Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in January 2019

South Africa: Fake News, Representations of Reality and Intermediality
University of Paris Diderot, France, 11 January 2019
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2018

In 1978, thirty years after Apartheid was officially established by the National Party, the South African government faced a political  scandal over a secret propaganda war that was designed both to influence local public opinion and rebrand the racial institution at  international level. Exposed by two Rand Daily Mail journalists, the Information scandal was nicknamed ‘Muldergate’ by reference to the early 1970s’ Watergate revelations that lead to Richard Nixon’s resignation. Nowadays, the political masterful manipulation would have been better described with the 2017’s word of the year ‘fake news’. With the ANC in exile, ‘the issue of culture began to rise steadily in prominence within the movement, particularly in the 1980s. This intensifying interest in culture saw rising numbers of workshops, festivals and seminars devoted to the issue, interviews and public pronouncements by leading ANC figures, and the high-profile Culture in Another South Africa (CASA) conference held in Amsterdam in December 1987.

As the end of Apartheid approached, lawyer and activist Albie Sachs’s thoughts on ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom’ started with the controversial proposition of reconsidering ‘culture [as] a weapon of struggle’, stressing his concern on how art could address the new political era. To what extent has the freed South Africa emerged as a changed society in the 21st century? A report published by the World Bank in March 2018 reveals that South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. This report is an analysis of South Africa’s progress in reducing poverty and inequality since 1994 : while poverty levels are lower today they still remain high, wealth inequality has been rising and consumption inequality has increased. Moreover, ‘poverty levels are consistently highest among female-headed households, black South Africans, and children below the age of 15 and these groups tend to have a higher risk of falling into poverty’.

24 years after the advent of democracy, a ‘post-apartheid apartheid’, as some have dubbed it, has somehow emerged. Within this context, has culture been re-reconsidered as a weapon of struggle? Have conceptions emerged of what culture’s role should be both in external critical information work about this ‘post-apartheid apartheid’ and in internally focused work of nation-building?  In the 2010s, events such as Nelson Mandela’s death and the Marikana massacre have been catalysing anguishes about the  fabrication of national narratives, icons and images. This has led to a partial deconstruction of representations as carriers of  colonial and apartheid ideologies, or post-apartheid ideologies pertaining to a ‘rainbow nation’ perceived as a construct. In what is sometimes referred to as the post-post-apartheid era, what role can and should the media play in the depiction of South African  realities, in South Africa and abroad? In parallel, social media have begun to transform the relations between images, information  and audiences. As social media shaped the way student movements shared information to local communities and to the world, new modes of production and distribution of filmed images have emerged, for instance with the form of the web-series.

(posted 1 October 2018)

Revisiting the Gothic in Literature and the Visual Arts (Revisiones del gótico en la literatura y las artes visuales)
UCAM Universidad Católica de Murcia, Spain, 18 January 2019
Deadline for proposals: 9 November 2018

The attached .pdf document includes the full CFP. If possible, please forward it to any colleagues who may be interested.

Our main focus will be on the analysis and discussion of the transformations undergone by the Gothic genre since the 1970s up to today within the fields of fiction, the visual arts and other forms of popular culture. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• The redefinition of the Gothic in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
• The uncanny in contemporary literature, film and TV (The Shining, Salem’s Lot, Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, Les Revenants, etc.)
• The portrayal of late 20th and early 21st century society from a Gothic perspective.
• Gothic rewritings of classic works.
• The Exotic Gothic: alternative readings in the global south.
• The exploitation of Gothic elements in film and TV. (Crimson Peak, Penny Dreadful, Wayward Pines, etc.)
• Transgression (in relation to identity, interpersonal contact, the social sphere…).
• Power relations: men and women in contemporary gothic works (Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Kate Morton, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Dolores Redondo, etc.)
• Modern individual or collective identities in Gothic fiction and film.

The deadline for the submission of proposals (in English or Spanish) is November the 9th, 2018. A selection of papers will be included in an edited book or journal. 

Abstracts (between 300-400 words) stating the name, address and institutional affiliation(s) of the participant(s) should be sent via e-mail, together with a separate biodata (about 150 words), to jmvillar@ucam.edu.

Plenary speaker: Dr. Julio Angel Olivares Merino (University of Jaén)

The conference fee is 70€ for participants and 30€ for students. Conference updates will gradually appear on the website http://www.revisitingthegothic.wordpress.com

(posted 8 October 2018)

Crime and Criminals in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American World
Paris, France, 18-19 January 2019
Deadline for proposals: 20 May 2018

An International Conference of the French Society for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies on the Anglo-American World (Société d’Etudes Anglo-Américaines XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles SEAA 17-18)

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Trevor Burnard (University of Melbourne)

We are grown old; I am come back to England, being almost seventy
years of age, husband sixty-eight, having performed much more than
the limited terms of my transportation […], and he is come over to
England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years
in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, 1722

Returning from exile as a convict in Virginia, Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders embodies the mythical figure of the English criminals deported in the colonies, who were made popular by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature and the press. Archives have given access to criminals’ profiles, relationships and networks, enabling historians to draw a more accurate picture of their lives and activities that were distorted and refashioned in drama, such as John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), featuring one of the leading figures of the underworld, Jonathan Wild, in sensational novels (e.g, Captain Alexander Smith’s History of the Lives of the Most Noted Highway-men, Foot-pads, House-Breakers, Shoplifters and Cheats, 1714) or in some reports by journalists who had connections with the underworld. Historians have also studied the deportation of English, Scottish and Irish convicts in the colonies (G. Morgan et P. Rushton (Eighteenth-Century Criminal Transportation, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2003, Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Banishment in the Early Atlantic World. Convicts, Rebells and Slaves, Bloomsbury, 2013, Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Les premiers irlandais du Nouveau Monde: une migration atlantique (1618-1705), 2016), Roger Ekirch (Bound for America. The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775, 1987).

At the intersection of social, legal history, colonial studies, literature and visual culture, this international conference seeks to re-assess the mythical and imaginary constructions of the criminal figures in literature (e.g the 17^th century genre of the murder plays, 18^th century novels) the press, the visual arts, travel narratives/accounts or trial reports. Archives also prove to be an invaluable source of information to study criminal activities and the complex structures of the English legal systems and those implemented in the colonies.

Among the great variety of possible topics, participants may like to consider:

• the legal relation between England and its colonies. How were convicts and slaves treated in these new territories over the period? Are narratives or accounts always reliable sources?
• Witches are recurrently portrayed in varied media of the time, both literature and the press. What was the reality of these women’s imagined or supposedly illegal practices?
• Is there any variation in the way female and male criminals were portrayed in those days? May the press and literature, and even some contemporary historians, have distorted the representation of female criminals?
• The figure of the pirates, travelling between different worlds and continents, remain highly ambiguous Anglo-American heroes and/or anti-heroes.
• The geography of crime. Beyond the capital of crime that used to be in London, was there any criminal network in the rest of Britain and in the English colonies, maybe crossing the borders with other European nations such as France, Portugal and Spain? Did literature or the press account for this geography of crime?
• What is the impact of new technologies on recent studies devoted to crime in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

We would also welcome contributions on other criminals such as thieves, prostitutes, murderers or any other criminal figures and/or any other aspect of this subject.

Potential speakers are invited to submit a title and an abstract of 300 words along with a brief bio-bibliography to seaa2019@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions is May 20^th 2018

(posted 26 March 2018)

From “Old Corruption” to the New Corruption? Public Life and Public Service in Britain, c. 1780–1940
Oxford Brookes University, UK, 24-25 January 2019
Deadline for proposals: 29 June 2018

Keynote speakers: Professor Graham Brooks (University of West London); Professor Angus Hawkins (University of Oxford); Dr Kathryn Rix (History of Parliament)

Context and aims: The problem of “corruption” has proved decidedly more tenacious than post-war theorists of modernization had once predicted. This much is evident globally, where corruption constitutes one of the most pressing problems facing emerging democratic states; but it is also evident in established, Western-style democracies, which remain gripped by recurrent scandals regarding the abuse of public office and widespread concerns about the decay of public life. Scholarship on corruption has flourished; and although much of this has focused on the present, historians have begun to grapple afresh with its multiple manifestations and meanings in the past, reaching back to the early modern period and beyond.

This conference seeks to revisit the wide-ranging struggles against corruption in Britain during the period c. 1780 to 1940, ranging from the conduct of ministerial office and central administration to parliamentary, electoral and local government reform. The period is still considered crucial in terms of the demise of forms of corruption inherited from previous centuries—“Old Corruption”—and more broadly Britain still holds a pre-eminent place among those nations that first embraced modern values of public service and accountability.  Yet, beyond the struggles to enact particular reforms and their peculiarly British realization, it is also clear that the very meaning of “corruption” was transformed in the process, as new problems, anxieties and scandals arose regarding the boundaries between the public and private interests of ministers, officials, councillors and MPs—and all in the context of an emerging market-driven, “mass society” that was at once more bureaucratic, democratic and industrialized. Arguably, the problem of corruption was less conquered than refashioned and revitalised, opening up a culture of public vigilance, suspicion and even cynicism that still prevails today.

In sum, the aim of the conference is to:

• encourage a more integrated approach to the study and conceptualisation of political and administrative corruption during the period when Britain became a mass democracy
• open up new historical perspectives through which we might better grasp the present

Format and themes: This will be a two-day conference: 24-25^th January, 2019, held at Oxford Brookes University and is supported by Newman University, Birmingham, and the History and Policy Unit, King’s College, London.

Papers (of 20 mins in length) might include discussion of—but are not limited to—the following subjects:

• Conceptualising and historicising “corruption” over the long-term
• Britain and the British Empire in comparative perspective: cultures of corruption and trajectories of reform
• Conceptions of public service and corruption: office as private property and office as public trust
• Patronage, privilege and salaried service in Whitehall and Westminster: from the Northcote-Trevelyan Report (1854) to the payment of MPs (1911)
• Public and private interests: ministerial and official corruption and scandal
• The business of politics: party financing, party managers and the practice of mass elections
• Class and corruption: aristocracy, plutocracy and democracy
• Corrupt practices and the reform of local government: “Civic Gospels” and “Tammany Halls”
• The role of the national and provincial press in exposing corruption
• Representing and imagining corruption: images, narratives, conspiracies

Contacts: Expressions of interest to: I.Cawood@newman.ac.uk and tcrook@brookes.ac.uk

These should include:

• a brief ‘bio’ (detailing institution, publications, research interests, etc.)
• a proposal/abstract (of roughly 300 words)

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 29 June 2018. Alternatively, if you are interested in attending as a delegate please email to reserve a place.

Conference fee: £95 (registration will open in September 2018)

Conference organisation enquiries:  tcrook@brookes.ac.uk

Organisers: Dr Ian Cawood (Newman University, Birmingham) and Dr Tom Crook (Oxford Brookes University)

(posted 26 March 2018)

Challenging Precarity
AURO University, Surat, Gujarat, India, 27-29 January 2019
Deadline for proposals: 10 October 2018

This proposed international conference aims to respond to the current state of world affairs: notably, the inherent ontological vulnerability of life and the economic, socially-conditioned precariousness of individuals, societies and populations, which have been heightened since the 2008 financial crisis. Caused by an economic shift in the labour market and global neoliberal capitalism, precarity has been increasing due to world-wide inequality as “more extensive and less visible patterns of global dispossession” and “relatively unstable and dispersed conditions of deprivation and insecurity” gain ground (During 2015).

The conference will consider issues related to the diverse forms and experiences of precarity from a global perspective with special reference to South Asia and India. Contributors are invited to examine contemporary literary, visual and textual productions for evidence of how states of precarity are being identified or imagined, and how civic, economic, and philosophical structures and their alternatives are given new narrative expression. New and revised modes and genres of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and visual culture that are constitutive of the current climate and provide cultural responses to the “precarious society”, acknowledging or challenging its imperatives, will be key areas of enquiry.

In assessing the impact of textual representations of precarity on cultural perceptions, you may also wish to reflect on current political, social, economic and cultural discourses, and identify resolutions, reconciliations, and alternative world scenarios that challenge precarity, referring to models of resistance, resilience and healing. Critical analysis of the political power structures that distribute precarity and cause economic deprivation attribute these conditions to structural inequality, lack of agency, reduced access to rights and capabilities, and social exclusion. Responses to such analyses may draw on case studies of socio-political and environmental marginalisation: e.g. the refugee crisis, terrorism and insurgency, planetary degradation, economic stagnation, redistribution of wealth, social injustice. Mainstream theorisations and framings of precarity such as Judith Butler’s (2009) may also be challenged or interrogated by drawing on decolonising perspectives such as Stef Craps’s (2013) revision of trauma studies, Sunera Thobani’s (2010) and Ida Danewid’s (2017) critiques of “imperial precariousness” as “white innocence” and “western supremacy” and studies such as that by Ella Harris and Mel Nowicki (2018).

In taking up established and revisionary critical positions, this three day conference aims to interpret precarity through the optics of postcolonial, feminist and globalisation studies that foreground racial, gender, or class discrimination, and acts of silencing, censorship and marginalization by governments, corporations or other forces that lead to socioeconomic deprivation, violence and terror. Interdisciplinary approaches drawn from cultural studies, globalisation and postcolonial studies, philosophy, law, and history, and that refer to theoretical critical paradigms (e.g. gender, race, indigenous, feminist) are particularly welcome.

The conference seeks to address, but is not limited to, the following:

• representations of refugees and slum-dwellers
• narratives of extreme right populist groups
• narratives of neo liberal institutionalism and its practices
• narratives of terrorism, insurgency, and necro-nationalism
• third world narratives of poverty and hunger
• precarity and a ‘poetics of abolition’
• narratives of economic stagnation
• thought experiments of feminist speculative and futurist fictions
• precarity and an ethics of care for the Other
• alternative notions of legal and Human Rights discourses
• forms of political activism, involving resistance, resilience, restitution and repentance advocated as an ethics of alterity
• interdisciplinary research methodologies for exploring precarity and precariousness
• defence of violence and political disruption that test and strengthen existing frameworks

as forms of change that require adaptation

• extreme right critiques that exploit precarity to promote hate crime and terrorism
• new pedagogies to evaluate social exclusion and develop resistant reading practices
• new imaginaries of precarity in relation to its historical functions under colonialism
• the testing of theoretical paradigms in seeking indigenous discourses of healing and resistance in an “environmental ethics of care”

References:
Butler Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso
Craps, Stef. 2013. Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma out of Bounds. Palgrave Macmillan.
Danewid, Ida. 2017. “White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History.” Third World Quarterly 38 (7): 1674—89.
During, Simon. 2015. “From the Subaltern to Precariat.” Boundary 2 42 (2): 57—84.
Harris, Ella, and Mel Nowicki. 2018. “Cultural Geographies of Precarity.” Cultural Geographies 1(5).
Thobani, Sunera. 2010. “White Innocence, Western Supremacy: the Role of Western Feminism in the ‘War on Terror’.” In States of Race: Critical Race Feminism for the 21st Century, edited by Sherene Razack, Malinda Smith, Sunera Thobani. Toronto; Between the Lines, pp. 127-146.

Deadlines:
Abstract submission: 10 October 2018
Notification of abstract acceptance: 31 October 2018
Registration opens: 05 November 2018
Early Bird Registration: 20 December 2018
Virtual Presentation Registration: 20 December 2018
Deadline for Online Registration: 27 January 2019
Deadline for submission of articles: 25 April 2019

Registration Fees:
Full registration: 3000/-
Early bird: 2500/-
Foreign scholars: 100 US $
Virtual presentation: 75 US $

Please submit abstracts to:
om.dwivedi@aurouniversity.edu.in;
janet.wilson@northampton.ac.uk
arndsp@tcd.ie

Address for payment:
The registration fee should be submitted only through the online mode (RTGS / NEFT) by bank transfer to:
State Bank of India
Account Holder: AURO University
Account No.: 31703674530
IFSC: SBIN0002636
Bhatha Branch Surat, Gujarat
The registration fee includes seminar kit, breakfast, dinner and high tea for all three days.

Accommodation:
A few rooms in the University hostel are available on payment. Anyone interested in residing on campus should let us know in advance. The rates are:
Non AC room: Rs 800/-
AC room:       Rs. 1200/-
The University can help participants in getting concessional accommodation in The Courtyard hotel, on its campus.

Coordinators:
Janet Wilson (University of Northampton, UK), janet.wilson@northampton.ac.uk
Peter Arnds (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), arndsp@tcd.ie
Om Dwivedi (AURO University, India), om.dwivedi@aurouniversity.edu.in

About Auro University
AURO University was established in 2009 under the Gujarat Private Universities Act, for value based education. The vision of the University is to be a premier university of integral and transformational learning for future leaders, and to provide an environment for integral and transformational education. Its research-oriented faculty members act as mentors and guides and shape the country’s future leaders by imparting knowledge and skills; providing opportunities for research on emerging trends and industry practices; promoting intellectual competence and inculcating reality-based knowledge and personal integrity. The following Schools offer UG, PG and PhD programmes: School of Business, School of Hospitality; School of Information Technology, School of Law, School of Design, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, School of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences

(posted 5 June 2018)

The Third International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics
Ahwaz, Iran, 31 January-1 February 2019
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2018

Please visit the Conference website for more information no Conference themes, important dates, fees, etc.

Academics and university lecturers are cordially invited to present their research in English, Arabic or Persian.

Such an approach suggests that a linguistic study is no longer limited within a certain field; knowledge from different fields cultivates diversity in linguistic study. Recognizing this trend, the conference organizing committee aims to provide a platform for researchers and scholars from various fields to exchange ideas.

The selective full papers of the conference will be published as the book of conference and also will be indexed in CIVILICA (however, the book of abstracts will be published too).

Optional Services for Non-Iranian Nationality Presenters (If they wish to use)

• A) Free Accommodation: ((1) accommodation will be in the university hostel or guest house, (2) Accommodation will be for four days (30^th & 31^st January & 1^st & 2^nd February 2019, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday). (3) Three or four participants will stay in each room).
• B) Free Transportation: All transportation from Ahwaz airport to the accommodation place, to the conference venue and vice versa will be free.
• C) Free Food: During 31^st January & 1^st February 2019 (Thursday, Friday) lunch and dinner will be free.
• D) Free Tour: One Day Shoustar Historical City Tour – 2^nd February, 2019 (Saturday) will be free. 
• E) Other Notable Free Services.

For the last year, the articles were received from more than 30 countries.

Download the Conference poster.

Please feel free to write if there is any query.
The Conference Secretariat,
Pazhoheshgaran Andishmand Institute,
Ahwaz 61335-4619 Iran
Email: info@pahi.ir
Tel: (+98) 61-32931199
Fax: (+98) 61-32931198
Mobile: (+98) 916-508-8772
WhatsApp Number: (+98) 916-776-5914

(posted 4 April 2018)

Joyce’s Feast of Languages: The XII James Joyce Italian Foundation Conference in Rome
Rome, Italy, 31 January – 1 February 2019
Deadline for abstracts: 25 November 2018

Keynote speakers: Richard Brown, Enrico Terrinoni, Chrissie Van Mierlo

The James Joyce Italian Foundation invites proposals for the Twelfth Annual Conference in Rome. It will be hosted by the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the Università Roma Tre, to celebrate Joyce’s 137th birthday.

As Giorgio Melchiori highlights in an essay entitled “The Languages of Joyce” (1992), “the whole of Joyce’s works, from Epiphanies to Finnegans Wake, is a great feast of languages of which we are asked to partake”. Language is not only a central theme in Joyce’s oeuvre, but also a biographical leitmotif, a site of symbolic power and a means for artistic creation.

We invite scholars to send proposals for a 20-minute contribution. The conference will be the occasion to present unpublished papers and works in progress on Joyce to an international audience.

Related topics include, but are not limited to:

• Joyce’s linguistic poetics
• Joyce’s politics of language
• Joyce’s many languages
• Joyce and the Irish language
• Joyce and the language of music
• Joyce and the language of silence
• Joyce’s dislocutions
•  The language of exile
• Joyce, translingualism and translingual writers
• Language teaching and language learning in Joyce
• Translating Joyce
• Joyce and translation/translation in Joyce
• Linguistic approaches to Joyce’s writing
• Corpus stylistics and Joyce’s oeuvre

Selected papers will be published. Please send abstracts, 250-500 words in length, along with a short bio-sketch to joyceconference@gmail.com
The Conference includes a Joycean birthday party.
Deadline for proposals: November 25, 2018.
Accepted speakers will be notified by December 16, 2018.

Key note speakers will be confirmed in September.

On arrival, participants will be expected to sign up for membership of The James Joyce Italian Foundation (Students: 30 Euro; Individual Membership: 45 Euro; Institutions: 50 Euro; Supporting members: 70 euro).

Accepted speakers can then apply for the Giorgio Melchiori Grants. Please visit the James Joyce Italian Foundation website for information: http://thejamesjoyceitalianfoundation.wordpress.com/

(posted 29 June 2018)