers:

  • Dr Ryszard W. Wolny, Professor and Director of the School of English and American Studies at the University of Opole, Poland
  • Dr Timothy Petete, Professor of Literature and Composition at the University of Central Oklahoma, USA
  • Dr Biljana Čubrović, Professor of Phonetics, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Submission of abstracts

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words (MS Word 2003-2007) to the following e-mail address: cells@unibl.rs

Abstracts should be anonymous containing only the name of the paper, the body of the abstract and references.

Please send the following information in the body of the e-mail:

  1. Title of the paper
  2. Name of the author(s)
  3. Affiliation of the author (s)
  4. Key words
  5.  E-mail address
  6. Bio note (no more than 100 words)

Important dates

  • 20th January, 2017 Deadline for Submission of Abstracts
  • 15th February, 2017 Notification of Acceptance
  • 30th March, 2017 Registration

The conference fee is 70 Euros.

All the details and important information can be found at the conference website: http://www.cellsbl.com/

A selection of papers will be published after the conference.

Contact: cells@unibl.rs

 (posted 12 November 2016)


Women, from Object to Subject: When the Law and Feminist Militancy Meet!
Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, France, 15-16 June 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 1st March 2017

Guests of Honor: Angela Davis, Geneviève Fraisse

This new international conference is a follow-up of a symposium held in January 2015 at the University of Toulouse 1 Capitole entitled ‘Women: from Objects to Becoming Subjects: Political Power, Legal Discourse and Professional Equality’. The purpose of this second edition is to invite scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to contemplate the manner in which law and militancy interact and feed each other in different states, institutions and political circles in France and other linguistic and cultural areas in the world.

The list of possible topics includes, but is not necessarily limited to, the following issues:

  • The relationships between feminist activism and the law
  • Ways and voices of feminist militancy
  • Feminist networks in the field of law
  • Women and the voluntary sector: another way to promote activism?
  • Feminist jurisprudence
  • Women’s subordination and the law
  • The mechanisms of gendered domination
  • The difficult dialogue between State apparatus and the rhizomatic community sector
  • Post-modernist and feminist approaches to law
  • Militancy and freedom of expression: the legal framework
  • Is there a specific female voice (in the judiciary, the economic and the professional sectors)?
  • The female body as an instrument for feminist demands
  • The female body at the heart of social and legal debates
  • Female artists between public outrage and freedom of expression
  • The aesthetic dimension of feminist activism in arts, visual arts, literature, cinema

Papers can be presented in French, English, or Spanish.
The new extended deadline for the submission of abstracts (maximum 200 words) is March 1st, 2017.
The proposals should include, along with the paper abstract, the paper title, a short biographical note (200 words), academic affiliation and contact information, as well as 5-6 keywords. Abstracts in Word Document (.doc / .docx) formats should be written in English and French and should be sent to femmes2017@gmail.com

Registration fees
Toulouse University: free
Students outside Toulouse University: 30 €
Researchers outside Toulouse University: 60 €

For the basic ideas and a bibliography see http://saesfrance.org/15-16-juin-2017-colloque-international-universite-toulouse-1-capitole-femmes-de-lobjet-au-sujet-quand-le-droit-et-le-militantisme-feministe-se-rencontrent/

Contact:
Anne-Marie O’CONNELL
MCF-HDR anglais et philosophie du droit anglophone au DLC
Laboratoire LAIRDIL
recherche: didactique des langues, études irlandaises
Bureau AR221: 05 61 63 35 91
Bureau ME110: 05 61 12 87 84
Université Toulouse 1 Capitole
<Anne-marie.O-connell@univ-tlse1.fr>

(posted 20 November 2016, updated 4 January 2017, updated 11 January 2017)


Voice(s) and Silence in the Arts
Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France, 15-16 June 2016
Deadline for proposals: 1st October 2016

 The objective of this conference is to look into various artistic experiences — in music, in performance poetry, in visual arts and the performing arts — that are built in the space where art produces a fusion of voice and silence, of what is said and what is withheld, of speech and its deliberate omission. Voice and silence take different forms depending on the medium, the physical set-up, the places of production and reception. The physiological definition of voice is the emission of sounds produced by the vibration of the vocal chords at the moment of exhaling. It is thus not only a means of transmitting breath, but also the physical embodiment of speech and the medium of transmission of the emotions; furthermore, it cannot be dissociated from the notion of a speaking subject and subjectivity. The voice, according to Henri Meschonnic, is “the intimate exterior,” and its texture is specific to each person. In the same way, silence, a notion which is equally complex, is not simply the absence of speech or sound. By its very nature, a painting is silent and its meaning can only be verbalised metaphorically. As far as music is concerned, as John Cage pointed out, absolute silence does not exist, for we are immersed in a ceaseless hum. In the theatre, voice and silence cannot be separated, for the theatrical experience is composed of an intermingling of voices, words, gestures, glances, silences, breathing…. In the improvised poems of David Antin, the hybrid voice and body language are at the origin of the creative process, and so are breathing and the silent pauses in Gary Snyder’s poems. As for the cinema, its power and the fascination it exerts are for the most part linked to the formal processes and the various configurations of the interactions of voices, silence, and images.

This conference aims to put into perspective the numerous studies devoted both to voices and to silence. Its objective is to focus on the way in which concepts might interact, on the shifts, contacts and echoes between one another.

Submissions may examine, but are not limited to the following questions:

  • As a physical mechanism, what is the connection between the voice and silence as pure materiality? The link between voice-silence and rhythm deserves being looked into.
  • What about the recorded voices included in musical performances, plastic arts, stage productions, and films, or the hidden voices in multimedia installations?
  • What formal devices do painters use for voices and silence to be heard and seen? In contemporary productions, what use do performing artists make of their voices and how do they distribute their silent pauses?
  • In tales/storytelling, how do voices and silence combine and converse to create the estheticism typical of oral traditions?
  • In drama, in the performing and living arts, how does the body language of the actor, the poet, the performer, and the choreographer contribute to creating a presence? In the more specific field of stage directions, how does one go about translating the interplay of language and silence translated from one language to the other? How are voices and silence indicated through scenography, the interaction of shadows and lights, and that of various multimedia devices?
  • In the cinema, some film techniques are worth analyzing, like cutting and mixing, for example. They provide voice-silence-body links and the special effects specific to that medium and its many genres. Silent movies and hybrid ones, those which preceded the advent of the talkies, may also be examined, as well as that paradoxical contact when, within the silent space of animated images, voices attempt to make themselves heard?
  • When dancers perform, to what extent do the breaks and ruptures in their gestures and the language of their breathing make listening to their bodies easier?
  • In music, how does the dialectic between voices and silence work out in the process of composition? How are the silences in the score perceived, translated and interpreted by the instrumentalists? In opera, for example, what does the exchange between singers, instrumentalists and the conductor consist of? The conductor is an actor whose voice is condemned to remain silent but is “mimed analogically” with the moves of his hands through space (Sémir Badir, Herman Parret)
  • What is the impact on the listener’s reception of the very moment when silence takes over within the interstices between music and applause?

“Voice(s) and Silence in the Arts” is part of five-year project organized within the IDEA research group. It results from the collaboration between the IDEA and ERIBIA research groups in partnership with the Théâtre de la Manufacture – Centre Dramatique National Nancy Lorraine and the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine. It welcomes theoreticians as wells as performers (musicians, producers, actors, choreographers, stage designers, storytellers…) in France and from abroad. Besides the presentation of papers, workshop performances of voice(s) and silence will be organized, along with debates and round tables.

Proposals including a title, a 250-300-word abstract with a short bio-bibliography in English or French are to be sent to Claudine Armand, Gilles Marseille, Gilles Couderc and Marcin Stawiarski by October 1st 2016.
claudine.armand@univ-lorraine.fr
gilles.marseille@univ-lorraine.fr
gilles.couderc@unicaen.fr
marcin.stawiarski@unicaen.fr

Paper presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

Keynote speakers

  • Philippe Claudel (to be confirmed), (writer, film director, and playwright)
    Stephen Langridge (stage director and artistic director of The Göteborg Opera, Sweden)
  • Estelle Pietrzyk (curator of the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art)

Invited film director and artists

  • Performance by James Luna (Native American artist, La Jolla Reservation, San Diego, California)
  • Film Le Complexe de la Salamandre by Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer, in film director Stéphane Manchematin’s presence

(posted 11 June 2016)


The Dark Sides of the Law in Common Law Countries
Paris, France, 15-17 June  2017
Deadline for proposals: 15 December 2016

The Panthéon-Assas University “Law and Humanities” research centre (a part of CERSA) is pleased to announce its first international conference to be held in Paris (France) on June 15-17, 2017. As an interdisciplinary group working on the connections between law and politics, economics, and literature, we are seeking papers exploring the dark sides of the law from a wide range of perspectives in the United Kingdom, the United States and Commonwealth countries.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Mrs. Judith Resnik, Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
Mr. Paul Raffield, Professor at the School of Law, Warwick University.

Darkness and obscurity, in the literal and figurative senses, are very much present in the law and legal language.
One of the main roles of the courts is to clarify obscure legal issues in order to improve access to law and justice. For example, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 573 U. S. (2014) or Director of Public Prosecutions v Dziurzynski [2002] EWHC 1380 (Admin), the judges asked the parties to “enlighten” them.
Legal language has been criticised for the intricacies of its jargon, starting with the 1362 Pleading Act rejecting the use of “Law French” in common law courts, to the extensive use of legalese that has been recently limited by the Plain Language Movement. Legalese has been removed to some extent, but some dark areas remain, due to an almost irreducible procedural formalism.
The increased liberalisation of the legal market is giving rise to issues of translation, not only from one language to another but also from one common law jurisdiction to another.
In the political world, darkness may characterise the relationship between the various branches of government or between the government and the private/public sectors and/or the People. For example, in the UK, the voluntary sector has long been intertwined with the government, thus endangering its independence.
Darkness is present in the literary and visual representations of the law and the legal world. Ever since the English Renaissance, drama and other literary genres have challenged the dark aspects of law and justice, mocking the legal professions or exposing unfair court procedures or decisions. For the past sixty years, cinema and TV series have explored the darkest aspects of the law. The dynamic relationship between darkness and light, opacity and transparency, may also be embodied in the architecture of courts.
Since the 19th century, judges have resorted to psychological analysis. Nowadays expert psychiatrists are summoned to court in order to explain the dark workings of the mind, in particular in criminal law.

For this interdisciplinary conference, we welcome proposals or contributions from scholars and academics as well as PhD students addressing any issues on darkness in relation to the law in common law countries. Papers may examine the interdisciplinary relationship between Law and any of the fields mentioned above, but also others such as economics, sociology etc.

The language of the conference will be mainly English, but papers may be given in French.

Potential speakers are invited to submit a title and an abstract of 300 words along with a brief bio-bibliography to the organising committee at darksides2017paris2@gmail.com
Deadline of submissions is December 15, 2016.
Selected speakers will be notified by February 4, 2017.

Organising committee: Geraldine Gadbin-George, Yvonne-Marie Rogez, Armelle Sabatier, Claire Wrobel

(posted 15 September 2016)


Movement and/in/of the City
University of Kent, UK, 16 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 24 April 2017

Keynote speaker: Donna STONECIPHER
http://movementcity2017.wordpress.com/
@MovementCity17

The notion of ‘movement’ has particular pertinence to our present cultural moment: across the globe, we live in a period marked both by unprecedented movements of population and by new popular political movements of all types.  Yet the idea of ‘movement’ as a literary preoccupation is as old as the earliest recorded literature itself, defining the quest/journey narratives of the ancient world. Movement can be conceived on the grandest geological or even planetary spatial and temporal scale, but by the same token is also perceived daily and personally in the individual human body.

The issue of movement intersects with that of the city and its representation. The flâneur at the centre of Benjamin’s texts roams the city and merges with the flow of its crowd. Movement and the city thus seem to be related to issues of modernity. Lately, the figure of the flâneur and Benjamin’s stance on modernity has been renegotiated to leave space to the flaneuse, the woman in the city, as Lauren Elkin’s book Flaneuse or Lynda Nead’s Victorian Babylon illustrate. Movement, the city and writing are closely linked and result in a “rhetoric of walking” such as it is defined by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life. The city is at the centre of various writings, from the eighteenth century onwards (one might think of the wandering adventures of Moll Flanders or Dickens’s novels and writing habits for instance), and is a favourite postmodern topos as exemplified by such works as Angela Carter’s The Passion of the New Eve and Zadie Smith’s N/W, amongst others.

Movement in the city bears witness to changes in terms of its improvement and ordering (we might think of Haussman’s works in Second Empire Paris or the grid shape of New York’s streets) but also to political changes. Thus, movement in the city can be linked to political movement as the marches in various American cities against Trump’s policies are showing. The latter political movements seem to be using the city as a site to ground their plea and thus turn the city in a new text.

We therefore seek submissions on this theme from across the full breadth of literary studies and related disciplines, from the classical to the contemporary. Interdisciplinary perspectives are strongly encouraged, as are creative writing responses.

Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

  • Movement, the city and modernity: Benjamin, the flâneur, the crowd vs. women’s appropriation of movement and the city, the flaneuse
  • Revolution and the city: riots, marches, petitions, from the 19thc (Marx, Engels, tale of Two Cities, to nowadays protests against Donald Trump, protests in Paris following terrorist attacks.
  • Moving on: the city and its transformations, transports, speed, fragmented vision of the city vs. totalised vision.
  • Circulation of objects in the city: commodities, letters, refuse etc.
  • Psychogeography, mapping the city.
  • Migration, immigration in the city: diaspora, postcolonial re-visiting of the city
  • Neo-Victorian cities
  • Utopian/dystopian cities

This call is open to MA and PhD students from all institutions, and ECRs who have completed PhDs in the last two years. We welcome abstracts for 20-minute academic papers and creative readings/performances. Innovative presentation formats are encouraged. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and must be sent by  24th April 2017 to kentpgconference2017@gmail.com as pdf. The conference will conclude with a wine reception.
Please include details of your current level of study and home institution. Fro creative readings, please send a short sample of your work.

(posted 6 April 2017)


Complicity and the Politics of Representation
Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, 16-18 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2016

Keynote Speaker: John Storey, University of Sunderland

While the concepts and manifestations of religious sin, moral guilt and legal culpability have been defined and categorized expansively, the notion of complicity, especially regarding forms of cultural representation, still remains a rich source for closer scrutiny and examination. Most broadly defined as the position of contributing to or benefiting from a moral wrong that one does not directly perpetrate, complicity is an elastic concept with political, moral, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions and implications. Even though complicity critiques have become increasingly important in cultural and literary studies (J. Pfister), the concept has seldom been properly defined or systematically analysed. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to continue a discussion about the vexed complexities of complicity initiated at Brighton University’s “Complicity Conference” in 2015, and places a particular emphasis on the politics of representation, broadly defined to include forms of cultural production including literature, film, new media, and so on.
Appropriating James Phelan’s 2014 differentiation of four levels of narrative ethics, we would like to explore complicity within the ethics of production, representation and reception, as well as investigate intra-textual negotiations of the concept. Geoffrey Hartman, for instance, argued in 1974 that texts can initiate us into complicity because “spying is complicity raised to an art, and the novelist [or ‘agent’] is a socially tolerated spy in league with many of our cruder instincts”; in addition, there are critiques of the way our engagement with texts can lead us as readers into broader complicities, either because we may be “amusing ourselves to death” (N. Postman) or pursuing the satisfaction of “false needs” (H. Marcuse). In addition to such questions concerning the ethics of production, representation and reception, we are interested in intra-textual ethics, i.e. in ways in which cultural products negotiate issues of complicity, either explicitly or implicitly.
We invite contributions from the fields of literary and cultural studies, media studies, sociology, psychology/psychoanalysis, art history, history of ideas, law, theology and political theory. Themes for papers could include, but are not limited to:

  • Definitions of the term complicity
  • Types of complicity (e.g. complicit silence, complicit hypocrisy, or involuntary complicity)
  • Complicit language
  • Complicity in racism, ableism, patriarchal ideology, etc.
  • Complicity as part of a polemic moral or political critique
  • Resistance to complicity
  • Complicit writing
  • Complicit representations
  • Critical complicity; complicit reading/reception
  • Complicity critique as a method

Please email 200-300 word abstracts for 20 minute papers to Cornelia Wächter (Ruhr University Bochum), Alex Adams (Independent Scholar) and Robert Wirth (University of Paderborn) at cornelia.waechter@rub.de by 30 September 2016.

(posted 16 August 2016)


Britain in Europe, Europe in Britain
Portsmouth University, UK, 22-23 June 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 5 February 2017

Keynote Speakers: Prof Arthur Aughey, University of Ulster & & award-­winning novelist Linda Grant

The Brexit result of June 23rd 2016 shocked Britain and Europe and has revealed a deep division of the country. In the months following the vote, the media continue to report on an almost daily basis about efforts by the ‘Remainers’ to reverse the referendum result, or on attempts by the ‘Leavers’ to speed up the triggering of Article 50. Tragically, the media also report on an almost daily basis about repercussions of the referendum on European ‘migrant’ communities. Verbal and physical abuse against Europeans living and working in Britain is on a terrifying increase and racially-­‐motivated crime is rising steeply. The referendum, and its aftermath, have highlighted a deep division within British society with some groups becoming increasingly politically active to ensure the rights of European residents and delay or forestall ‘Brexit’, while others have appeared to retreat behind a ‘Little England’ discourse that aims to ‘make Britain great again’ and ‘get our country back’.

This conference, on the first anniversary of the 2016 Referendum, aims to look at the social and cultural repercussions of the Brexit vote, assessing the future of Britain within the EU, as well as the future of Europeans within Britain. Bringing together academics from a variety of disciplines – Literature, History, Politics, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Creative Writing, Area Studies – as well as creative practitioners, representatives of local European minority groupings and local politicians, the conference aims to offer a fertile ground for a cultural debate on ‘Brexit’ and its ramifications.

Some of the topics that could be addressed are:

  • Presentations/(Re)presentations of contemporary Englishness & Britishness, in particular with a focus on ‘Britains in Europe’ and ‘Europeans in Britain’ in literature, film, media, etc.
  • Social, historical and cultural representations of European minority groups in Britain
  • Local and national responses of European citizens to the referendum and ensuing treatment
  • Historical, political and/or cultural legacies of Britain’s relationship with Europe
  • Community/activist responses to the vote (both ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’)
  • Legacies and impacts of migration between Britain and Europe in the past and present
  • Social pressure and cultural impacts on policy making

The conference will also include a public evening discussion event bringing together creative practitioners and representatives of local community groups to discuss the cultural and social consequences of Brexit.

Please send 200-­‐250 words abstracts and a brief bio sketch to the organisers, Dr Christine Berberich, Christine.berberich@port.ac.uk and Dr Jodi Burkett, Jodi.burkett@port.ac.uk by Sunday, 5th February 2017 (new extended deadline).

(posted 11 January 2017)


Intercultural Communicative Competence – A Competitive Advantage for Global Employability (ICCAGE)
MIAS School of Business & Interdisciplinary Studies, Czech Technical University, Prague,  Czech Republic, 22-23 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2017

In the highly competitive environment of the globalised world, higher education necessarily faces ever-present challenges such as linguistic and extra-linguistic communication barriers, cultural stereotyping, cross-cultural prejudices, identity conflicts and/or L2 deficiency, which compound the lack of skills to interact successfully. The acquisition of intercultural communicative competence becomes a key professional skill and a primary success factor for university educators, graduates, and researchers in the field, as well as business professionals, international employers, or HR specialists.

Addressing these concerns, the ICCAGE conference will contribute to the on-going debate on intercultural language/communicative skills, and various innovative teaching and training approaches to ICC including global mobility, intercultural mediation and telecollaboration, and in and out-of classroom methodologies

The conference will offer an opportunity to share/present experience, develop interdisciplinary networks, and foster cooperation by sharing knowledge and best practices essential for further development and innovation.

We look forward to receiving proposals (150 – 200 words) for full-length papers (20 minutes) or posters on related topics, including but not restricted to:

  • Perspectives on intercultural language learning/teaching
  • Current theories of language and intercultural communication
  • ICC best practice & innovative ICC contents
  • Telecollaborative practice and trans-national mobility research

For more details please visit the conference webpage http://iccageproject.wixsite.com/presentation/conferece

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

  • Robert O’Dowd, Associate Professor, teacher-trainer of English as a Foreign Language, the University of León, Spain
  • Margarida Morgado, Coordinating Professor of English Cultural Studies at the Higher Education College for Education, Castelo Branco Polytechnic Institute, Portugal
  • Melinda Dooly, teacher trainer and researcher, Department of Language Teaching Methodology, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
  • Mirjam Hauck, Senior lecturer at the Department of Languages at the Open University, United Kingdom

Registration Fee:

The conference is free for all registered participants thanks to the funding by the Erasmus+ KA2 Programme No 2015-1-CZ01-KA203-013992.

Selected conference papers will be included in a reviewed post-conference publication.

Pleases submit your proposals (150-200 words) by 28 February 2017 via the conference webpage http://iccageproject.wixsite.com/presentation/conferece or directly by e-mail iccage.conference2017@muvs.cvut.cz

(posted 7 February 2017)


Reading the Middle Ages Today: Sources, Texts and Translation
Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal, 22-23 June 2017
Submission deadline: 30 March 2017

Link for the event: http://cehum.ilch.uminho.pt/medieval

Middle Ages are not far from Modernity, or from Post-Modernity. This premise is valid and easy to attest in the many forms (and trans-formations) medieval narrative has taken to still appeal to contemporary audiences.

It is clearly the case of endless rewritings of medieval legends to be found in authors such as Iris Murdoch (The Green Knight, 1993); Stephen Lawhead with his immersion in the Arthurian imagery on the Pendragon Cycle and his many medieval themed novels, such as Byzantium, 1996; or George Martin, (A Song of Ice and Fire, 1991).

These rewritings have also taken the screen; a long list of films on Arthurian legend started in 1904 with a silent film by Edwin S. Porter, Parsifal, and has been increasing with countless and essential titles such as Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981), Prince Valiant (Anthony Hickox, 1997) or the soon to be released in 2017 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (by Guy Richie).

Outside the Arthurian imaginary, there are landmark film features dealing with medieval themes such as the fundamental The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957); The Name of the Rose, 1986, by Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on Umberto Eco’s eponymous novel; the film adaptations of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy works The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2014); or the many versions of Robin Hood’s tale, the last one directed by Ridley Scott in 2010.

The dissemination of new productions for television in the last decades of the 20th century included many medieval inspired shows. This is the case of Ivanhoe (1997) mini-series based on the novel with the same name by Walter Scott; Les Rois Maudits (2005), remake of a 1972 mini-series that adapted the novel by Maurice Druon with the same name; Pillars of the Earth (2010), series based on Ken Follet’s novel with the same title; or Game of Thrones (2011), a fantasy drama based on the already mentioned series of novels by George Martin.

Popular music is also inspired by medieval themes, instruments and traditons. The second half of the 20th century witnessed the rise of what is called Neo-Medieval Music. Its core elements range from classical interpretation of medieval music to a complete blending of medieval instruments with modern styles such as electronic music or rock. This is the case of groups such as Corvus Corax and In Extremo (German bands), The Moon and the Nightspirit from Hungary or even the Portuguese groups Strella do Dia and Origo.

Medieval is also a term borrowed by the gaming industry from historical studies. The gaming community and producers are medieval enthusiasts and avid consumers of medieval material for the creation of their themes, avatars and general game routines.

There is still a great amount of work being done on medieval texts per se. From the study of manuscripts (now more accessible due to many digital catalogues such as the British Library, Vienna Library, Santiago de Compostela University Library, etc.) to the edition of medieval texts, many scholars dedicate their lives to medieval studies.

All these who enjoy medieval lore can do it due to the passionate and enduring work in such disciplines as the study of historiography, hagiography or literary studies but also through the hard work of making these texts available and present in the future memory of other cultures. This is achieved by the often forgotten hand of the translator.

On this International Conference, we aim at looking again to the Medieval Studies within its many fields of study. Middle Ages will be discussed in its various modern shapes: as source, as text or – still – as object of work by translators.

We are welcoming 20 minute paper abstracts on:

  1. Middle-Ages as source for contemporary Art: Literature, Music, Screen, etc.
  2. Medieval Studies today – their pertinence as a field of study.
  3. Medieval Translation – theory, challenges.

Abstracts of 250 words in English or Portuguese should include name of the speaker, affiliation, title of the paper, contact details and short bio note. Please send them to the conference email address: readingmiddleages@gmail.com.

Confirmed Speakers:
– Prof. David Matthews (University of Manchester);
– Prof. Graça Videira Lopes (Instituto de Estudos Medievais, FCSHUNL);
– Prof. Elisa Lessa (ILCH, UM);
– Prof. Pedro Dono Lopez (CEHUM, ILCH).

Download the conference poster.

(posted 3 March 2917)


Epistemological Canons in Language, Literature and Cultural Studies: 26th  Conference of PASE
University of Gdańsk, Poland, 22-24 June 2017
New extended deadline for proposals: 20 Fevruary 2017

PASE-logoThe Institute of English and American Studies of the University of Gdańsk
The Polish Association for the Study of English
The Polish Society for the Study of European Romanticism
The 26th Annual Conference
of the Polish Association for the Study of English
University of Gdańsk, 22–24 June 2017

2nd Circular
We are pleased to confirm that the following scholars have agreed to give plenary talks at our conference:

  • Prof. Christoph Bode, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
  • Prof. Małgorzata Grzegorzewska, Warsaw University
  • Prof. Marzenna Mioduszewska, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid
  • Prof. Christina Schäffner, Aston University, Brimingham
  • Prof. Marek Wilczyński, Gdańsk University

PAPERS, WORKSHOPS AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Proposals for twenty-minute papers inspired by the theme of the conference, not exceeding 200 words, should be sent to 2017pase@gmail.com. They should state the author’s name, academic title, affiliation and contact details, and include a short bio note (up to 100 words). Please include your surname in the file name for ease of identification.
We would also welcome proposals for workshops and panel discussions.
The proposal for a panel on Historical Linguistics and Culture is already posted on the conference website: http://www.ptsner.ug.edu.pl/pase-2017/programme.
The extended deadline is 20 February 2017.
We plan to publish selected conference papers in the Polish Journal of English Studies, Beyond Philology and a possible volume of conference proceedings, provided that the number and quality of submitted materials warrants this.
REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEE
The conference fee is:
500 PLN for PASE members and doctoral students,
550 PLN (130 EURO) for other participants.
The fee covers conference participation and materials, coffee and lunch breaks and the conference reception. We regret that we cannot accept reduced or partial payments.
The fee is not affected by whether the participant is presenting a paper.
For formal registration, all participants should complete the REGISTRATION FORM available on the conference website http://www.ptsner.ug.edu.pl/pase-2017/registration
and send it to 2017pase@gmail.com at the time that the conference fee is paid.
If you require an invoice for your payment please inform us via the registration form and include all the necessary information.
THE DEADLINE for the conference fee is 30 April 2017.
The late conference fee is:
550 PLN for PASE members,
600 PLN for other participants.
PAYMENT DETAILS
Bank: mBank S.A.
Account holder: Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów nad Europejskim Romantyzmem, Uniwersytet Gdański, ul. Wita Stwosza 55, Sala 3.20, 80-952 Gdańsk
Title of payment: PASE 2017, surname and e-mail address of the participant
Account number: 29 1140 2004 0000 3902 7549 7636 (for transfers in PLN)
Payments from abroad: Iban code: PL92 1140 2004 0000 3812 0342 3092 (for transfers in EURO)
BIC code (Swift address) BREXPLPWMBK
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
You will find all details concerning conference programme, registration, accommodation and conference venue on our website: http://www.ptsner.ug.edu.pl/pase-2017
As Gdańsk is a busy tourist destination, you are advised to book your accommodation early. The organizers do not assist with the booking process.
Dr hab. Mirosława Modrzewska, Prof. UG
Director, Institute of English and American Studies, University of Gdańsk
President of the Polish Society for the Study of European Romanticism
Prof. dr hab. Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak
University of Wrocław
President of the Polish Association for the Study of English
Organising Committee:
Dr Tomasz Wiśniewski
Dr Maria Fengler
Dr Magdalena Wawrzyniak-Śliwska
Dr Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska
Dr Karolina Janczukowicz
Dr Małgorzata Smentek
Dr Agnieszka Wawrzyniak
Dr Grzegorz Welizarowicz
Tadeusz Wolański, MA

We hope to stimulate academic research and discussion around the theme of cognition, in relation to language (including language teaching), literature, translation and culture. In every aspect of our lives we make judgments and assessments and encounter judgments and assessments made by others, without necessarily examining closely the perspectives, methodologies or theoretical assumptions on which these judgments are based. What established procedures and canons of seeing and understanding govern the way we teach, the way we translate, or the direction of our research in any given area? Is there a need for these procedures or canons to be revised, modified or even abandoned altogether? What benefits derive from following a given procedure or methodology? How and why have ways of seeing in a given field changed over the years? What are the difficulties of defining a canon in any given field? These are only some of the questions that the conference would hope to explore. The list below, which is far from exhaustive, provides some suggestions as to areas of possible interest for panel papers.

  • The fashioning and refashioning of literary conventions in response to changing world views and paradigm shift
  • Literature/theatre/film and truth
  • Literature/theatre/film and science
  • Languages of theatre
  • Cognition on stage and in printed drama
  • Defining/re-defining/extending literary canons
  • Themes of [re]cognition and [mis]understanding in literary texts and texts of culture
  • Theories of literary and cultural studies
  • Ethnography of communication
  • Psychological, sociological and cultural aspects of bi-/multilingualism
  • Logic and linguistics
  • Language and reality, language and culture, linguistic relativity today
  • Synchronic and diachronic study of language
  • Comparative phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics
  • Theories of language and field research
  • Testing linguistic theories
  • Theories of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics)
  • Cognition and language
  • Language teaching/learning and cognition
  • Language teaching/learning and culture
  • Teaching/learning language skills
  • Teaching/learning components of language
  • Language teacher training
  • Bilingual education
  • Translation theory vs. translation theories
  • Changing objectives of Translation Studies (the “turns” in TS)
  • Changing methodologies in TS
  • Empiricism and translation studies
  • Translation technology and epistemological concerns
  • Translation industry, translation market and new perspectives in translation studies
  • Plurilingualism vs. the concept of translation
  • The impact of ideological concerns on translation and translation studies
  • Sociology of translation

(posted 5 October 2016, updated 16 January 2017)


Gestures in Texts and the Visual Arts: INTERFACES International Conference
Université de Bourgogne, France, 29-30 June 2017
Deadline for proposals: 20  December 2016

Following up on its exploration of intermediality and text-image relations, the Centre de Recherche Texte/Image/Langage of Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté is organizing a bilingual (French-English) international conference on the inscription of gestures in texts and the visual arts from the early modern period.
As part and parcel of the work of artists, craftsmen, writers and labourers, gestures combine an intention, technical skills, actualisation, thought in action as well as expenditure of energy. The variety of their meanings and functions offers promising perspectives in the field of interdisciplinary and intermedial studies. In The Pleasure in Drawing (2013), Jean-Luc Nancy construes the draughtsman’s gesture as “the essence and excellence” of gestures, whether they belong “to the dancer, the musician, or filmmaker”: “this gesture is above all what is most proper to a gesture: an immanent signifiance, in other words, without the sign taking off toward the signified, but a sense that is offered right at the body [à même le corps], right at a body that becomes less active, efficient, or operative than the body that gives itself over to a motion—to an emotion—that received it, coming from beyond its functional corporeality” (p. 39, transl. Philip Armstrong). Accordingly, the conference will focus on the inchoative and technical aspects of gestures in the genesis of a work, taking into account its fabrication as well as its representation. We will explore the contemporary theoretical and technical implications of gestures—rather than draw typologies or describe the semiotics of gestures since there already exists a substantial critical corpus in that field.
We invite abstracts (in English or French) that explore the following themes in this non-exhaustive list:

  • The conference will specifically examine the role, treatment and inscription of gestures in artistic and literary practices as well as in aesthetic discourse. We welcome state-of-the-art research in the field of intermedial studies as well as explorations of recent technological applications such as digital productions or augmented reality.
  • Beyond the mere recording of movement, we wish to address the transcription of gestures in texts and still or moving images, which may encompass discussions of the aesthetics of notation systems or of ekphrasis. Papers may explore how artistic and poetical works engage with (actual or imaginary) gestures, and in doing so, partake in the interdisciplinary cultural practice of performance art. This may entail an analysis of the relation between gestural writings/images and the aesthetics of reception. Of equal interest is how a poetics of gesture may be defined as it is enacted in artists’ and writers’ performances.
  • We also invite papers that tackle the interaction of gestures and tools/instruments in the fields of education, cognition, art and craft and in a variety of practices ranging from agricultural labour to music and dance. This may include innovative representations of technical and professional gestures, but also the recording of living gestures from an anthropological and ethnographic perspective.
  • The suggested discussions above may tie in with analyses of symbolic systems. Therefore we will also welcome papers that deal with the figurative aspects of gestures insofar as they signify heroic or memorable actions (as they are recorded in chansons de geste), such as historic and political gestures along with their social, cultural and ideological dimension.

Please send a 300-word abstract (in French or in English) before 20th December 2016 to the following address: 2017Interfaces@googlegroups.com
Notification: 31st January 2017.
The programme will be finalised in March 2017.
Organizing committee: Sophie Aymes, Marie-Odile Bernez, Bénédicte Coste, Véronique Liard, Fiona McMahon, Christelle Serée-Chaussinand, Shannon Wells.

(posted 19 October 2016)


Systemic Functional Linguistics at the Crossroads: Intercultural and Contrastive Descriptions of Language. 27th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference
University of Salamanca, Spain, 29 June-01 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2016

esflaContributions are welcome for the following thematic strands and colloquia, albeit, as in previous conferences, papers with a systemic functional focus will also be considered even if they do not address the conference themes:

Thematic Panel Sessions

  • SFL at Intercultural Crossroads
  • SFL at Contrastive Crossroads
  • SFL at Crossroads in Linguistics and Beyond
  • SFL at the Cutting Edge of Descriptions of Language

Colloquia

  • 1er Coloquio ‘La LSF en/del Español’ / 1st Colloquium: ‘SFL in/of Spanish’ (Language of this colloquium: Spanish) (please check the conference website for this CFP)
  • 2nd Colloquium ‘Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Assumptions in SFL’ (Language of this colloquium: English) (please check the conference website for this CFP)

Submissions

Abstracts (300 words maximum, plus a short list of key references) should contain a statement of the aim of the contribution, and should make clear how the paper relates to previous and/or current work within SFL and to the panel and/or colloquium chosen. Abstracts should provide a description of the main contents and results to be presented.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers

Jorge Arús Hita (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)
Tom Bartlett (Cardiff University, UK)
Adriana Bolívar (Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuela)
Elsa Ghio (Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina)
Mick O’Donnell (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)

Dates and Deadlines

Submission period opens: 1 October 2016
Deadline for submissions: 30 November 2016
Notice of acceptance: 15 January 2017
Early-bird registration (all): 15 January to 31 March 2017
Ordinary registration period (all): 1-30 April 2017
Extension of registration period for attendees only: up to 25 June 2017

More information at: http://eventum.usal.es/go/esflc2017

(posted 23 September 2016)


Modernist Life
Birmingham, UK, 29 June-1 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2017

Only to the person who is prepared to lose her life in its known form will life appear in its new guises of ever-greater beauty and perfection. But in order to achieve such a position, silence must be reached in both thinking and feeling. This is losing life, for life is, first and foremost, pervaded by human thoughts and feelings in a universal and common form.
—Hilma af Klint

Modernist Life is an international, interdisciplinary conference that aims to explore the range, depth and prolongation of modernisms from the nineteenth century into the present moment and the future. It takes as its starting point the fundamental tension between art and life, central to modernism, but also the lifespan of modernism itself – beginnings, endings, or alternatively modernism’s longue durée.
The conference invites discussion of the ways in which modernisms negotiate the concept of life, afterlife and still life, or death; it is interested in the cultivation of life (the ecological) and the extension or replacement of life (the technological); and it seeks to debate the ways in which modernism’s lives are preserved or reconstructed, through biography, editing, citation, education, cultural institutions and the new technologies of the archive.
Topics might include, but are not restricted to:

• life writing
• vitalism
• ecology and biology
• still life and portraiture
• modernist lifestyles
• cultures of everyday life
• architecture and designs for living
• liveable lives
• bodies and machines
• religions, spiritualisms, mysticisms
• haunting
• the inhuman and the posthuman
• the post-apocalyptic
• health and illness
• the death drive and the pleasure principle
• repetition and compulsion
• curation and preservation
• editing and archiving
• lives and letters

Keynote speakers:
Claire Colebrook (Penn State University)
Janet Wolff (University of Manchester)

Attendance and fees
The conference is open to anyone, in any discipline, working on modernism. Prices for the conference, and details of how to pay, will appear shortly via http://bams.ac.uk
There is a reduced registration rate for BAMS members.
Current annual membership rates, which include a subscription to Modernist Cultures, are £45 standard; £32 student; £55 international standard; £45 international student. Membership with online-only subscription to Modernist Cultures is £28 standard; £23 student.
For more information about BAMS membership, click here. We will be offering some bursaries to enable postgraduate members of BAMS to attend the conference.

How to submit
Proposals are welcomed for individual 20 minute papers, or panels of 3-4 speakers. As one of the aims of the conference is to showcase the work not only of individuals but of groups, societies, institutions and research projects, we warmly welcome proposals from, for example, author societies, research projects, and departmental research centres. Proposals for papers should be 250 words long.
Panel proposals should include a short paragraph naming the organiser of the panel and explaining its rationale as well as a 250 word abstract for each paper. For all proposals,
please also include a short biographical statement in the same document. Word format preferred.
Proposals should be emailed to bamsbirmingham2017@gmail.com by February 28th 2017.

(posted 23 January 2017)


Transformers: All that is solid changes into something else
University of Aveiro, Portugal, 29 June-1 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2017

Keynote addresses by:

  • Author and activist Roz Kaveney
  • Toby Miller, Loughborough University London

Section 1: Formal and Commercial Issues
The formation of global conglomerates (delivery system AT&T is currently attempting to swallow content provider Time Warner) has created the commercial conditions for ever more lucrative exchanges between different media. Hardware, software and entertainment generation are now in lock-step, and they are like this because it makes it easier to function in global markets, working the magic transformation of your money into their money. In this regard, Sony-Columbia’s exploitation of its hoary 1950s product Godzilla is a quaint example of a practice now brought to considerable refinement. The franchise, the sequel and more recently the prequel, are now industry norms, lurching fastly and furiously into online multiplayer gaming after-life.

With these and more issues in mind, papers are invited in the following general areas:

  • transmedia synergies and convergences
  • innovative business practices in media and merchandising
  • fandom, community and popular culture
  • crossover forms and digital interactivities
  • resistances to and rejections of popular cultural forms

Section 2: Thematic Content
Transformation of bodies is now an ever-present theme. Bodies may develop special abilities through forms of cod-scientific causes, such as being bitten by a spider developed in a scientific experiment, or through forms of more plausibly scientific explanation, such as current research on genetics or prosthetics extended into imagined future possibilities, or actually present technologies in the realisation of gender affirming surgery. From superheroes to cyberbodies to transsexuals may be a tasteless conjunction of disparate phenomena. On the other hand, they may also be different points on a paradigm in which the stability of bodies has been overtaken by logics of choice associated with varying possibilities, real or promised, in a battle of not just warring super and enhanced figures, but of the models of desire they embody.

Accordingly, the conference invites proposals for papers dealing with these and related thematic phenomena.

  • bodies which refuse to die
  • superbodies and ordinary worlds
  • rehearsing technologically altered bodies
  • genetics and special bodies
  • identical bodies
  • choosing bodies; control over bodies

Proposals of between 200 and 300 words should be submitted by February 28th 2017, along with a short bionote to David Callahan callahan@ua.pt & Anthony Barker abarker@ua.pt
Acceptances will be notified by March 31st. The conference language will be English.

The registration fee will be kept low at €80, and €50 for postgraduate students.

David Callahan
Professor Associado
Departamento de Línguas e Culturas
Universidade de Aveiro
3810-193 Aveiro
Portugal

http://aveiro.academia.edu/DavidCallahan

(posted 14 November 2016)


Crime Fiction: Detection, Public and Private, Past and Present
Bath Spa University, UK, 29 June – 1 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 13 February 2017

Venue: Corsham Court, Bath Spa University, UK

The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its fourth UK conference. Building upon and developing ideas and themes from the previous three successful conferences, Crime Fiction: Detection, Public and Private, Past and Present will examine what is arguably the very heart of this field of critical study.

Crime fiction narratives continue to gain in both popularity and critical appreciation. This conference will consider the ways in which both the public and private aspects of criminality and detection merge and differ from each other. The police detective, bound by laws of the state (however loosely adhered to) brings a different set of skills and methods of detection than the often maverick private eye. Of course, detection includes the criminals who attempt to avoid capture – the term ‘anti-hero’ can apply to both upholders of the law and to those evading it.

A key question that this conference will address is the enduring appeal of crime fiction and its ability to incorporate other disciplines such as Criminology, Film, and Psychology. From the ‘sensational’ novelists of the 1860s to today’s ‘Domestic Noir’ narratives, crime fiction has proved itself exceptionally proficient in expanding its parameters to encompass changes in the wider culture. With this in mind, we are interested in submissions that approach crime narratives from the earliest days of crime fiction up until the present day.

This international, interdisciplinary event is organised by Bath Spa University and the Captivating Criminality Network, and we invite scholars, practitioners and fans of crime writing, as well as interested parties from Criminology, Psychology, Sociology, and Film and Media, to participate in this conference that will address these key elements of crime fiction and real crime. Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

  • The Detective, Then and Now
  • The Anti-Hero
  • True Crime
  • Contemporary Crime Fiction
  • Victorian Crime Fiction
  • The Golden Age
  • Hardboiled Fiction
  • Forensics and Detection
  • The Body as Evidence (silent witness)
  • Crime and Clues
  • Dostoevsky and Beyond: The Genealogy of Crime Writing
  • Fatal Femininity
  • Seduction and Sexuality
  • The Criminal Analyst
  • Others and Otherness
  • Landscape and Identity
  • The Country and the City
  • The Media and Detection
  • Adaptation and Interpretation
  • Justice Versus Punishment
  • Lack of Order and Resolution

Please send 300 word proposals to Dr. Fiona Peters (f.peters@bathspa.ac.uk) by 13th February 2017. The abstract should include your name, email address, and affiliation, as well as the title of your paper. Please feel free to submit abstracts presenting work in progress as well as completed projects. Postgraduate students are welcome. Papers will be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. Proposals for suggested panels are also welcome.

Attendance fees: £155 (£105 students)

(posted 6 February 2017)


The Postmillennial Sensibility in Anglophone Literatures, Cultures and Media
Košice, Slovakia, 29 June – 1 July 2017
Deadline for the submission of abstracts: 20 March 2017

Conference organized by the Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia and the Slovak Association for the Study of English

Extended deadlines:
Submission of abstracts: 20 March 2017
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2017
Registration begins on 1 April 2017

Registration fees:
Early registration fee paid before/on 15 April 2017: 50 EUR
Early registration fee for PhD students and accompanying persons paid before/on 15 April 2017: 25 EUR
Registration fee paid on/after 16 April 2017: 60 EUR
Registration fee for PhD students and accompanying persons paid on/after 16 April 2017: 30 EUR
Registration of MA and BA students: free of charge

Authors of presented papers will be invited to extend their papers for publication in electronic proceedings with ISBN.

Plenary Speakers

  • Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall as post-millennial historical fiction: Prof. Dr. José Igor Prieto-Arranz, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Sain. Web profile: http://www.uib.eu/personal/ABTE5MTA4/
  • Ideology in the multimodal discourse of television documentaries on Irish communities in the UK: a mixed portrayal: Prof. Dr. Roberta Piazza, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK .Web profile: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/24748

Recent development in the field of cultural studies has produced an increased consensus about the emergence of a postmillennial sensibility, characterized by the end of postmodernism and its replacement by a new cultural paradigm. Cultural theorists have so far produced a rich variety of concepts and approaches that try to capture the essence of the new state of culture: Nealon’s study (2012) associates the ‘post-postmodern’ era with an intensification of postmodern capitalism and increasing influence of the economic sphere on everyday cultural life. Lipovetsky (2005), Kirby (2009) and Samuels (2010), though employing three different concepts, respectively hypermodernity, digimodernism, and automodernity, focus on the role of digital technologies and consumerism in the contemporary transformations of human relations and cultural production. Bourriaud (2009) uses the term altermodern to define new, anti-commercial trends in contemporary visual arts typical of globalized perception, cultural nomadism, and creaolization. Elshelman (2008) identifies the new epoch with performativism reflected in a wide range of performatist texts that encourage the viewer/reader to accept (at least for the duration of the text) the monistic and metaphysical values (e.g. unified self, transcendence, god) that postmodernism challenges through ironic deconstruction. Elshelman (2008) shows how performatist texts induce the suspension of disbelief by using ‘a coercive frame’ that cuts, at least temporarily, the reader/viewer off from the outside context of metaphysical scepticism and irony. Gans (2000, 2011), drawing on his theory of generative anthropology, sees the victimary discourse, reflected mainly in feminist, postcolonial and post-Holocaust narratives, as the defining feature of the postmodern era and associates postmillennial sensibility with the possibility to lead a dialogue with victimary thinking.

Finally, the new cultural paradigm is also addressed in Vermeulen and Akker’s work (2010) that suggests that metamodernism could be a useful umbrella term for such diverse cultural practices as digitalization of textuality, creolization of arts and performativism. Vermeulen and Akker believe that metamoderism finds its ‘clearest expression in an emergent neoromantic sensibility’, in ‘the return of the Romantic, whether as style, philosophy or attitude’. They find its reflection in the works that replace postmodernist rationalism (sarcasm, indifference, ironic deconstruction) with the perspective of childlike naivety and a desire for metaphysical truths, and the postmodernist focus on pastiche and parody with the focus on irrational principles (nature, the primitive, sublime, mysterious). These neoromantic practices are seen as playing a crucial role in the metamodernist oscillation between the ‘modern desire for sens’ (expressed in modern beliefs in utopism, linear progress and grand narratives) and the postmodern doubt about the sense of it all’.

The conference aims to bring together scholars from across the world to explore the postmillennial sensibility in Anglophone literary, cultural and media texts. We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers relating to any of the theoretical issues outlined above. Submissions will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

Abstract submissionAbstracts of papers (500 words max.) clearly defining the topic and the objectives pursued in the paper should be submitted by e-mail as WORD attachments to: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Soňa Šnircová (sona.snircova@upjs.sk) by March 20, 2017.

(posted 22 February 2017)


Nation, Nationhood and Theatre: 26th Annual CDE Conference
Reading, UK, 29 June – 2 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 16 Dcember 2016

CDEThe German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (Deutsche Gesellschaft für das englischsprachige Theater und Drama der Gegenwart e.V.) is pleased to announce its 26th Annual Conference. It is organized by the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading (UK) and will be held as a residential conference at the University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus.

With the referendum on Britain’s EU membership on June 23, 2016 – ‘exit or remain’ – definitions of both nation and nationhood are being stretched on both sides of the question. As the EU undergoes severe difficulties – such as the economic imbalance between the constituent countries, the increasing clamour for the re-recognition of smaller nations within larger entities, and controversies about migration – now seems a very good time to take a fresh look at the representation of issues of nation and nationhood in contemporary theatre and drama in English.
This is not an area of debate exclusive to the UK. The ever-growing refugee crisis is creating pressure on western governments and governments worldwide to effectively close borders, or at the very least severely curtail the movement of the thousands of people seeking to find a new life. It is a pressure that is frequently xenophobic, sometimes patriarchal and homophobic and it can be related to the emergence and re-emergence of strongly nationalistic movements. They seek to define ‘nation’ and ‘nationhood’ in ways that oppose all pluralistic policies, and any programme of multi-cultural aspirations, in particular. At the same time immigrants tend to find themselves in the conflicted position of engaging with the cultural assumptions of their adopted country even as they also wish to hold on to cultural values of their nation of family origin.
It is not long since the ‘state of the nation’ play was declared a thing of the past. More recent evidence suggests that its obituary notices were somewhat premature, and that it has re-emerged – as it is always prone to do in periods of crisis – albeit in very different theatrical forms and deploying very different theatrical voices. As the theatre continues to search for ways to consider questions of nation, nationhood and national identity, this conference will seek to explore the voices and topics as well as the politics and dramaturgies contemporary plays and performances bring to the stage.

We invite proposals for papers in English of 20 minutes length, with possible topics including (but not being limited to):

  • the Dis-United Kingdom and its nations
  • national aspirations in Western Europe
  • the global rise of nationalisms and populist movements
  • borders, mobility and national identity
  • the representation of national stereotypes in theatre and performance
  • nations within nations: seeking to find a voice: seeking to find an audience
  • issues of race/class/gender in defining the nation
  • whose ‘state of the nation’ plays?
  • National Theatres?

In accordance with CDE’s constitutional policy, papers should deal exclusively with contemporary (i.e. post-1989) theatre and drama in English.
Abstracts: Abstracts (300 words) for papers proposed (20 minutes maximum delivery time) should be accompanied by a short biographical note, plus full address and institutional affiliation.
Deadline: 16 December 2016
Send to: John Bull jbull@lincoln.ac.uk
N.B. Only paid-up members are eligible to give papers at CDE conferences. Membership subscriptions may be taken out or renewed during the conference. For details, please contact CDE’s treasurer Monika Pietrzak-Franger monika.pietrzak-franger@uni-hamburg.de

(posted 22 June 2016)


Corpus Historicus: the Body in/of History
Sosnowiec, Poland, 30 June 30th- 2 July 2017
Deadline for proposals: 30 January 2017

corpushistoricusUniversity of Silesia in Katowice
Faculty of Philology
Institute of English Cultures and Literatures
http://www.ikila.us.edu.pl

The significance of the body in the context of historical narratives has been paramount for the understanding of the contemporary human condition and of the past by which it has been shaped. Our perception of the body and the bodily, seen as both the object and the subject in and of history, has influenced our current understanding of both individual and collective narratives of the past, since, in the words of Donna McCormack, “[f]lesh is woven into history as both the bloody deaths necessary to achieve the desired goals and the skin on which it has become possible to write these new foundational narratives.” (Donna McCormack, Queer Postcolonial Narratives and the Ethics of Witnessing (London – Oxford – New York – New Delhi – Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), 2.
Therefore, the conference aims to address the ways in which the body and the bodily have been conceived of in various historical contexts, ranging from past developments in the field of medical study, epitomised in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, to the history of futuristic reconceptualisations of the bodily and the human, exemplified, for instance, by Blade Runner. Thus, we invite scholars working in various disciplines and fields of study to consider the body as both an instrument and a subject of history, and to engage in a discussion concerning the representations of the corporeal in different media across cultures and centuries.
Dr Richard Sugg (University of Durham) has kindly agreed to be the conference’s keynote speaker. Dr Sugg is the renowned author of Murder after Death: Literature and Anatomy in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 2007), Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians (Routledge, 2011) and several other books focusing on early modern studies, corporeality and cultural marginality.

Specific topics may address, but are not limited to:

  • the body in / as history;
  • the body politic / the politics of the body;
  • histories of bodies;
  • the body in historiography and philosophy of history;
  • the body and history in literature and other arts;
  • the body in cultural history;
  • the body as canvas / text / space / territory / map;geography of the body;
  • the body and ahistoricity;
  • the history of medicine (health, disease, pain, pleasure, physiology, body parts etc.);
  • death of the body / the corpse in history;
  • the body and trauma / suffering / memory;
  • ideal / beautiful / liminal / monstrous bodies in history;
  • histories of adornment, modification and augmentation of the body;
  • transhumanism, posthumanism and futures of the body;
  • the body and material culture / the materiality of the body;
  • history and the body at the intersections of the humanities, science and policy;
  • methodologies in body-related history;
  • animal bodies in history / histories of animal bodies;
  • flesh and meat in history / histories of flesh and meat.

We welcome scholars from various academic fields to submit their proposals (ca. 250 words) by 30 January 2017 to corpus.historicus@gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 1 March 2017. A selection of papers will appear in a post-conference monograph.
The conference fee is 450 / 350 PLN (105 / 80 EUR) for full fee participants and graduate students respectively. The fee includes a meal, coffee breaks and conference materials.
Further details will be gradually available on http://corpushistoricus.wordpress.com

(posted 31 October 2016)