Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in June 2018

Corporeal Archives: International Scientific Conference
Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade, Serbia, 1-2 June 2018
New extended deadline for submissions: 20 March 2018

Technological advances have enabled a vast array of archives, satisfying our insatiable need to collect, store and preserve, and, further, allowing us to go beyond the institutional repositories of information. Derrida’s claim that “nothing is less clear today than the word ‘archive’” has proven to be accurate and convincing in present-day societies. The bio-cultural record which engages both data production and accumulation has established the body as a crucial “artefact” within a discourse of individual/micro/macro archives.

To think the body is to undo the thinking itself, to approach the body from the border point of the corporeality of thinking. Having stated that, we are to think the body, or bodies, from the archival perspective, from various and multiple “starting” points of imaginary of the body. The normative and normalized “ending” points of bodily archives should be, therefore, thoroughly interrogated. The body has often been represented as a mere footnote to the vast scripture of the mind, reason, soul, spirit, nous, nomos and the like. To think the body from the archival perspective is to re-write and to re-member – it is not to commence but to suspend, to defer closure, and to safeguard the openness of the questions of/on the body. Our aim is to graft on to the “aggregates of knowledge” (in Hegel’s terms), understood as normative epistemic body-productions, and to re-question obsessive archiving of knowledge on the „body“ by following Derrida’s critical concept of “paleonymy” and „archive fever“. In accordance to Derridian philosophy of différance, we invite you to trace the catalogue of the body, a corpus, an to dwell on immense discourse of the body and its failures as discussed in Jean-Luc Nancy’s accounts on „exscribing“ and „ectopic“ body.

The conference sets out to disrupt the everpresent corpuses of knowledge (biological, medical, anthropometric, cultural, ethnographic, political, historical and etc.), and further to imagine alternative productions of new epistemologies of corpus, new “aggregates” of non-normative knowledge, i.e. to invent different bodily registries. Our aim is to probe the subversive tendencies within corporeal archives (in literature, film and media studies, (bio)art, performance studies, etc.), and to engage in the re-evaluation of the notions of (de)construction, (re)organization and bio-thanato-political control of bodily matter. Therefore, we plan to address various and cultural politics and practices that are reshaping our understanding of the body, as well as to examine the new forms of the archival inscriptions and erasures. We invite contributors to critically evaluate the ambiguity of access to the corporeal caches. In addition to academic papers and presentations, we also welcome creative submissions across all genres and forms, from independent scholars, cultural workers and artists.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Biopolitical and Necropolitical Corporeal Archives

• Political bodyscape
• Docile bodies and biopolitics
• Thanatopolitical bodies
• Body as thanatopolitical fiction
• Vulnerability and precarity
• Immunitary communal body

Histories and Epistemologies of/on the Body

• Cartesian diagram of the body
• Bodies of memory
• Gendered body
• Racialized, sexualized and normalized body
• Monstrous corpus
• Human-cyborg divide
• Body phenomenology

Body Forensics and Death Studies

• Mass(ive)-body
• Bodily mournings
• Abject bodies (undead, fragmented, body waste, disability)
• Mute witnesses/silence of corpses

Bioart and Performative Body Archives

• Doll-body – figurines of immobility
• Cinematic corporealities
• Bodily humour and travesty
• Written/writing bodies
• Bodily choreographies

Wearable Technologies and BioDigital Bodies

• Surface bodies
• Engravings on the skin
• Cell archives
• Subversive anatomical catalogues
• Multiplying data in desire synapses
• Quilted bodies – bodily patchwork
• “Fashtech” & “tech couture”

Paper proposals:
Proposals of 300 words should be submitted, along with a short bionote at corporeal.archives@fmk.edu.rs
The official language of the conference will be English.

Important dates (extended deadlines)
Deadline for abstracts submission:  March 20^th 2018
Notifications of acceptance:  March 25^th 2018
Deadline for full paper submission: September 15^th 2018

For more information follow the link:
http://www.fmk.singidunum.ac.rs/konkursi/selected/982-call-for-papers-corporeal-archives/

(posted 27 November 2017, updated 1 March 2018)

Vulgarity in literature and the visual arts of the English-speaking world
Paris, France, 2 June 2018
Deadine for proposals: 7 Marh 2018

Conference organised by the doctoral student research group OVALE – part of the VALE research group, EA4085, Sorbonne University.

Keynote speaker: Jonathon Green, slang lexicographer and author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

“thou claybrained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson,
obscene, greasy tallow- catch” Shakespeare, Henri IV, I (I,4)

With these colourful words, Shakespeare conjures up his most accomplished comic character. A figure of garish excess in both body and language, the larger-than-life Falstaff is a unique literary creation. In him, vulgarity is not only given prime position but posterity in the world of belles-lettres. The representation of vulgarity remains nonetheless a polemical choice. Time and again, the vulgar has been suspected of a sensationalist agenda or of compromising quality. However, for a number of thinkers and literary critics, it is a legitimate attempt to capture the vitality of life through language. This only exemplifies the notional ambivalence of the term and the tension at the heart of its definition: between inclusion and exclusion, between what is common, oral, shared by all (vulgar tongue) and what is cheap, in bad taste and unrefined. This conference therefore aims to map and confront the various uses and forms of the vulgar in the literature and the arts of the English-speaking world.

Proposals may consider (but are not restricted to) the diegetic representation of the vulgar and reflection on what makes a vulgar character. This could summon ideas of the stereotypical nouveau riche (the vulgarian), whose previous lower social class is made only too obvious by his or her ostentatious and excessive behaviour, which makes him or her the butt of jokes on the part of the Establishment. At the other end of the spectrum, the character of the hoi polloi can also become an object of aesthetic fascination (think Eliza Doolittle in G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion). Social characteristics that are perceived or represented as “vulgar” may change according to

historical (think of the nationalist clash between Saxon vigour and French refinement in Walter Scott’s Invahoe) or geographical contexts (the opposition between Europe and the United Stated in The Ambassadors by Henry James, or The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton). Particular attention may also be paid to the different idiolects capable of conveying this “vulgarity”.

The linguistic dimension of the notion equally calls for a reflection on the poetic fertility of the vulgar tongue. What does the inclusion in texts of this oral, ordinary, popular language create? The use of slang, dialects or various accents can be regarded as an active fight against the ossification of the written word (e.g. Huckleberry Finn’s verbal irreverence, or Robert Burns’ Scot language); but it can also mark a loss of vitality compared to ever-changing unwritten language. The struggle against established language invites us to examine the role of so-called vernacular languages in postcolonial literatures. Does the “vernacularisation” of English subvert the linguistic norm, create a poetical, multifaceted idiom, or simply an exotic effect ? How does “standard English” include other languages in its discourse?

Finally, proposals may focus on a more specifically aesthetic and generic perspective. There are vulgar genres in literature (vulgar comedy, sensation novels, airport novels, crime or sentimental fiction, etc.) and the visual arts (the hierarchy of the genres was theorized in the 17th century). The codes associated with such genres (obscenity, sentimentalism, pornography, etc.) often discredit objects that would otherwise be considered legitimate. But these codes and genres, being excluded from high-brow culture can nevertheless be inspiringly reclaimed (calling to mind camp or trash aesthetics, or Hogarth’s promotion of the English school though the re-evaluation of minor genres such as satire and caricature).

Proposals for other papers dealing with how literature or the visual arts relate to philosophy, sociology or linguistics will be welcomed. Please send a 300-word abstract (for a 20-minute presentation) with a short bio- bibliography to the following address: laboratoire.ovale@gmail.com.
Deadline for submissions: March 7.
Notification of acceptance: March 28.

A more detailed bibliography is available on OVALE’s research blog: http://ovale.hypotheses.org/ovale-2017-2018

Key Information and Contact:

– This conference is open to all.
– The selection committee is composed of Charlotte Arnautou, Marianne Hillion and Clara Manco, doctoral students and head members of OVALE, as well as Professors Élisabeth Angel-Perez, Frédéric Regard and Alexis Tadié.
– Some of the papers will be published on VALE’s online journal Sillages Critiques.
– The conference will take place at the Maison de la Recherche de Paris-Sorbonne (28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris). – Contact: laboratoire.ovale@gmail.com
– URL reference :
http://ovale.hypotheses.org
http://www.vale.paris-sorbonne.fr/FR/Page_OVALE.php

(posted 29 January 2018)

Migrations in American Drama and Theater: 5th International Conference on American Drama and Theater
Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France, 4-6 June 2018
Deadline for porposals: 15 September 2017

Working in partnership with the American Theater and Drama Society (ATDS) and the Spanish universities of Cádiz, Sevilla, and Madrid Autónoma, the research group I.D.E.A. (“Théories et pratiques de l’interdisciplinarité dans les études anglophones”) and the Université de Lorraine are announcing a call for papers for the conference “Migrations in American Drama and Theater” to be held in Nancy, France, from 4 to 6 June 2018.
This 5th International Conference on American Drama and Theater will be dedicated to the study of migrations, understood in a broad sense. The four previous conferences were held in Málaga, 2000; Málaga, 2004; Cádiz, 2009; and Sevilla, 2012; topics included violence, plays and players, politics, and the romance of the theater.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

• John Patrick Shanley, American playwright, screenwriter, and theater and film director. His play Doubt: A Parable won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play. He won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his film Moonstruck.
• John Guare, American playwright, best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, Landscape of the Body, and A Free Man of Color, which was nominated for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of a Tony Award, as well as several Drama Desk, Obie, and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards.
• Lee Breuer, American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, film maker, poet and lyricist. Founding co-artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company, Breuer directed the celebrated 2011 production of Un tramway nommé Désir (A Streetcar Named Desire), the first foreign play produced at the illustrious Comédie Française in Paris.
• Maude Mitchell, American actress and producer, who specializes in fresh interpretations of classics and development of new plays, and worked alongside Breuer in Un tramway nommé Désir as dramaturg. Best known for her performance as Nora in Mabou Mines’ critically acclaimed production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which toured internationally for 8 years and earned her an Obie Award as Best Actress.
• Dr. Annette Saddik, professor and scholar of American drama and theater, City University of New York. She has published numerous articles and four books on American drama: Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess: The Strange, The Crazed, The Queer (2015); The Traveling Companion and Other Plays (2008); Contemporary American Drama (2007); and The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams’ Later Plays (1999). Dr. Saddik lectures regularly at Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and serves as a judge for the Lucille Lortel Theater Awards in New York.
• Dr. Sue Abbotson, British born professor and scholar of American drama and theater. Former President of the Arthur Miller Society, Abbotson currently serves on their board and is Performance Editor for the Arthur Miller Journal. She has authored countless articles and chapters on a wide range of other American playwrights, and is also a creative writer herself. Among her many books are Critical Companion to Arthur Miller (2007) and Thematic Guide to Modern Drama (2003). Forthcoming is the long-awaited Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s (Methuen, 2016).

The impulse to cross geographical barriers and transgress boundaries, of whatever kind, traverses the history of mankind. Such processes often turn out traumatic and painful, however ultimately beneficial or rewarding. Motivations may be economic, political, or just sentimental. But fleeing the (literal or figurative) homeland (or, in today’s parlance, one’s comfort zone) in search of safety, a livelihood, happiness, novelty, change, self-realization or prosperity is bound, in most cases, to exert psychological pressure and involve a price. For the scholar, such processes whereby human communities or individuals are confronted by the new and the alien, often by the other in oneself, are fascinating to study and probe. Cross-hybridization between cultures and values has often resulted in new ways of looking at and making sense of reality. The friction and strife such processes bring with them are similarly pertinent areas of scholarly interest and inquiry.
Few countries have been more dependent upon migrations, understood in a broad sense, than the US. Not only is a great part of its population descended from migrants (all of it if we understand migrations in a wider sense, as native peoples have had to migrate not only geographically but culturally from ancient practices to largely alien notions of progress and modernity), but the country has been predicated upon geographical and social mobility, in itself a kind of migration. Debates on the advantages, if any, of migrations, as well as the alleged danger of disenfranchisement for the receiving population, the advisability of “contamination” by foreign values, or competition from abroad, are common. Obviously, there has never been a time in the history of the country where some kind of wall has not been deemed advisable, and not only the kind endorsed by the protagonists of The Fantasticks, a musical which became an icon of American theatrical culture precisely on account of its adamant refusal to the oft-suggested migration to Broadway.
Migration here is understood as a trope that implies change, translation, re-situation or re-location, adaptation, transferral, as well as the embracement of the new. When playwrights explore new themes, new theatrical styles or new dramatic voices, they become migrants, often encountering resistance and feeling unwelcome, which they brave in search of artistic fulfilment, new audiences, or merely profit. Without stylistic migrations, there would have been no evolution in the dramatic art: no Eugene O’Neill, no Susan Glaspell, no Thornton Wilder, no Living Theater, no Sam Shepard, no Broadway musicals. Even migrations across media (from film to stage or stage to film, from novel to play or play to musical) or from one country to another (European influences on American playwrights, the impact of US drama and theater abroad) are areas of research especially encouraged.
Other possible areas for research and reflection include (but are not limited to):

• Theatrical migrations understood both literally and figuratively. Real migrations and migrations as a trope.
• Stylistic migrations and cross-hybridization between formats.
• Transnational studies of American drama.
• Foreign playwrights in America and hyphenated American playwrights. Multiculturalism as migration.
• US drama abroad and foreign drama in the US. The migration of cultures on stage.
• World realities on the US stage. America on the world’s stage.
• Mainstream playwrights migrating to the fringe. Fringe playwrights reaching the mainstream. Crossings between theatrical milieus.
• Broadway migrating from Broadway. The emergence of Off and Off-Off Broadway and the regional theater movement.
• Bodies, trauma, gender, and identity. Migrations from one’s sense of self and the corporeality of migrations.
• Intertextuality, transmedia, and intercultural exchanges. Migrating texts.

As we embrace a more international model for these conferences, and will hold the first of them outside of Spain, we are ourselves becoming migrants, and our destination, Nancy, is the perfect venue for such a conference. Nancy, with its various World Heritage sites, is at the heart of a historically disputed area in Europe, and has often migrated across countries and cultures. Ever since 1963, the Nancy festival has been not only in the avant-garde of theater festivals in Europe, but has welcomed groups and professionals from all countries to explore new territories, spearheading theatrical migrations, new languages, and all kinds of hybridities.
To submit either a paper, a roundtable discussion, or an already organized panel, please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief CV to Dr. Josefa Fernandez Martin (jfmartin@us.es) by 15 September 2017.
For updated information on the conference (travel, accommodation, participation fees, etc.), please visit https://idea-udl.org/migrations/.

(posted 15 February 2017)

Chronos 13: International conference on tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 4-6 June June 2018
Deadline for submissions: 10 December 2017

http://www.unine.ch/islc/chronos2018

CHRONOS is the foremost international forum dedicated to current linguistic research on tense, aspect, actionality, and modality/evidentiality. The CHRONOS conferences welcome substantial and innovative presentations from scholars who conduct linguistic research from different perspectives, concerning any language, regardless of theoretical persuasions.

Keynote Speakers:
Ayhan Aksu-Koç (Bogaziçi University)
Victoria Escandell-Vidal (UNED Madrid)
Adeline Patard (Université de Caen)
Andrea Rocci (University of Lugano)

A special session will be dedicated to the pragmatics of tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality.

Abstracts will be less than 600 words + references. Abstracts submitted in the special session on pragmatics have to bear this indication. All other abstratcs will be considered for the main session. Abstracts rejected in the special session might be directed to the main session. All abstracts will have to be deposited on the following platform:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=chronos13

Important Dates:
Deadline for submissions: 10 December, 2017.
Notifications: 15 February 2018

The working languages are English and French. Colleagues presenting in one language are encouraged to prepare their supporting documentation (hand-out, powerpoint presentation) in the other one.

Contact:
Louis de Saussure (conference chair, louis.desaussure@unine.ch)
Vabienne Voirin (administration, fabienne.voirin@unine.ch)

(posted 9 September 2017)

The Scottish diaspora in Poland and Central Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries
Krosno State College, Poland, 4-6 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 15 April 2018

International Conference commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of Robert Wojciech Portius de Lanxeth, Scottish merchant and benefactor, in Krosno.

Conference time and venue:
– 4-5 June 2018 on the premises of Krosno State College, Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Zawodowa im. Stanisława Pigonia w Krośnie
– 5-6 June 2018 – a visit to the Portius Wine Cellar in Hercegkút, Hungary, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Papers in Polish and English are welcome on the following groups of topics:

• Scottish diaspora in Poland and Central Europe in the 17^th-18 c.
• Polish-Hungarian economic and political relations in the 17th c.
• Hungarian wine trade in the 16th and 17th c.
• Hungarian traces of Robert Wojciech Portius
• Krosno in the times of Robert Wojciech Portius
• Robert Wojciech Portius as an art sponsor
• The Portius Society of Krosno and the memory of its Scottish patron
• Robert Wojciech Portius and Krosno’s tourist brand

Send your paper proposals to pwsz@pwsz.krosno.pl by 15th April 2018. The proposal should include the title of the presentation, the name of the author, title or degree, affiliation, address of home institution. Mention if you plan to participate in the trip to Hercegkút, Hungary, on 6th June at additional cost.

Additional information:

The organising committee will accept papers related to the topics listed above provided they contribute to the scholarly debate of the conference. The length of the presentation must not exceed 30 minutes.

Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in a post-conference volume before the end of 2018. The stylesheet and editorial requirements will be announced in a separate communication.

Conference fee: 300 PLN or 80 euros will cover the cost of accommodation (one night) and meals for the duration of the conference.

On 5th-6th June the organisers plan a bus trip to the Portius Wine Cellar in Hercegkút, Hungary (3-hour drive) at the additional cost of 300 PLN (or 80 euros). At least 20 participants required.

Questions and queries can be addressed to Dr. Piotr Łopatkiewicz at the Department of Tourism and Recreation of Krosno State College: tel. +48 691-503-393; email: piotr@lopatkiewicz.pl

Conference web page: http://www.pwsz.krosno.pl/uczelnia/aktualnosci/art,1556,robert-wojciech-portius-de-lanxeth-krosnienski-mieszczanin-kupiec-i-fundator.html

(posted 6 February 2018)

The Future of Genre: NFEAP 2018  
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus), Oslo, Norway, 7-8 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 18 February 2018

Or, to put it another way, “The Futures of Genre” …

We are pleased to announce the  12^th annual NFEAP summer conference, which will take place on Thursday the 7^th   and Friday the 8^th  of June 2018 at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus), Oslo, Norway.

Genre is a vital concept and resource in EAP, and NFEAP 2018 offers opportunities to think about the ongoing, ever-developing relationship between genres, teaching, research and thinking. What are the key questions about genre, EAP and teaching at this moment in time, and what might they be in the future? How do concepts of genre affect and shape teaching and research in academic disciplines, and in EAP itself?

We invite proposals that explore genre 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:
John M. Swales, University of Michigan, USA
Christine M. Tardy, University of Arizona, USA
Carmen Perez-Llantada, University of Zaragoza, Spain

Submission guidelines:
Please submit your abstract of no more than 300 words and a biography of no more than 50 words by February 18^th, 2018 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 17^th, 2018. More information, and a link for proposal submission, can be found here: http://www.hioa.no/LSB/EAP/Norwegian-Forum-for-English-for-Academic-Purposes/NFEAP-Summer-Conference-2018-The-Future-of-Genres-First-Call-for-Papers

(posted 22 January 2018)

Cultural Itineraries: Research and Innovation: 2^nd TEM Conference on Local Development Innovation, Tourism and Place Branding
Forte di Bard, Bard, Aosta Valley, Italy, 7-8 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 16 avril 2018

http://www.xtem.org/conference-2018/

This session wishes to address how the articulation of historical, literary, and artistic itineraries can extend the potential of cultural tourism from a multidisciplinary perspective. Literary pilgrimages and cultural itineraries can enhance the tourist attractiveness of a territory, foster community development, and link together creative enterprises, academia, and traditions.

Possible topics of interest may include, but are not limited to: the connections between culture, territory, and tourism; the past and the future of cultural tourism; place branding; rediscovering or shaping the cultural identity of a territory.

Please send an abstract (max. 500 words) to Professor Carlo Maria Bajetta c.bajetta@univda.it (Università della Valle d’Aosta – Université de la Vallée d’Aoste) by 16 April 2018.

(posted 15 March 2018)

Truth(s) and Alternative Facts
University of Bucharest, Romania, 7-9 June 2018
New extended deadline for proposals: 22 April 2018

The English Department of the University of Bucharest invites proposals for the Literature and Cultural Studies section of its 20^th Annual International Conference (AICED-20): Truth(s) and Alternative Facts
Venue: The Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Str. Pitar Mos 7–13, Bucharest, Romania

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Prof. Mircea Dumitru (University of Bucharest)
Prof. Michael Hattaway (New York University, London)
Prof. Mihaela Irimia (University of Bucharest)
Prof. Domnica Rădulescu (Washington and Lee University, Lexington)

In the mid-twentieth century Erich Auerbach saw his Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature published, a book he had been working on for years and to which he could give appropriate time and energy only in exile in Istanbul, having fled Germany under Nazi threat. It is intriguing and relevant now to think of this intellectual and, more widely, human odyssey in terms of truth(s) and lie(s). Here was an author dedicated to the lifelong study of reality and its re-presentation accused of telling lies and ousted from a university chair for such ominous behaviour. More exciting still to think that Auerbach completed his cornerstone work in the absence of his working library, amazingly quoting from memory chunks of Western canonical works in the original! Everything had been stored in his erudite mind.

Mind indeed is the basic concept when it comes to truth and facts, and, of course, to truths and alternative facts. (And the connection between mind and lying is recalled in the transparent etymology of such Romance verbs as It. mentire, Sp. mentir, Port. mentir, Fr. mentir, and Ro. a minţi.) It is what specialists in philosophy, religion, and art operate with as a rule. Engaged in identifying (the) truth under linguistic, cultural, or societal vestments, in search of nuda veritas, they carry on a tradition originating in Aristotle and his aesthetic theory, yet traceable further back to the Pre-Socratics, whose enquiry into truth and truth-related matters remains fundamental and foundationalist.

Lies propagate, circulate in human communities and may eventually become established by general agreement as truths. Once a lie is told, it needs more lies to make it acceptable and the snowball effect it can undergo may lead to common wisdom dislocating epistemic premises. Theories have been erected along the centuries to consolidate and stabilize these and similar issues, among which: substantive theories (e.g. correspondence, coherence, consensus, constructivist, and pragmatic) and minimalist or deflationary (e.g. performative, redundancy, pluralist).

We invite papers focusing on, yet not limited to, the following:

• truth in relation to reality
• truth and the self (as individual or collective identity)
• truth-telling as a compelling religious commandment, ethical constraint, political responsibility
• Relative truth and liberal democratic practice
• Truth versus opinion, absolute certainty versus sufficient assurance (cf. John Stuart Mill)
• lies and lying as scapegoat strategy
• lying in the face of the “naked truth”
• forms and samples of truth’s historical embeddedness (from aletheia to “by troth” commitment, to verum ipsum factum, to simulacra etc.)
• faith-based vs. empirically based truth
• lying as sin, failure or punishment
• truth and half-truths
• faithfulness, fidelity, veracity as virtues or constraints
• truth and “regimes of truth” and epistemic shifts (cf. Foucault)
• the theatricality of truth procession/precession (cf. Baudrillard)
• essentialist vs. man-made truth(s)
• the “dust in their eyes” manoeuvre and political success
• post-Enlightenment consequences (from the moral law and the cold stars in the sky to corner-bending conclusions regarding human communities)
• the high tech “democratization” of truth(s) and lie(s)
• the epistemic way-out (truth in terms of knowledge, belief, conviction, acceptance, perspective etc.)
• trompe l’oeil effects
• white lies
• lies meant to protect, spare and shield
• the explanation of reality by myths and legends
• strategies of mendacity and alternative truths practiced in authoritarian politics
• truth and lies as weapons or irresponsibility in journalism
• lies as investigative steps to uncovering the truth (police work, literature, etc.)
• truth and fidelity in adaptation
• historical fiction and the question of truth
• continuity and/or discontinuity in the sequence of modern truths propounded in the neo-classical, romantic, realist, modernist, postmodernist paradigms.
• truth in religions

Conference presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words. Proposals should be in .doc or .docx format, and should also include name and institutional affiliation, a short bio (no more than 100 words), and e-mail address. Proposals for panel discussions (to be organized by the participant) will also be considered.

We look forward in particular to hosting a panel organized by the Romanian Studies Association of America, applying a Romanian Studies perspective to aspects of the conference theme.

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). See the guidelines for contributors at http://ubr.rev.unibuc.ro.
New extended deadline for proposals: 22 April 2018
Please send proposals (and enquiries) to conf.eng.litcult@lls.unibuc.ro

The conference fee of 50 euro (or 200 lei if paid in Romanian currency) is payable in cash on registration, and covers lunches and refreshments during the conference, but not evening meals.

For further details and updates, see:
http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php
(Enquiries regarding the Linguistics section of the conference, which will be running at the same time, should be sent to aiced20th@gmail.com)

We look forward to welcoming you in Bucharest,

The Organizing Committee: Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru, Dr Alina Bottez, Dr James Brown, Antonia Gîrmacea, Dr Eliana Ionoaia, Dr Dragoș Manea, Prof. Mădălina Nicolaescu, Dr Anamaria Schwab, Dr Ioana Zirra

Advisory Board: Dr Nazmi Ağıl (Koç University, Istanbul), Prof. Bart Eeckhout (University of Antwerp), Prof. José Manuel Estévez-Saá (University of A Coruña), Dr Felicity Hand (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Prof. Michael Hattaway (New York University, London), Prof. Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow), Prof. Thomas Leitch (University of Delaware), Dr Chris Louttit (Radboud University, Nijmegen), Prof. Domnica Rădulescu (Washington and Lee University, Lexington), Prof. Kerstin Shands (Södertörn University), Prof. Nicolas Tredell (University of Sussex)

(posted 13 January 2018)

Developing Research Skills Workshop
London, UK, 10 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 15 April 2018

http://www.lcir.co.uk/research-skills-workshop/

The workshop is designed for students, young scholars and independent researchers who would like to improve their academic research skills in order to succeed in studies and in career. Flexible and interactive, this workshop will provide an overview of research, including how to find information, generate the aims of a project, read critically, evaluate sources, and manage a research project. We will focus on how to find all necessary and appropriate resources using the most comprehensive and efficient methods and how to develop critical thinking analysing the

data. Designed and run by experienced scholars, the workshop will help you to organise your research adopting best practice.

Topics will include:

• Research and Reading Strategies
• Finding and Evaluating Sources
• Data Analysis
• Project Management
• Presenting Your Work

The workshop will be divided into sessions with breaks for tea, coffee and snacks. All the participants who will attend the workshop will receive certificates.

In order to book a place, please fill in the Workshop booking form and send it by 15 April 2018 to workshops@lcir.co.uk.After you receive a confirmation of booking, please register on http://registration.lcir.co.uk.

Registration fee – 65 GBP

Provisional Venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, London

(posted 21 March 2018)

War Memories: Celebrations, Reconstructions, Representations, War narratives in the English-speaking world (18^th to the 21^st century)
Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, 12-14 June 2018
Deadline for proposals:  15 October 2017

Conference website: https://warmem2018.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/3

An initiative with roots stemming from the “Anglophonie: Communautés, Écritures” Laboratory of the University Rennes 2 (ACE, France) and the Royal Military College of Canada (Kingston), the War Memories research initiative is pleased to announce that the momentum will carry-on to the third biennial conference, set to take place in June 2018. The third gathering will build upon the foundations set forth by discussions during the previous conferences.

The first conference was organized in conjunction with the events surrounding the 100^th anniversary of the First World War, and served as a continuity of the seminal symposium in May 2010 organized in collaboration with the Caen Memorial at the University of Caen-Basse Normandie. Following the international symposium in June 2014 at the University Rennes 2, collaborative work emerged which discussed media attention, and the spectacularization, interpretation and re-writing of the events surrounding the wars. The second gathering was held in 2016 at the University of Paris-Diderot, with focused discussions regarding the identification of memories with a special attention to the Second World War, locations of memory spaces and media attention. The collaborative work highlighting these discussions is currently being prepared.

The third gathering will be held in Jun 2018 at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. This symposium will encourage discussions surrounding the symbols used to represent the physical and moral injuries endured by individuals as a result of war. The way different conflicts define, tailor, and possibly even distort military culture through societies and through the ages will also be discussed.

One of the major advances of modern times is illuminated by the literary representations heightened by the experiences and consequences of war, the terror produced by the conflicts and the dehumanization that cannot be disassociated with armed conflicts.  Heart of Darkness by Conrad, Feu by Barbuse, or even Orages d’acier by Jünger, are all milestone pieces that initiate us to the representations of the marks these resonances make on contemporary societies’ imagination, to the point where it becomes normal for many of these representations to be referenced when discussing the violence that was endured by individuals. Before the commemorations of military glory, the symbols and representations used in literature to convey the impact of war involved trauma and injuries; artistic and semantic pieces of literature were pushed away in order to avoid expressing and representing the main themes for modern wars. It is the tension between the indescribable experiences and the outrageous representations that will be discussed as the primary topic of this symposium.

It is the movement towards honorable commemorations (Born on the 4th of July by Stone, Les Fragments d’Antonin by Le Bomin, etc.) and the representation of the lack of care that will become the second branch of topics to be discussed during the symposium. The dehumanization of suffering goes beyond the discussion of denunciation, because the act of commemoration, even if done with honor, is in itself a celebration. Therefore, the representation of the young dismembered or dislocated body becomes a manifestation of the glory of handicaps; a broken spirit, an occasion to celebrate the survival or combat. Thus, the wars of the past and present become the objects of new representations; having lived through violence becomes fully expressed through its representation of decrepitude. Moreover, the representations of the wars of the past is molding the way todays’ actors of war are portraying their testimonies or other representations of their own experiences.

Our work may fall under many themes, but will revolve around the following ideas:

• War narratives and features on literature (theater, novels, poetry, etc.)
• Visual, television, film (fiction and non-fiction), musical, media and artistic representations of war
• Injuries, trauma, handicaps associated with the phenomenon’s of war and terrorism (testimonies of soldiers, lives of the survivors, social and political charges, management of handicaps and reintegration into society, …)
• Memories, war memories, and memory space and locations (monuments, ceremonies, history books, questions about personal and collective identity during times of war and the process of recalling and commemoration); wars and memories of war surrounding the experiences of minorities and/or the aboriginal people (Gurkhas, Aboriginal of North America or Australia, Maoris, etc.) and of Non-English speaking nation (Afrikaners, etc.) and their participation in word conflicts.

Contacts: Stéphanie Bélanger, Renée Dickason, Michel Prum, Florence Binard, Delphine Letort and Gilles Teulié. For contact details, please visit the Contact Us page.

Please submit a 250-word abstract along with a 200-word bio directly through this website before October 15^th, 2017. You will need to create an account (near top right of page), then fill the submission forms under My Space > Submissions.

(posted 12 July 2017)

Thomas Merton: Prophecy and Renewal
Rome, Italy, 12-15 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2017

The international symposium “Thomas Merton: Prophecy and Renewal” will focus particularly on the way in which Merton engaged the prophetic elements of monasticism. He believed that this witness could make a major contribution to a renewal of human and Christian life. In this spirit, this inaugural symposium is an invitation to participate in wide-open and interdisciplinary dialogues on Merton and his ideas.

Papers should relate to the conference theme under the headings of “prophecy” and “renewal” as follows below.

MERTON AND PROPHECY

• Tradition : the Desert Fathers, the Fathers of the Church, authority
• Vision : Christianity, monasticism, interreligious and intermonastic dialogue
• Performance : art, biography, letters, dialogue with Jean Leclercq

MERTON AND RENEWAL

• Monasticism : prayer, life, community
• Church : theology, spirituality, liturgy
• Society : culture, politics, nonviolence

Session formats may include:

• Scholarly papers designed for presentation in 20 minutes, i.e., 8-10 double-spaced pages, maximum
• Workshops designed to involve interactive participation, incorporating adult learning strategies and/or small group discussion
• Creative / Dramatic presentations using music, poetry, dance or other media to provide insight into aspects of Merton’s life or work
• Guided meditation / Prayer sessions, particularly those using Merton’s own writings as a framework for prayer and meditative reflection

Proposals of no more than 250 words, and a short biographical statement of 1-2 sentences should be submitted by 30 November 2017, by e-mail to: ufficiorettore@anselmianum.com
Responses to submitted proposals will be sent by 15 January 2018.

Conference website: merton.anselmianum.com

(posted 25 September 2017)

Modernist Objects
Paris Sorbonne University (VALE EA 4085), France, 13-16 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2017

The third International Conference of the French Society for Modernist Studies (SEM)

Keynote speakers:
Rachel Bowlby (University College London)
Douglas Mao (Johns Hopkins University).

In a line which seems pre-emptively levelled at Aaron Jaffe’s The Way Things Go exactly one century later, Richard Aldington wrote in The Egoist that “one of the problems of modern art” is that “to drag smells of petrol, refrigerators, ocean greyhounds, President Wilson and analine [sic] dyes into a work of art will not compensate for lack of talent and technique.” This was December 1914. In the next few decades, psychoanalysis sought to make sense of the trivial, thinkers inquired into the status of the mass-produced object, and the rise of feminist and Labour movements posed the prosaic and essential question of material comforts. Modernist art and literature focused on the mundane, as emblematized by the everyday object, which now crystallized our changing relation to the world. The anachronistic frigidaire patent in Ezra Pound’s “Homage to Sextus Propertius,” ordinariness in William Carlos Williams’s famous “red wheelbarrow,” defamiliarization in Gertrude Stein’s “Roastbeef” are but a few possible variations on the object, its importance becoming central to the British neo-empiricists and the American Objectivists. Papers could examine the claim that the poetry and prose, the visual and performing arts, and the music of the Modernist era accounted for a shift in object relations with an intensity of observation in proportion with the changes which so profoundly affected the experience of living in industrial times. This SEM conference invites English-language contributions that cover the widest range of reflections on Modernist objects.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• the object vs the thing
• instruments and tools, technology, the machine
• the object as mass-produced commodity; resistance to consumption
• waste, junk, obsolescence, recycling
• the material presence of the book or the magazine in everyday life
• architecture, machines for living
• the Utopian potential of the crafted object
• the gift and the unalienable object
• objects, social identities and intimacy
• the object and/in space
• the object in/of science
• non-human agency
• the object in the Anthropocene

Please send proposals (300 words) and short biographies to Hélène Aji, Université Paris Nanterre (helene.aji@parisnanterre.fr), Noëlle Cuny, Université de Haute Alsace (noelle.cuny@gmail.com), and Xavier Kalck, Université Paris Sorbonne (xkalck@gmail.com) no later than November 15th, 2017. Notification of decision: December 15th, 2017.

(posted 12 September 2018)

Immortality and Memory
University of Wolverhampton, UK, 14 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2018

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton) and Nick Lavery (Roehampton)

A Postgraduate Conference organised by the Postgraduate Memory Network hosted by the University of Wolverhampton, UK  

The human condition is based on the fact that our time on earth is limited. But perhaps not for much longer: new advances in science and technology aim to create biological and virtual immortality. Research companies such as SENS, Forever Healthy, BioViva but also HelixNano and Google are trying to find ways to undo the ageing process. They treat aging no longer as a characteristic of the human experience, but as a curable disease that can be countered via damage repair processes. At the same time, tech companies are also able to digitally replicate personalities through mass data capture. This type of ‘brain dump’ will enable the creation of a simulated mind that continues to behave and communicate one behalf of it owner after biological death. Some futurists fantasize about mind uploading whereby the self is transferred to a computer.    

Whether or not we will actually be able to create eternal life on earth will remain to be seen, but its prospect poses a plethora of new questions. This conference focuses on the relationship between immortality and human memory, and explores the implications for conceptualisation of memory when humans no longer have a definite expiry date.  

We invite proposals for 15-minute speculative presentations, position papers or creative contributions. Questions that could be considered could include, but are not limited to, the following:    

• What (new) types of memory are generated when the self is not located in a body but in a computer or robot?  
• If we’re immortal, and we no longer need to control and manipulate our posthumous image and reputation, what is the impact on individual and collective memorialisation?   
• If we live forever, will this weaken our ability to remember?   
• How does immortality affect processes of forgetting?   
• What is the impact on the ’forwardlooking’ nature of memory when the future is limitless?
• How does the current obsession with longevity impact upon legal issues such as inheritance?   
• How does immortality impact on concepts such as the reminiscence bump, Flash Bulb Memory, and information overload?  
• What would impact of the unlimited acquisition of skills and knowledge be on the fallibility of memory?    
• How will the role of memory in shaping the self change in the light of immortality?   
• What new temporalities does the prospect of immortality afford memory?  
• What are the implications of immortality on traditional, human-shaped (Aristotelian) poetics and religious narratives?   
• What new complexities are emerging for the shaping of memory of the self biological and virtual memories?  
• What can immortal figures in art (vampires, Dr Manhattan in Watchmen, Borges’s The Immortal, Black Mirror) teach us about the effect of immortality on memory?   

We encourage multidisciplinary co-presentations and/or multidisciplinary panels. When submitting a proposal, please include a title; an abstract of ca. 150 words; a short bio. Proposals can be sent to: immortalityandmemory@gmail.com  

The University of Wolverhampton offers bursaries for the first twenty delegates; they will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.   

Accommodation can be booked via the University of Wolverhampton conferencing website: https://www.wlv.ac.uk/business-services/conferencing-solutions/accommodation/   

Deadline: 31 May, 2018. We will accept contributions on a rolling basis, with a final acceptance notice by Monday 4 June, 2018.   

Conference organisers: Sally Roberts (Edinburgh), Nick Lavery (Roehampton), Sebastian Groes (Wolverhampton).

(posted 13 April 2018)

Writing and imaging 21^st-century Scotland:  dialogues across spaces and forms
Aix-en-Provence, France, 14-15 June,2018
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2018

An international conference organized jointly by The University of Aix-Marseille, the University of Western Brittany and the University of Stirling

Keynote Speakers:
Dr Eleanor Bell (University of Strathclyde), “The Quest for Truth in Fiction”
Kevin MacNeil (University of Stirling), “Misty Islands and Hidden Bridges: Scottish Literature (Un)Revealed”
Dr Carla Sassi (University of Verona), “Settling and unsettling memories: the changing boundaries of Scottish literature”

Organized by:
Pr. Marie-Odile Pittin-Hédon (Aix-Marseille Université)
Dr. Scott Hames (University of Stirling)
Dr. Camille Manfredi (Université de Bretagne Occidentale)

This international conference aims to examine cultural diversity and prolixity in twenty-first century Scotland, as well as its changed relations to the UK and Europe in the wake of the Brexit referendum. If writers in the 1990s placed Scotland on the map, the new millennium ushered in a variety of works of fiction that contributed to the expansion of that map and to an integration of notions that shift the focus from the national to that of an examination of Scotland in a context that foregrounds the post-national and the cosmopolitan. In Scotland in Theory, Gavin Miller and Eleanor Bell describe the contemporary period as a ‘post-national age’. Bell, starting from the theoretical thinking of Richard Kearney, contends that a European identity is developing because of the way power is restructured at a European level, with the emergence of countries as super-nation-states, which are gradually prevailing over nation states. ‘This focus on the postnational’, she argues, ‘encourages a re-thinking of the traditional concept of ‘Scotland’’ (2005: 84). In Literature as Intervention, Jürgen Neubauer, opposing those he calls ‘the nationalist critics’, argues that the concept of national identity itself is problematic, as is the link established by critics between literature and national identity. He borrows instead Habermas’ concept of the ‘postnational constellation’ to show that with the collapse of national boundaries, there has been in European countries a move which he describes as transnational as well as local. This analysis, Neubauer insists, applies to both macro-economic issues and to culture and the arts: ‘Scottish writers are beginning to imagine life in postnational constellations in which interactions and relationships are both more local and more global than the nation’ (1999: 12). Berthold Schoene resorts to the concept of cosmopolitanism to describe this shift in recent Scottish literature:

Cosmopolitanism repudiates reductions of ‘society’ and ‘the public’ to what inhabits or evolves within a neatly staked-out homogeneous realm. […] In fact, cosmopolitanism’s greatest strength lies in defusing the undesirable side-effects of globalisation by working to deconstruct neo-imperial hegemonies, champion transnational partnership, and project the world as a network of interdependencies. (Schoene 2008: 75-6)

This concept of a post-national identity, and therefore of a – possibly problematic – post-national literature raises the issue of the interconnections of art, ideology and politics, which are precisely the crossroads the Scottish novel is standing at. Ian Brown and Colin Nicholson phrase this peculiar situation in terms of Scottish literature’s ability precisely to cross borders, rather than reinforce or retrace them:

As the ‘United’ Kingdom’s nature is questioned, so writers who cross genre, language and art-form boundaries reflect that enquiry. Interrogating artistic borders, they interrogate the national idea. (Brown, 2007: 263)

The conference will therefore welcome papers that focus on the interrogation of borders and of the national sentiment in twenty-first-century Scottish literature both before and after Brexit, and on the various ways that writers “reconfigure the possible” (Brown, 2007, 261) in a key period of their political and cultural history. Questions might be raised as to the dynamic of contemporary Scottish cultural politics and the way literary nationalism is being overtaken by the mass-movement politics of independence; both ‘taking it over’ in the sense of determining the political/social frames in which literary criticism operates, thus rendering key paradigms redundant, and ‘overtaking’ in the sense of surpassing and leaving behind. We will also seek to assess the extent to which the new media and new art forms that are currently occupying Scotland’s creative space contribute to the remapping of Scotland’s artistic as well as political borders.

Participants will for instance address the following issues:

• Globalization vs regionalism in post-Brexit, pre-Indyref2 Scotland
• Scottish literature in times of change: Scottish-British-European relations and their impact on the literary production
• Scottish cultural / “poetic” politics: literature and the 2014 referendum experience
• Post-nationalism and the global imaginary
• Scottish literature, border-crossers and cosmopolitanism
• Multiculturalism, plurilingualism (English, Scots, Gaelic…), multimediality and literary polyphony in 21st-century Scottish literature
• Change, permanence and transmission in 21^st-century Scottish literature
• intermedial approaches to C21 Scotland in literature and other media: graphic novels, photo-textual apparatuses, literature and the Internet, etc

Deadline for submission: January 31 2018

Please send a 300-word abstract (for a 20-minute presentation) with a short biography to the three convenors Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon (marie-odile.hedon@univ-amu.fr), Camille Manfredi (camille.manfredi@univ-brest.fr) and Scott Hames (scott.hames@stir.ac.uk) by January 31.
Notification of acceptance: February 28.

Bibliography

• Bell, Eleanor, and Gavin Miller (eds.). 2005. Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Culture and Literature (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi)
• Gifford, Douglas. 2007. ‘Breaking Boundaries: From Modern to Contemporary in Scottish Fiction’, The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol III: Modern Transformations, New Identities (from 1918), ed. by Ian Brown (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 237-52
• Neubauer, Jürgen. 1999. Literature as Intervention: Struggles over Cultural Identity in Contemporary Scottish Fiction (Marburg: Textum Verlag)
• Schoene, Berthold. 2008. ‘Cosmopolitan Scots’, The Scottish Studies Review, 9, 2, Autumn, pp. 71−

(posted 19 October 2018)

Corpora and performance text: NACLA2
Avignon, France, 14-15 June 2018
New extended deadline for proposals: 1 April 2018

The aim of the conference NACLA2 is to explore the relevance of a corpus based approach to performance texts.
The performance text includes classical drama – plays, scenarios, film scripts, etc. – but potentially also texts relating to other dramatic modes, in the largest sense, including parliamentary debate, minutes of meetings, interviews, etc. all of which involve some aspect of performance.

If there are now TEI criteria for the xml labelling of theatrical texts, there are as yet no such norms for the daily dramaturgy of debates, etc. (http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/DR.html) a point which has led some researchers to take inspiration from standards for the theatrical text in the structuration of other similarly heterogeneous text types (cf. the PolMine initiative https://polmine.github.io/about/). The xml tags of TEI are in addition not always the most relevant, depending on the type of data and the tasks envisaged (Hardie 2014, “Modest XML for Corpora : Not a standard, but a suggestion.” ICAME Journal 38.1).

The conference aims to bring together researchers in NLP and in corpus linguistics and researchers in theatre or media studies (for example), with a common reflexion on the structuration of textual data in these special fields and on the sort of exploitation one might develop, according to the chosen modes of structuration.

Questions asked might include :

• What structural tags for what data ?
• What structuration for what exploitation ?
• Is it possible to develop automatic or semi-automated procedures for structuring this type of text ?
• What types of exploitation can these data give rise to ?
• What visualisation tools or associativity measures are most relevant ?

Independently of the opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange, the project is also intended to lead to a publication and to future collaboration on related themes.

The project aims to foster dialogue between researchers in linguistics (corpus linguistics and NLP), in IT, in literature and in the social sciences. It is a project that is fully in keeping with the identity of the university, in associating cultural heritage, society and the digital humanities, via the exploitation of linguistic data in each of these fields.

Organisers
Aurélia Barrière, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
Madelena Gonzalez, Professeur, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
Mohamed Morchid, Maître de conférences, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
Graham Ranger, Professeur, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse

Submission guidelines
Anonymous submissions for a 30′ presentation should include a title, a short bibliography of no more than ten references and a text of approximately 400 words indicating the theoretical framework, the aims and methods of the study, the data involved and the perspective (structuration and/or exploitation).
Submissions are made directly via the conference website. First you will need to create an account on sciencesconf.org, if you do not already have one, then click on “Submissions” then “Submit an abstract”. Each submission will receive two anonymous reviews the results of which will be communicated before 15 April 2018. Should you encounter any problems, send an email to the “Contact” address via the menu on the left.
The final date for submissions is set at 15 March 2018.

Dates
New extended deadline for submissions: 1 April 2018
Deadline for reviewing feedback: 15 April 2018
Conference dates: 14-15 June 2018

Supported by ICTT EA 4277 http://ictt.univ-avignon.fr the SFR Agorantic http://agorantic.univ-avignon.fr/ and the Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse www.univ-avignon.fr.

(posted 22 January 2018, updated 16 March 2018)

Modernity in crisis: representing the city in 19th century to 21st century literature
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France, 15 June 2018
New deadline for proposals: 18 February 2018

A Postgraduate Study Day.
Organisation : Aliette Ventéjoux et Charlotte Wadoux
modernityandcitycrisis@gmail.com

The Industrial Revolution brought many a transformation in eighteenth-century England (and more broadly Europe), one of the most important being the boom of the city. As Ian Watts states in The Rise of the Novel, it is at that time that a new genre emerged, that of the novel. The novel and the city thus seem to have been linked from the start, the novel becoming the voice of the chaos reigning in the streets, as several examples from the 19th century illustrate. In his collection of essays Arcades, as well as in other texts, Walter Benjamin finds in this relation the expression of the experience of modernity, or, to be more precise, of the shock (and the crisis) of modernity. Several critics have since then written about that topic, among whom Lauren Elkin in her recent book Flâneuse, which offers a feminist response to Benjamin’s male flâneur.
Although modernists tried to detach themselves from their Victorian predecessors, the representation and the experience of the city finds an expression in the fragmented vision that is offered by the stream of consciousness in Ulysses or Woolf’s “myriads of expressions”. The representation of the city in crisis is a ubiquitous topos of contemporary literature. Examples of these portrayals abound, amongst which are Carter and her neo-gothic jungle of New York in The Passion of the New Eve, Peter Ackroyd and his generically hybrid biography of London, or Don DeLillo, painting New York after September 11, 2001.
This issue is also of paramount importance for postcolonial studies. Indeed, postcolonial writers appropriate the city, as the imaginary London of Naipaul in The Enigma of Arrival, or the fragmented memories of Bombay in Salman Rushdie’s texts illustrate. The city is considered as a fascinating subject and is evidence of an ontological crisis of the subject who tries to reconstruct his/her identity thanks to pieces of maps, postcards, or other materials.
Last, but not least, changes happening in the contemporary city will be questioned, be they the consequence of natural or human catastrophes (hurricanes, terrorism, wars, nuclear accidents, …). One of the first responses to catastrophe is often the reinforcement of surveillance (the Patriot Act, October 2001), with a colossal impact on the way people apprehend the city. For instance, one could question the changes linked to the effects of the increase in surveillance following terrorist attacks (9.11 in New York, 7.7 in London), addressing among others the questions of the circulation in the
city, or the importance of technology (CCTV).
This study day wishes to present the work of Master and PhD students as well as of young researchers who focus their research on the city in crisis, a topos which has been present in novels from Moll Flanders’ picaresque adventures to the fragmented vision given by Zadie Smith in NW, without forgetting the representation of revolution in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• fragmented city,
• experiencing modernity in the city: flâneur / flâneuse,
• possibility / impossibility of reading / mapping the city / deciphering the city,
• writing the catastrophe in the city,
• reinforcing surveillance within the city,
• trauma and memorials,
• reconstruction / reappropriation of the urban space,
• accidents / natural catastrophes,
• postcolonial cities,
• exile / diaspora / migration.

Keywords: Accident, cartography, catastrophe, city, crisis, flâneur, flâneuse, identity, reconstruction, rewriting, novel, surveillance, trauma.

Keynote Speaker (confirmed): Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse.
Please send a 200-word abstract and a short biographical note by 21 January 2018 to Aliette Ventéjoux and Charlotte Wadoux to: modernityandcitycrisis@gmail.com
Presentations might be either in English or in French.

(posted 13 January 2018)

Representations of Age and Ageing in American Culture : 6th Annual CAAS American Studies Workshop
Zadar, Croatia, 15-16 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2018

Croatian Association for American Studies (CAAS) announces a Call for Papers for the 6th Annual Workshop in American Studies to be held in Zadar, Croatia, 15-16 June 2018.

This year’s topic of the CAAS American Studies workshop focuses on representations of age and ageing in American society and culture. Acknowledging trends such as the “massification of old age,” “longevity revolution” (Butler), and the changing demographics of the Western societies, we ask the presenters to address a plethora of issues that encapsulate our society’s attitudes to age, to ageing, to ages of man, to bodily and mental changes pertaining to different ages, and to cultural assumptions and misconceptions attending to different ages (young, middle, old). How do the humanities and social sciences, and literary and cultural texts in particular, address the transformations—mental, social, bodily, health/medical, cognitive, emotional, economic—accompanying the processes of senescence? How do the race, class, and gender factors, separately or in conjunction, inflect the process of ageing? Welcoming comparatist approaches to the set topic, we hope to receive inquiries and research into cultural specificities of age and ageing in different societies. We conceive of the topic in broad interdisciplinary terms, working at the intersection of American studies, ageing studies, medical humanities, literary gerontology, the corporeal turn, studies of affect and emotions, and the like, and thus invite proposals touching on any of these fields. In short, we pose the underlying question: how is “age identity constructed in literature and in society, for both young and old” (Maierhofer)?

We are delighted to announce that our guest speaker is Prof. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer (University of Graz), a renowned ageing studies and American studies scholar.

More particular concerns should address the following broadly devised topics, among others:

• American cultural attitudes to age and ageing
• Ageing, individualism, interdependence in American culture
• Age and ageing in a historical perspective
• Gendered narratives of age and ageing
• Race and age/ ageing
• Class-based narratives of age and ageing
• Ageing and (re)distribution of resources
• Age/ ageing and consumer culture, leisure and cultural industries
• Age-appropriate/ age-related emotions?
• Ageing and creativity (Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Don DeLillo…)
• The genre of pathography (illness memoirs/ autobiography) and the medicalization of the ageing body
• Age-centered literary genres: the Bildungsroman, the sentimental novel, the domestic novel, memoirs…

Deadline for the submission of proposals is March 31, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by April 15, 2018.
Please send your proposals of no more than 300 words, and a short bio, by March 31, 2018 to all of the following addresses: jsesnic@ffzg.hr; mlukic@unizd.hr; scvek@ffzg.hr . Please note that each presentation is allotted 15 minutes of talk time, followed by discussion.

Registration and payment deadline: May 30, 2018.
Workshop fee: 300 HRK (40 euros)
Workshop fee for non-waged participants (students, postdocs, etc.): 150 HRK (20 euros)
For CAAS and AASSEE members, their annual membership fee is the equivalent of the workshop fee.
For additional information, please check the CAAS web site regularly at: http://www.huams.hr/ .

(posted 26 January 2018)

Third Biennial John Dos Passos Society Conference
Lisbon, Portugal, 20-22 June 2018
Abstract Submission Deadline: January 31, 2018

The John Dos Passos Society invites papers for its third biennial conference to be held in Lisbon, Portugal.

Graduate students wishing to be considered for supplemental travel funding must submit a full paper by February 28, 2018

John Dos Passos remained fascinated with his ancestral Portuguese homeland throughout his life. Over the course of that life, he visited both mainland Portugal and Madeira on several occasions. On his first trip to Madeira, in the year 1905, he was a child still going by the name of Jack Madison (using his mother’s surname). The sights and smells of that trip, Dos Passos recalled years later in The Best Times, stayed with him his whole life. No doubt these and other memories are what compelled the author to publish The Portugal Story, a history of Portugal’s celebrated nautical past, a year before he died.

Hosted by the Geographical Society of Lisbon, the 2018 conference encourages papers that connect the theme of exploration (however broadly construed) to the life and writings of Dos Passos; however, even papers that do not address exploration are still welcome.

Please send an English-language abstract of 250-300 words and a brief CV to both Aaron Shaheen and Mário Avelar at aaron-shaheen@utc.edu and avelar@netcabo.npt respectively by 18 February 2018 (new extended deadline). Graduate students must submit a full paper by February 28^th in order to be considered for supplemental travel funds. Make note of any A/V requests in your abstract. Please note that the conference will be exclusively in English.

For more information about the John Dos Passos Society and the 2018 Lisbon conference, including the complete call-for-papers, please visit our website at http://www.johndospassossociety.org

(posted 28 November 2017, updated 22 January 2018)

Jean Rhys: Transmission Lines / Lignes de transmission
Paris Sorbonne University, France, 21-23 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 1 June 2017

Jean Rhys’s recognition as a major author came late, almost accidentally so, and not without a number of misunderstandings, misfires and sidesteps; lines of transmission between her work and contemporary readers now appear certain if erratic, unpredictable, and sometimes discontinuous. Her status within the various lineages of modernist and Caribbean fiction is doubly problematized by Rhys’s position as a woman, and as one of the last members of the white creole society. Jean Rhys’s position upon the literary map of the 20th century remains unstable, even after Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which constituted a turning point in the critical rediscovery of her earlier work. She shunned public exposure and yet, desperately sought acknowledgement by her own peers; she stood away from the modernist circles of Montparnasse and yet, explored a radically avant-garde writing, which retrospectively makes her rank among them.

This conference wishes to interrogate the twists and paradoxes of transmission, in its various, and often, in the case of Rhys, paradoxical, meanings; it will be placed under the sign of plurality and criss-crossing, including that between modernism and (post)colonialism. Indeed, her bridging the span between modernism and post-colonialism has made her an author studied separately by two currents of thought which we would like to reconnect towards a more hybrid reading along the transmission lines of the Caribbean/modernist rhi(ys)zome.

With Jean Rhys, transmission is precisely not teleological or testamentary. The modernist polyphony at the heart of her experimentations with form can be seen as an obstacle to transmission both technically and hermeneutically, while her always problematic authority places her in the marginalized position of the postcolonial author. Transmission comes up against the notion of inscription; it remains transient, fluid, and precarious. In order to encompass the modernist Rhys and the postcolonial ‘writer back’, we would welcome papers on Jean Rhys’s peculiar history of publications and critical reception, with the late scrutiny by postcolonial studies of an author only seriously acknowledged after The Empire Writes Back (1984).

This conference wishes to reassess the heritage of the first critical period largely dominated by an emphasis on the typology of the ‘Rhys woman’ and the victim paradigm: we invite papers examining the resistance to transmission as a process, the deconstruction always at work, the dead-ends and unease in the reading experience, the lines of flight in many directions. Our ultimate aim would be to create a moment of critical kairos by reconnecting the structuralist/modernist reading of the 1980s, and the poststructuralist/postcolonial Rhys of the 1990s: we propose to grasp those lines and allow them to travel farther, towards what is still there to read between the lines – of transmission.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• moments of passages, dissemination, transfers and transitions, including between languages
• patterns of continuity/contiguity and leaps/gaps in texts that struggle against frames of all kinds
• the paradigm of memory and testimony, when the marginalized voices of the modernist city and the Empire were grappling with an irrevocable loss and resisting silencing
• the minimal resistance of female characters who do not recognise the masculine power structures relegating them to passivity
• the multiple lines of transmission drawn by Rhys’s letters, whose publication in 1984 corresponded to a landmark in her critical rediscovery
• reflections on (trans)mediation and generic hybridity
• the lines of literary filiation and influence of Rhys on contemporary authors
• resistance to transmission as an opposition to commodification, to systems of colonial trade and exchange
• the radio and its impact on the transcription of voices

Please send proposals no later than June 1st, 2017 to Juliana Lopoukhine (j_lopoukhine@yahoo.fr), Frédéric Regard (flook@orange.fr) and Kerry-Jane Wallart (kjwallart@yahoo.fr)

We are contemplating publishing a selection of papers after the conference.

(posted 22 February 2017)

Women’s Spring: Feminism, Nationalism and Civil Disobedience
University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, 21-23 June 2018
Deadlne for proposals: 1 April 2018

This call for papers concerns a conference held on 21-23 June 2018 at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. The conference proceedings will be published as a special issue in Open Cultural Studies. Authors who cannot attend the conference are invited to present their papers on a video platform or SKYPE. It is also possible to submit a paper to the special issue without presenting at the conference. The conference fee for the delegates is £120; for non-attending authors £80; APCs for authors submitting their papers directly to the journal is €100. PhD students will be offered discounts. Authors of selected papers will be exempted from APCs.

Conference website: http://ibaruclan.com/womens-spring-feminism-nationalism-and-civil-disobedience/

 Keynote speakers (confirmed):

• Dr Umut Erel, International Development and Inclusive Innovation, Strategic Research Area (The Open University);
• Prof. Lubaina Himid, 2017 Turner Prize winner, University of Central Lancashire;
• Prof. Dr. Helma Lutz, the Cornelia Goethe Center at Goethe University, Frankfurt;
• Prof. Ewa Mazierska, University of Central Lancashire;
• Prof. Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside; Loughborough University London
• Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters;
• Prof. Nira Yuval-Davis, Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. 

Partners: openDemocracy 50.50, the Cornelia Goethe Center (Goethe University, Frankfurt); International Development and Inclusive Innovation, Strategic Research Area (The Open University), De Gruyter Open

 In a recent interview for BBC Radio 3, Paul Gilroy, rather provocatively contended that nationalism is embedded a “fascistic” wish for “a magical identity that will somehow dissolve every little bit of otherness.” In the era that witnessed the success of the Brexit campaign, the election of Donald Trump, the rise in anti-immigrant resentment and religious fundamentalism, nationalism is more and more often associated with militant extremism that threatens the very existence of the secular and culturally diverse public sphere.

As Tamar Mayer has observed, nationalism is an exercise in internal hegemony that aims at dissolution of ethnic, religious and sexual differences, in which “the empowerment of one gender or one nation or one sexuality virtually always comes at the expense and disempowerment of another’’ (Mayer 1). Women represent a notable point of similarity and difference vis-a-vis ethnic, religious or sexual others. Like minorities, women are often marginalised in the public sphere; unlike them, due to their sheer numbers, women can have a considerable political leverage. Occasionally  women stand up en mass not only to attempts to limit their agency but also to nationalist excesses. Ukrainian Femen, the Black Lives Matter movement spearheaded by black women, Argentinian 2016 #NiUnaMenos protest against femicides, the Women’s March on Washington against Trump’s populism, and Polish feminist “black” marches against patriarchal and Catholic conservatism, are just a few examples of women showing tremendous courage and determination in defending “the culture of Human Rights” (Pramod Nayar) and “conviviality” (Paul Gilroy). With these movements, women have aroused hope of creating what Nancy Fraser called multiple “subaltern counterpublics” – that is discursive arenas which develop in opposition to the official (un?)public sphere. Roger Sue called these alternative feminist social hubs “a counter society” (La Contresociété 2016). Alain Tourain saw in their emergence a transformative political force with far-reaching consequences for the neo-liberal world (Le monde des femmes 2006).

The aim of this conference is to explore the ways in which female activists and artists responded the resurgence of the far-right nationalism and the twin evil of religious fundamentalism. We want to take a closer look at grassroots emancipatory movements, women-led voluntary associations, as well as cultural texts by women – performances, installations, artworks, films and novels – in which authors take a stance against religious bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny. But we also invite contributions that focus on women’s endorsement of and participation in ultra-conservative national and orthodox religious campaigns. We are aware of the fact the Arab Spring to which the title of this conference alludes ended in a disappointing disaster. Therefore, we also welcome submissions that imaginatively tackle dystopian visions of a world which rejects women’s subjectivity and agency and failure of feminist movements to live up to expectations (expressed among others by Alain Touraine after the publications of Le monde des femmes)

Please send your 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers or article proposals and 100-word bio notes to: ipenier@uclan.ac.uk by 01.04.2018 Selected papers will be published as a special issue in Open Cultural Studies https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/culture

(posted 13 November 2018, updated 22 January 2018)

Translating and adapting canonical works in contemporary British theatre
Paris, France, 22-23 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 30 October 2017

A Conference organized by Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis and Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle

Organisers: Isabelle Génin (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle), Marie Nadia Karsky (Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis), Bruno Poncharal (Université Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle)

Over the centuries, British theatre has traditionally imported plays from the European continent (France, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Russia…), most of the time adapting them. In the last forty years, however, British playwrights have seemed to be increasingly inspired by canonical works, translating, adapting or rewriting them. Molière, Racine, Marivaux, Chekhov, Sophocles and Euripides, for instance, are all classics in the sense that they belong to a well-established theatrical canon, and many contemporary British playwrights and poets turn to them at some time in their careers. Martin Crimp said he adapted Molière’s Misanthrope in 1996 as a way of overcoming the « writing block » he was then experiencing. What was the motivation of other authors such as Tony Harrison, for instance, whose Misanthrope, performed at the National Theatre in London in 1973, is one of the first in a long series of contemporary translations and adaptations of Molière’s play ? In 1975, Harrison went on adapting 17^th-century French theatre with his Phaedra Britannica, written after Racine’s Phèdre. Other poets and playwrights also adapted Racine’s play (Ted Hughes, Timberlake Wertenbaker) or Seneca’s (Sara Kane’s Phaedra’s Love was commissioned by the Gate Theatre in London in 1996). Euripides and Sophocles have been adapted, among others, by Martin Crimp, Timberlake Wertenbaker or April de Angelis. Since the 1980s, there have been dozens of different translations and adaptations of The Seagull, not to speak of Chekhov’s other plays, and English playwrights regularly turn to Molière to work on Tartuffe, Don Juan, or The School for Wives, besides the Misanthrope which is a general favourite. The list of canonical works and classics adapted for the contemporary stage in the United Kingdom is quite long. Has surtitling—enabling audiences to see and hear plays in the original—had an impact on the number of translations and adaptations into English ? What seems to be paramount among contemporary playwrights is the desire to weigh their production against canonical works, as though the latter were a sounding board, amplifying the questions raised in our times. Past and present, familiar elements and their rediscovery in a new light interact on the stage in a paradoxical form of tension. What does the rewriting of canonical works reveal about British playwriting and staging these last fifty years? Are there any recurrent themes? How do they fuel some of the stylistic concerns of contemporary dramatic writers? We have not mentioned Shakespeare, whose works are also a constant source of adaptations (by Bond or Barker, for instance), because what seems striking and well worth researching is the frequency with which contemporary British playwrights resort to works in foreign languages. What does crossing linguistic, historical and cultural lines bring them ? Both translations and adaptations have been mentioned – the fact is that in qualifying their work, contemporary playwrights often use the different terms « translation », « adaptation », and « version » without specifying their differences. As David Johnston points out in his interviews of translators, directors dramaturgs and playwrights in Stages of Translation, theatre translators view translation as tied in with creation and linked to creative writing, though they are aware of the transient dimension of their work. Translations and adaptations are sometimes done in pairs : when the contemporary playwrights do not know the language of the original, they often rely on a first, literal translation done by a professional translator and then move away from it in their final version. Whose is the voice most heard in the translations and adaptations of canonical works by contemporary authors ? How do classic and canonical texts influence the writing of contemporary playwrights ? Do these translated or rewritten plays form part of a quest for new forms of theatre ? Do they participate in redefining writing for the stage, or do they echo forms of writing and preoccupations which might belong to more traditional lines ?

Conference papers will also look into the concrete role played by foreign canonical works on the contemporary British stage. What plays, genres, and authors are mostly translated or adapted ? Are canonical works still dominant among translated and adapted foreign plays in Britain, as they were a few years ago (according to data given by Geraldine Brodie at the conference “La Place du traducteur au théâtre”, organised at University Paris 8 in June 2013) ? Has Brexit already had an impact on translation and adaptation ? And how does the situation vary according to the different nation shaping the United-Kingdom ?

Papers will be 30 minute-long, followed by 10 minutes for questions. Abstracts are to be sent by 30 October 2017 to :

Marie Nadia Karsky : mnkarsky@gmail.com

Isabelle Génin : isagenin@club-internet.fr

Bruno Poncharal : bruno.poncharal@orange.fr

(posted 9 Sseptember 2017)

A Holiday from War? “Resting” behind the lines during the First World War
Université Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, 22-23 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 20 November 2017

Organised by Sarah Montin (EA PRISMES) et Clémentine Tholas-Disset (EA CREW)

Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Tim Kendall (University of Exeter)

His men threw the discus and the javelin, and practiced archery on the shore, and their horses, un-harnessed, munched idly on cress and parsley from the marsh, the covered chariots housed in their masters’ huts. Longing for their warlike leader, his warriors roamed their camp, out of the fight. (lliad, Book II)

What do the soldiers do when they are not on the battlefield? The broadening of the definition of war experience in recent historiography has transformed our spatial and temporal understanding of the conflict, shifting the scope away from the front lines and the activities of combat. Beyond the battlefield and its traditional martial associations emerges another representation of the warrior and the soldier, along with another experience of the war.

Situated a few kilometres behind the front lines, the rear area is the space where soldiers rotated after several days burrowed at the front or in reserve lines, surfacing from the trenches to join rest stations, training installations, ammunition and food supply depots, hospitals, brothels, command headquarters or soldiers’ shelters. In that space in-between which is neither the site of combat nor that of civilian life, the soldiers were less exposed to danger and followed a barracks routine enlivened by relaxing activities which aimed to restore morale. If some soldiers found there a form of rest far from the fury of the guns, others suffered from the encroaching discipline, the imposition of training or the promiscuity with soldiers that were no longer brothers-in-arms in thas buffer zone where they spent 3/5ths of their time. Both a place of abandonment and a place of control, the rear area merges at times with the civilian world as it occupies farms and villages and hosts non-combatants such as doctors, nurses or volunteers. With battles being waged close by, the “back of the front” (Paul Cazin) is a meeting place for soldiers of different armies and allied countries, as well as for officers and privates, soldiers and civilians, men and women, foreign troops and locals living in occupied zones. The rear area is not only a spatial concept but also a temporal one: it is a moment of reprieve, of passing forgetfulness and illusive freedom; a moment of “liberated time” (Thierry Hardier and Jean-François Jagielski) indicating a period of relative rest between combat and leave, a short-lived respite before returning to the front. If the combatant is entitled to repose and time to himself, military regulations demand that he never cease to be a soldier. As such we have to consider these moments of relaxation within the strict frame of military life at the front and the role played by civilian organizations such as the YMCA or the Salvation Army, who managed the shelters for soldiers on the Western Front.

Though seemingly incompatible with war experience, certain recreational activities specific to civilian life make their way to the rear area with the approval of military command. Moments of relaxation and leisure are encouraged in order to maintain or restore the soldier’s physical and emotional well-being, thus sustaining the war effort. They also ensure that the soldier is not entirely cut off from “normal” life and bring comfort to those who are not granted leave. Liberated time is not free time, just as periods without war are not periods of peace. These “holidays from war” are not wholly synonymous with rest as the men are almost constantly occupied (review, training exercises, instruction) in order to fight idleness and ensure the soldiers stay fit for duty. The rear is thus also a place of heightened collective practises such as sports, hunting and fishing, walking, bathing, discussions, creation of trench journals, film projections, concert parties, theatre productions, religious services as well as individual activities such as reading, writing and artistic creation.

Between communion with the group and meditative isolation, experiences vary from one soldier to another, depending on social origins, level of education and rank, all of which take on a new meaning at the rear where the egalitarian spirit fostered during combat is often put to the test. Sociability differs in periods of fighting and periods of recovery, and is not always considered positively by the soldiers. However, despite the tensions induced by life at the rear, these “holidays from war” and spells of idleness are often represented as idyllic “pastoral moments” (Paul Fussell) in the visual and written productions of the combatants. The enchanted interlude sandwiched between two bouts of war becomes thus a literary and artistic trope, evoking, by contrast, a fleeting yet exhilarating return to life, innocence and harmony, a rediscovery of the pleasures of the body following its alienation and humiliation during combat.

In order to further our understanding of the historical, political and aesthetic concerns of life at the rear, long considered a parenthesis in the experience of war, this interdisciplinary conference will address, but will not be limited to, the following themes:

The ideological, medical and administrative construction of the notion of “rest” in the First World War (as it applied to combatants but also auxiliary corps and personnel).
Paramilitary, recreational and artistic activities at the rear; the organisation of activities in particular leisure and entertainment, the role of the army and independent contractors (civilian organisations, etc.)
Sociability between soldiers (hierarchy, tensions, camaraderie); the rear area as meeting place  with the other (between soldiers/auxiliary personnel, combatants, locals, men/women, foreign troops, etc.), site of passage, exploration, initiation or “return to the norm” (“rest huts” built to offer a “home away from home”), testimonies from  inhabitants of the occupied zones
Articulations and dissonances between community life and time to oneself, collective experience and individual experience
The  historic and artistic conceptualisation of the rear area, specific artistic and literary modes at the rear by contrast with writings at the front
Staging life at the rear: scenes of country-life, idyllic representations of non-combat as farniente or hellscapes, bathing parties or penitentiary universes, the figure of the soldier as dilettante, flâneur and solitary rambler, in the productions (memoirs, accounts, correspondence, novels, poetry, visual arts, etc.) of combatants and non-combatants;
Cultural, political and media (re)construction of the figure of the “soldier at rest” (war photography, postcards, songs, etc.); representations of the male and female body at rest, constructions of a new model of masculinity (sexuality and sport), and their place in war production

In order to foster dialogue between the Anglophone, Francophone and Germanophone areas of study, the conference will mainly focus on the Western Front. However proposals dealing with other fronts will be examined. Presentations will preferably be in English.

Please send a 250-word proposal and a short bio before November 20, 2017 to :
montin.sarah@gmail.com and clementine.tholas@univ-paris3.fr
Notification of decision: December 15th 2017

(posted 20 September 2017)

Periodicals In-Between: Periodicals in the Ecology of Print and Visual Cultures
Paris, 27-29 June 2019
Deadline for proposals: 31 January 2018

7th International Conference of the European Society for Periodical Research: http://www.espr-it.eu

The 7th annual conference of the European Society for Periodical Research will explore how periodicals from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century function as mediators of alternative or experimental forms of publication and as springboards for other publishing and cultural activities. Many periodicals gave birth to publishing houses by using their printers’ networks and by treating their issues as experimental or more conventional test cases and economic drivers both in the book and the print industry and in the arts and crafts. Often, the periodical is a vehicle for science enthusiasts, trade or professional organisations, literature and arts connoisseurs: volumes of aggregated materials published over the year, then bound in hard covers to resist time, respond to the needs of such readers. Or the opposite may be the case: publishers or galleries issue a periodical or magazine to underpin their publication list, to foster their artists, to test new formulas or to retain their audience. The phenomenon extends to prints, both as bonuses to subscribers and as original works. The study of such a phenomenon in its international scope would highlight the relations of periodicals with the world of publishing, art galleries, various salons and circles of influence, as well as with several alternate forms of publication, of new ideas, trends, and manifestos.

How is the standard history of book and print publishing extended by more nuanced considerations of media structures – economic and symbolic – that focus on the role of periodicals? What questions emerge when we consider periodicals as key drivers of print and visual cultures, the materiality of publications, their exchange value, and their function as cultural operators? We invite papers, panels, round table proposals that address these issues.

Topics could include but are not limited to:

• Periodicals and publishing houses
• Periodicals and galleries or salons
• Periodicals and print networks
• Periodical economies
• Periodicals and intertextuality; hybridization; remediation
• Parts; instalments; supplements; annuals
• Periodicals and prints for subscribers
• Periodicals and print-outs
• Periodicals and albums
• Periodicals as bound volumes/“books”
• Quotidian periodical cultures
• Alternative periodical cultures

Please send proposals in either English or French for 20-minute papers (max. 250 words), panels of three or four papers, round tables, one-hour workshops or other suitable sessions, together with a short CV (max. one page), to 2018ESPRit@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is 31st January 2018.

(posted 22 January 2018)

Word-formation Theories III, Typology and Universals in Word-formation IV
Kosice, Slovakia, 27-30 June 2018
Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2018

For more information abut the venue, acommodation etc., please visit the conference website: https://goo.gl/Hgd1K2

Plenary Speakers:

(posted 7 March 2018)

International Conference The Future of Education: 8th edition
Florence, Italy, 28-29 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 26 February 2018

The 8th edition of the Future of Education International Conference will take place in Florence, Italy, on 28 – 29 June 2018.
The objective of the Future of Education Conference is to promote transnational cooperation and share good practice in the field of education. The Future of Education conference is also an excellent opportunity for the presentation of previous and current education projects and initiatives. The Call for Papers is addressed to teachers, researchers and experts in the field of education as well as to coordinators of teaching and training projects.
Experts in the field of education are therefore invited to submit an abstract of a paper to be presented in the conference.

Important dates:
• 26 February 2018: Deadline for submitting abstracts
• 8 May 2018: Deadline for final submission of papers
• 28 – 29 June 2018: Dates of the conference

There will be three presentation modalities: oral, poster and virtual presentations.
All accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by LibreriaUniversitaria with ISBN and ISSN (2384-9509) 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 Google Scholar.
For further information, please contact us at the following address: foe@pixel-online.net or visit the Future of Education conference website: http://conference.pixel-online.net/FOE/

(posted 25 August 2017)

Katherine Mansfield: New Directions
Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 28-29 June 2018
Deadline fore proposals: 1 February 2018

An international conference organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society

• KM and world literature
• KM, music and art
• KM as an avant-garde writer
• KM and modernist magazines
• KM and material publication contexts
• KM and cultural material studies
• KM and medical humanities.
• KM and queer studies
• KM and her biographers
• KM and her contemporaries
• KM and New Zealand
• KM and World War 1
• KM and cosmopolitanism
• KM and travel writing
• KM and the literary marketplace
• KM and modernity/the modern
• KM and pedagogy
• KM and the colonial world
• KM and critical heritage
• KM and her legacy

(posted 4 October 2017)

Crime Fiction: Insiders and Outsiders. Captivating Criminality 5
Corsham Court, Bath Spa University, UK, 28-30 June 2018
Deadline for proposals: 3 February 2018

The Captivating Criminality Network is delighted to announce its fifth UK conference. Building upon and developing ideas and themes from the previous four successful conferences, Crime Fiction: Insiders and Outsiders, will examine the ways in which Crime Fiction as a genre is able to incorporate both traditional ideas and themes, as well as those from outside mainstream and/or dominant ways of thinking.

Crime fiction narratives continue to gain in both popularity and critical appreciation. This conference will consider the ways in which writers who work within generic cultural and critical boundaries and those who challenge those seeming restrictions, through both form and content, have influenced each other. Crime fiction, in its widest sense, has benefited from challenges from diverse ‘outsiders’ who in turn shift and develop the genre. This was as true in the early days of the genre as it is today and, as such, we welcome submissions from the early modern to the present day.

A key question that this conference will address is the enduring appeal of crime fiction and its ability to incorporate other disciplines such as History, Criminology, Film, TV, Media, and Psychology. From the ‘sensational’ novelists of the 1860s to today’s ‘Domestic Noir’ narratives, crime fiction has proved itself to be open to challenges and development from historical and cultural movements such as, feminism, gender studies, queer politics, post modernism, metafiction, war, and shifting concepts of criminality. In addition, crime fiction is able to respond to and incorporate changes in political and historic world events. With this in mind, we are interested in submissions that approach crime narratives from the earliest days of crime writing 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, 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:

• Feminist Sleuths (second wave and beyond)
• The Victorian Lady Detective
• Femininity and the Golden Age
• Masculinities
• Crime and Queer Theory
• Crime and War
• Crime and the Gothic
• Gothic Outsiders
• Gothic Disruptions and Disturbances
• The Cozy Crime Novel
• Victims and Perpetrators
• Crime Fiction and Form
• The Prison and Other Institutions
• Madness and Criminality
• Technology
• Film Adaptations
• Post-Communist Crime Fiction
• Crime Fiction in Times of Trauma
• Latin American Crime Fiction and Trauma
• The Psychological
• The Detective, Then and Now
• The Anti-Hero
• True Crime
• Contemporary Crime Fiction
• Victorian Crime Fiction
• Eighteenth-Century Crime
• Early Forms of Crime Writing
• The Golden Age
• Hardboiled Fiction
• Forensics and Detection
• The Body
• Seduction and Sexuality
• The Criminal Analyst
• Others and Otherness
• Landscape
• The Country and the City
• The Media and Detection
• Adaptation and Interpretation
• Justice Versus Punishment
• Lack of Order and Resolution

Please send 200 word proposals to Dr. Fiona Peters and Joanne Ella Parsons (captivatingcriminalitynetwork@gmail.com) by 3rd February 2018. 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:
Full Fee: £180 (£135 if a member of the International Crime Fiction Association)
Reduced Rate (students, ECRs not on a permanent contract/retired): £130 (£95 if a member of the International Crime Fiction Association)

To join the International Crime Fiction Association please email: captivatingcriminalitynetwork@gmail.com
Full Membership: £20 per annum
Reduced Rate Membership £10 per annum

(posted 20 September 2017)