Calls for papers – Conferences taking place in October 2021

I International Postgraduate Seminar in English Literature and Linguistics (IPSELL)
Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, University of Granada, Spain, 1 October 2021
Deadline for proposals:  15 July 2021

The I International Postgraduate Seminar in English Literature and Linguistics (IPSELL) organised by the Master’s in English Literature and Linguistics of the University of Granada aims to provide a forum where postgraduate students/researchers can present the results of their current research projects (preferably MA dissertation or early PhD work). This event intends to allow master’s and early career research students to share their research interests with national and international young scholars and get acquainted with the critical visions and methodological approaches that will be leading academic research in the years to come. IPSELL welcomes submissions reporting original research results related —though not restricted to— any of the following academic interests:

LITERATURE

  • Comparative Literature
  • Contemporary Literature
  • Cultural Studies
  • Ecocriticism
  • Gender Studies, Feminisms, Masculinities, LGTBQ+ Studies
  • Literary Translation
  • Postcolonial Studies

LINGUISTICS

  • Adaptation Studies
  • Computational linguistics
  • Corpus Linguistics
  • Genre analysis
  • Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Second Language Acquisition
  • Sociolinguistics

Pandemic-bound restrictions allowing, the IPSELL will be held face-to-face at the Facultad de Filosof a y Letras of the University of Granada on October 1, 2021. However, those participants who wish to do so will also be able to present and attend the seminar online. The presentations will be grouped into theme sessions based on the research field and they will be presented in parallel sessions. Each presenter will be given 10 minutes to present their work.

REGISTRATION AND FEES
Seminar fees: FREE for both presenters and attendees.
Registration: Both presenters and attendees must REGISTER HERE by September 20, 2021.

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES AND SUBMISSION
All abstracts need to meet the following requirements: 300 words in English (excluding references), typeset in Times New Roman, 12pt, 1.15 spacing. Please use THIS TEMPLATE to ensure that all abstracts follow these requirements. Name the attachment “LING” or “LIT” according to your field, followed by the author’s initials.
Abstracts should contain thesis statement, aims, critical approach, methodology, analysis, results, and conclusions. Abstracts must be uploaded via the following link: https://forms.gle/DL6e2T2hUogmiVMG7 by  July 15, 2021 (included). Participants will be notified by September 7, 2021.
If you have any queries, please contact us via the following email address: ipsellugr@gmail.com
@IPSELL_UGR @ipsell_ugr

ORGANISING COMMITTEE: Lucia Bennett Ortega, Elena Garcia-Guerrero, Carmen Hidalgo-Varo, Fernando Martin-Villena

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:  Margarita Carretero Gonzalez, Angel Felices Lago, Miriam Fernandez Santiago, Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio, Cristobal Lozano, Jose Maria Perez Fernandez

(posted 14 June 2021)

Re-Examining Gender Concepts and Identities in Discourse(s) and Practice(s) Across Periods and Disciplines: Fourth International Conference on English Language, Literature, Teaching and Translation Studies (CELLTTS)
University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (on line) 1-2 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2021

The Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Sarajevo, is pleased to announce the new date and format for its 4th International Conference on English Language, Literature, Teaching and Translation Studies (CELLTTS). After careful deliberation and due to the current situation with the pandemic (and related matters) the Committees have agreed upon the online/remote format of the conference which will take place on October 1–2 2021. For the fourth time we invite scholars and experts in their respective fields of research to present and discuss their research findings and exchange experience and ideas with their colleagues from the region and the world.

As the globalized world of the early 21st century is facing multiple social, cultural, economic, ecological and political challenges, it seems that gender has remained a prominent factor in contemporary constructions and/or notions of identity, informing any number of theoretical assessments and analyses across disciplines, and constituting a significant driving force behind practical governmental, non-governmental, activist, academic, non-academic or civil society’s agendas and platforms for action. Also gender continues provoking heated cultural debates and polarizations, just as we witness its revived instrumentalization by various rightwing and extremist doctrines and groups. We are interested in re-examining and re-contextualizing the legacies of various strands of a vast field of gender studies, such as queer studies, men’s studies, feminism, postfeminism, or posthumanist studies, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary lens, i.e. through their intersection with a wide range of research areas within linguistics, literature, cultural and translation studies, and a variety of theoretical and critical approaches, such as modernism, postmodernism, post-postmodernism, performatism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, or transnationalism. Finally, marking the centennial anniversary of the US Nineteenth Amendment obliges us to look back and re-evaluate progress and backlash in all our gender policies by reconsidering implications of cultural representations of gender, from women’s rights to LGBT rights to complex research into the category of the “posthumanˮ and AI/human interaction that has ushered us into the digital age.

It is these and related topics that we intend to examine as closely as possible at this year’s conference and we invite researchers and scholars working in the broad area of Anglophone studies to submit abstracts for oral presentations based on the (non-exhaustive) list of areas of interest below:

  • Phonetics/ Phonology/ Morphology/ Syntax
  • Semantics/ Pragmatics/ (Critical) Discourse Analysis
  • Sociolinguistics
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Linguistics
  • Stylistics
  • Semiotics
  • History of English
  • Contrastive Analysis/ Corpus Linguistics
  • Teaching English as a Foreign/ Second Language/ Language Acquisition
  • Translation Studies
  • Interpretation Studies
  • Literary Theory/ Literary Criticism/ Literary History
  • Cultural Studies/ Environmental studies/ Film studies/ Theatre Studies/ Media studies

Venue: remotely/ online (the selected platform TBA)

The conference language is English. The presenters are required to restrict their presentations to 15 minutes.

Submission guidelines

Abstracts within 200–250 words should be submitted here
or sent electronically as email attachments (using “Abstract Submission” template) in Microsoft Word for Windows (.doc or .docx formats) to the Conference’s email address: celltts@ff.unsa.ba with the word ‘Abstract’ as the subject.

Abstracts will be evaluated according to the originality of the theme, clear methodology and theoretical framework, and scholarly contribution of the research.

Deadline for the submission of abstracts (revised and extended): June 30, 2021

Deadline for the notification of acceptance (revised and extended): July 15, 2021

Registration fee (revised):
Regular: 25 euros (EUR), or 50 Bosnian convertible marks (BAM) (bank transfer fees are to be paid by each participant, in full)*
Registration fee for students from BiH: 15 euros (EUR), or 30 Bosnian convertible marks (BAM)
Non-presenting participants’ fee: none, but the interested party must contact the Organising Committee in advance
* In case of two or more papers by the same participant, registration fee for the second (and each next paper) is 20 euros (EUR) /40 BAM
Deadline for registration: September 15, 2021 (note that CELLTTS Committees are no longer able to provide reimbursement)
The fee covers organisational costs, a book of abstracts and a book of proceedings (after the Conference, a refereed selection of papers will be published as a book of proceedings).

Please visit the conference website for more information.

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

Organizing Committee: Dr. Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija, Dr. Selma Đuliman, Dr. Merima Osmankadić, Dr. Sanja Šoštarić, Dr. Amira Sadiković, Dr. Larisa Kasumagić-Kafedžić, Dr. Nejla Kalajdžisalihović, Dr. Lejla Mulalić, Dr. Melisa Okičić, Matea Tolić, MA, Dajana Zečić-Durmišević, MA, Nermina Čordalija, MA

Programme Committee: Dr. Snežana Bilbija, Dr. Srebren Dizdar, Dr. Nedžad Leko, Dr. Sanja Šoštarić, Dr. Merima Osmankadić, Dr. Amira Sadiković, Dr. Ifeta Čirić-Fazlija, Dr. Larisa Kasumagić-Kafedžić, Dr. Lejla Mulalić

(posted 22 February 2021)

Tourism, arts and territories
ULCO, Boulogne sur Mer, France, 7-8 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2021

International conference co-organised by ULCO (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale – HLLI and InRent) in partnership with the University of Lille (DEMOGUE)

The “health pass” is necessary to attend. Please register on https://tat2021.univ-littoral.fr/modalites-dinscription if you wish to attend, either in person or on the Internet.

Though tourism is a leisure activity, it has nevertheless become the subject of academic interest and publications. Its links with art no longer need to be demonstrated as testified by the crowds of tourists that yearly throng the corridors of our great museums.
Tourism to see works of art (at Le Louvres, The MOMA, the British Museum….), tourism that has inspired artists and their work (linked to the Grand Tour, to painters on holiday. ), and tourism born out of art in all its forms (for example in the footsteps of Charles Dickens in London or film-induced tourism linked to Star Wars) all have an impact on the territories where they have developed.
This call for papers offers academics from all disciplines the possibility to explore the interactions between art and tourism (in particular the legal, strategic and organisational aspects of this interaction) as well as their impacts on their host territories, including the structuring aspect.
The field of study addresses arts in all their forms, not only the visual ones, but also literary and popular arts (including performing arts, digital arts, even culinary arts….). The same goes for tourism since all forms of tourism can be studied.

The proposed papers can be based on the study of artistic productions as vectors of tourism. Conversely, they can also be based on tourism and its impact on the artistic development of a territory. Possible topics to explore in 20-minute conference papers include (but are not limited to):

  • Film and television series as tourism and cultural vectors through: local / national policies designed to attract film/TV crews (for example the French tax rebate production companies can benefit from since 2009…) and the subsequent exploitation of filming locations for film-induced tourism (for example linked to Australia -Baz Luhrmann, 2008- in Australia, The Da Vinci Code -Ron Howard, 2006- in Paris, Game of Thrones in various countries including Ireland, or the local film-induced tourism in Greece on the former sets of Mamma Mia -Phyllida Lloyd, 2008-….).
  • Literary works and paintings as tourism and cultural vectors through: works resulting from the visits of artists (such as painters in Italy, on the coast of Normandy or the painters of the Hudson River School….), tourism in the footsteps (family houses, birthplaces …) of writers, playwrights or poets (such as tourism in the footsteps of Victor Hugo, George Sand, Jane Austen, or the British poets in the First World War ….).
  • Popular arts as tourism and cultural vectors: whether linked to actors and actresses (for example Cary Grant and Bristol), singers (Serge Gainsbourg in Paris, Elvis in Memphis, the Beatles in London …) or to famous performances such as musicals (Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera…), the Cirque du Soleil shows or those of international stars.
  • The creation of voluntary territorial policies seeking to develop new artistic productions destined to attract tourists with : the creation of art-related events such as festivals (the Sundance film festival, the Cannes, Dinard film festivals, the Montreux jazz festival, Series Mania …), artistic productions specifically created for tourists, such as street theater and performances, fairground art, the privileged use of local or national services and infrastructures facilitating the development of new artistic projects via an adapted legal and contractual framework (such as with artists-in- residence places).

These are the questions and fields we wish to address during this international conference that intends to bring together academics from various disciplines, historical periods (including the current Covid-19-linked one) and countries. Abstracts (ca. 400 words), written in French or in English with 3 key words and a short biographical presentation, can be submitted online by 31 March 2021 at https://tat2021.univ-littoral.fr.

Accepted participants will be notified at the beginning of May by the co-organisers (nathalie.dupont@univ-littoral.fr and laetitia.garcia@univ-lille.fr).

Due to the current health context, the conference will be held on-site or/and online, depending on the official instructions of the time.

Selected papers will then be published in an academic journal.

Scientific committee:

  • Danièle André (Université de La Rochelle)
  • Julie Assouly (Université d’Artois)
  • Joël Augros (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)
  • Nathalie Dupont (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
  • Michel Félix (SKEMA and Université de Lille)
  • Laetitia Garcia (Université de Lille)
  • Vincent Herbert (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale)
  • Marie-Christine Michaud (Université Bretagne Sud)
  • Christophe Reffait (Université de Picardie Jules Verne)
  • Philippe Vaesken (Université de Lille)

Download the programme of the TAT2021 Conference.

(posted 12 February 2021, updated 27 September 2021)

20 Years Later: Looking Back at 9/11
University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France,  7-9 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 11 September 2020

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the Universities of Toulouse and Montpellier in the South of France are joining forces to organize an international interdisciplinary conference on these events. Its aim is to analyze, not only the events and their short-term consequences with a two-decade hindsight, but also the many ways in which those events have been perceived, represented, commented upon, co-opted or rewritten along the years. It also invites reflections upon the way in which some of these responses, representations or co-optations have been in their turn received, commented upon and used in this 20-year period.
The scope of the conference is interdisciplinary, as it welcomes contributions from scholars specializing in history (contemporary, political, institutional, military), geopolitics, international relations, sociology, psychology, law, economics, media and communication studies, literature, film studies, art, architecture, and popular culture. The conference is meant as a place for fruitful cross reflections on images, discourses, facts that have been seen, heard, told thousands of times, with varied intentions and perspectives. Joint paper proposals by two or three specialists from different fields are particularly welcome. Two interdisciplinary round tables will also be organized.
Our two keynote speakers are Kristiaan Versluys, Professor of US Literature and Culture at the University of Ghent (Belgium), author of Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), and Andrew Rudalevige, Professor of Government, Chair of Department of Government and Legal Studies, Bowdoin College (USA), and author of New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate (Chicago: University of Michigan Press, 2006).
Participants are invited to examine the various responses to the events (from the micro level of individuals to the macro level of institutions), and the evolution and variety of the representations of 9/11. Specific attention will be given to the context of such reactions and representations, in 2001, and throughout the two decades since then.

Proposals may include, but may not be limited to, the following topics:

  •  Twenty-years-later recontextualization of the attacks (the first Gulf War in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the influence of neoconservatism, US foreign policy in the Arab-Muslim world, the 2000 and 2004 general elections, the Bush presidency);
  •  Perspectives upon the aftermath of 9/11 in its political, institutional, military, ideological, economic, social, geopolitical, artistic, media, semiotic, psychological and architectural dimensions;
  • -Studies of the discursive and aesthetic responses to events that have hurled America into a semiotic vacuum, due to the erasure of traces, bearings, and meaning;
  • -Analyses of the reception of 9/11-related works produced over two decades, and especially of the impact on reception of the temporal distance between the events and the reception of those works;
  • -Enquiries into the way trauma has manifested itself, at the individual level and/or at the collective level, in given social groups or communities, or according to specific ideological points of view;
  • -Studies of the commemorative and remembering processes: institutional responses (from the Federal Government and the NYC authorities), architectural aspects (the debates over the rebuilding of Ground Zero and the construction of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum), media responses (anniversary coverage in the mainstream media, viral conspiracy theories on social media), or in pedagogy (how 9/11 made its way into US schoolbooks and syllabi).

Papers can be given in either English or French. Conference proposals of up to 300 words should be accompanied by a short biographical note and should be sent to Françoise Coste (francoste@hotmail.com) by September 11, 2020.

Conference organizers:
Marie Bouchet, University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France
Françoise Coste, University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, France
Raphaël Ricaud, University of Montpellier Paul Valéry, France

(posted 15 June 2020)

Aldous Huxley in France: The Experience of Exile. Seventh International Aldous Huxley Symposium 2020: postponed to October 2021
University of Toulon, Bandol, France, 13-15 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 31 July 2021

Conference warming on 12 October evening; colloquy at Bandol and visit to Sanary and Bandol on 16 October; departure day: 17 October.

Convenors: The University of Toulon, represented by Profs Alice Cheylan alicecheylan@yahoo.fr and Alain Morello morelloaa@yahoo.fr, and the International Aldous Huxley Society (AHS).
The colloquy at Bandol will be organized by Gilles Iltis, M.A., Sanary contact@sanary.com

General theme: “Aldous Huxley in France: The Experience of Exile”
The general theme of the conference will naturally focus on Huxley’s activities in France, particularly on the experience of exile that Huxley and other writers underwent in Sanary and Bandol between the wars, but there will certainly be room for a variety of other topics.

Huxley Forum: “Aldous Huxley’s Controversial Philosophical Theories”
This forum, which will discuss the intellectual ‘exile’ that Huxley’s ideas were at times exposed to, is being organized by Prof Dana Sawyer (please send your proposals to <dsawyer@meca.edu>). It will be held in a similar fashion as at the previous symposia in Oxford (2013) and Almería (2017), see Conferences.

Call for Papers:
In addition to the lectures already included in the programme (see Huxley-Toulon) new proposals are cordially invited.
Please send your proposals for lectures (20 minutes, plus 10 minutes discussion) and your abstracts (20 – 30 lines or 200 – 300 words) by 31 July 2021 to Prof Bernfried Nugel nugel@uni-muenster.de.

Registration and accommodation will in due course be organized by Profs Cheylan and Morello.

(posted 7 May 2021)

Disrupting the City: Urban Cris(e)s in Contemporary British Literature and Art
Avignon Université, France, 14-15 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 15 April 2021

Colloque de la Société d’Études Anglaises Contemporaines /ICTT (EA 4277)

Due to the current health situation, the SEAC conference has been postponed to 14-15 October 2021

Henry Lefebvre famously established the individual’s “right to the city” as “a cry and a demand. This right slowly meanders through the surprising detours of nostalgia and the return to the heart of the city, and the call of existent or recently developed centralities.” (158). In a social and political context where crisis has been the dominant mode of experiencing the city and/or the urban environment, one may wonder what the “right to the city” has become and whether nostalgia still represents the emotional framework through which the city is apprehended. Is “the heart of the city” what the contemporary urban, or rural individual longs for?

In the last few decades, crisis itself has often been redefined as the meaning inducing concept named “disruption”. The term “disruption” was first popularized as an economic concept applied to marketing and advertising. The “disruptive methodology” coined by Jean-Marie Dru originally referred to a transformation of markets initiated by a new creation, or rupture that would challenge the established order of markets. In a book tellingly entitled How Disruption Brought Order, J.M Dru breaks down disruption into three steps: after identifying the mechanisms of an established system, the innovative creation that goes against the grain will challenge those conventions. The final step of such innovative disruption is the creation of a new order, a new system that takes after the initially disturbing or altering creation. According to its proponents, disruption is not simply a process that challenges an established order, it is first and foremost an innovation that ultimately allows the advent of a new order. In one of the first studies of disruption in arts, Koch and Nanz insist that “the first thing that needs to be emphasized is the productive character of disruptions” (ix).

The economic dimension at the heart of the term “disruption” itself underlines the hegemonic presence of market theories and economic imperatives in contemporary life. Transferring and applying this concept in art and literature necessarily entails questioning the porosity between economic theories and art and leads the critic to consider subsequent epistemological issues. Before becoming popular under this acceptation, the adjective “disruptive” originally referred to a form of rupture or fracture, from the Latin “which is used to break, or explode”. We can therefore question all forms of ruptures, fractures or crises and their representations, whether they occur within the urban space or whether they inform urban identities and bodies.

With this concept in mind, we would like to use the connected notions of crisis and disruption as prisms to study the representations of cities and urban networks or frameworks in contemporary British literature. The choice to consider disruptive phenomena in connection with the urban environment stems from the natural affinity of cities (or urbanity) with reconfigurations and paradigm shifts. As Jean Christophe Bailly explains, “le langage comme la ville sont des équilibres qui vivent des perturbations qu’ils engendrent, des systèmes ouverts” (Bailly 39).

It will be fruitful to consider the spatial realisation of these processes, both in terms of architecture and urban planning, conflictual manifestations in street art or contemporary art, or radical rewritings of urban space, such as China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station or Will Self’s Grey Area or Walking to Hollywood, for “an emerging body of novelists are taking responsibility for creating a poiesis of space that can re-envision the landscape of everyday life, receptive to the social and historical forces under which new habitats are forged.” (James 168).

From this perspective, one should also question the matter of artistic disruption, for “in the aesthetic domain, disruptions can occur as the results of intentional strategies, that is, as ‘artistic means’, as effects of the medium-bound conditions of a work of art, as effects of interference between different logics of the media” (Koch & Nanz x). Is all disturbance fated to become “disruption”, or in other words, is not any logic of destabilization of an established order (pre)determined to being reclaimed and institutionalized, in a word, re-stabilized? In that respect, how is the process of disruption in literature and the arts represented? Is the writing of disruption necessarily performative, or are there other textual strategies to represent it? Can Modernist art be considered as the template after which all urban representations of the crisis have been modelled on (one may think in particular of Woolf’s writings on the city, but also of visual reconfigurations of the representation of the city such as Wyndham Lewis’s)? Could 21stcentury “neo-modernist” novels, and their resolutely urban anchoring, (Umbrellaby Will Self or Ian McEwan’s Saturday, …) belong to an aesthetic of disruption rather than crisis?

One may finally question the fate of the individual immersed into an urban environment dominated by crisis, or plagued by “disruption”. Is the advent of the new order evoked by Dru necessarily accompanied by ontological disruption? What are the sensory markers of urbanity in crisis? Are nostalgia and melancholy the inevitable consequences of the perception of a city in crisis? Could literature also be the place of resilience, or even resistance to disruption?

The following topics may be considered

  • Taxonomy of the crisis, differences and porosity between crisis and disruption. Evolution of archetypal figures such as Benjamin’s flâneur
  • Origins of disruptive and crisis phenomena: interaction between capital, society and literature especially in urban areas
  • Perceptions of crisis and disruption: resistance, resilience and adaptation strategies,
  • Rhythms, interruption and ruptures in an urban environment
  • Crisis writing and the limits of performativity
  • New disruptive strategies in literature: new narrative processes, e-writing and multiverse features
  • Interaction between dissensusand disruption
  • Urban art: street art, norm and margin(s) tension, recuperation of marginal art forms
  • Incarnation(s) of disruption and crisis, how the body interacts with the urban environment. Potential renormalization(s) of gendered and racialized minorities.
  • Nostalgia and urban melancholy

Proposals in English of about 300 words, together with a short biographical note, should be sent to Justine Gonneaud (justine.gonneaud@univ-avignon.fr)and Elsa Cavalié (elsa.cavalie@univ-avignon.fr) before April 15th 2021.

Bibliography

Bailly Jean-Christophe, La Phrase urbaine,Paris, Seuil, 2013.
Benjamin Walter, Paris Capitale du XIXème siècle, 1935, Paris, Allia, 2015.
Bernard Catherine, Matière à réflexion. Du corps politique dans la littérature et les arts visuels britanniques contemporains, Paris, PUPS, 2018.
Collot Michel, La Pensée-paysage,Paris, Actes Sud, 2011.
—, Pour une géographie littéraire,Paris, Corti, 2014.
Dru Jean-Marie, How Disruption Brought Order: The Story of a Winning Strategy in the World of Advertising,New York, Palgrave, 2007.
Duff Kim, Contemporary British Literature and Urban Space: After Thatcher, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Hubble Nick & Philip Tew, eds., London in Contemporary British Fiction: the City Beyond the City,London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016
James David, Contemporary British Fiction and the Artistry of Space: Style, Landscape, Perception, London, Continuum, 2011.
Lars Koch, Tobias Nanz, Johannes Pause, Disruption in the Arts: Textual, Visual, and Performative Strategies for Analyzing Societal Self-Descriptions, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2018.
Lefebvre Henri. Le droit à la ville, 1968, Paris, Economica, 2009.
Lehan Richard, The City in Literature – An Intellectual & Cultural History, U of California, 1998.
Lussault Michel, L’Homme spatial. La construction sociale de l’espace humain, Paris, Le Seuil, 2007.
McCormick Carlo, Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, Berlin, Taschen, 2010.
McNamara Kevin, The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature,Cambridge, CUP, 2014.
Paquot Thierry,Homo urbanus : Essai sur l’urbanisation du monde et des mœurs, Paris, Editions du Felin, 1990.
Plesske Nora, The Intelligible Metropolis: Urban Mentality in Contemporary London Novels, Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2014.
Soja Edward W., Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social History,Londres/New York, Verso, 1989.
Solnit Rebecca, Wanderlust: A Historyof Walking, London, Penguin, 2000.
Tally Robert, Literary Cartographies Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative, London, Palgrave, 2014.
Tambling Jeremy, The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City,London, Palgrave, 2017.
Westphal Bertrand, La Géocritique : Réel, fiction, espace,Paris, les Editions de Minuit, 2007.

(posted 12 Februay 2021)

Writing the Nation in France, the British Isles, and the Thirteen Colonies in the 17th and 18th c.: Post-Graduate Study Days
Université de Caen Normandie, France, 21-22 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2021

Post-Graduate Study Days 2021 organized by the SEAA17-18 (Société d’étude du XVIIe siècle, and the Société Française d’Étude du XVIIIe siècle
SFEDS)
Advisory Board : Meriel Cordier (Université Clermont Auvergne), Alix Desnain (Université Clermont Auvergne), Marie-Gabrielle Lallemand (Université de Caen-Normandie), Juliette Misset (Université de Strasbourg), Mickaël Popelard (Université de Caen-Normandie), et Alain Sandrier (Université de Caen-Normandie)

These post-graduate study days will focus on the idea of writing the nation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France, the British Isles, and the Thirteen Colonies, with particular attention paid to the ways in which an individual can participate in the construction of a national, and therefore collective, identity. Seeing as France and Great Britain— followed by Europe and North America— have traditionally defined themselves in opposition to one another, their understanding of the concept of nation is particularly complex in that it is rooted in a dialogue between identity and alterity, singularity and plurality. How then was this national feeling able to develop, given the political, social, and religious context of the early modern period, marked as it was by dissent and the coexistence of various “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983)?

The aim of these study days is therefore to establish links between the rise of a national consciousness and national writing. As early as the end of the twelfth century, the word “nacion” in Old French referred to a people united by a common origin, language, and culture (CNTRL 1b), and this term can be found in English texts as early as the fourteenth century, thanks to Anglo-Norman influence. The cases of England (and later Great Britain), its American colonies, and France are thus particularly complex due to the plurality of ethnic origins and foundational myths that challenge the very possibility for each country to forge its own identity. While the place and function of “national literature” in our societies is heavily debated today, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the emergence of a body of works which gradually constructed a sense of collective identity through the appropriation or reappropriation of literary forms and genres. For writers of that period, writing was a way of reinventing the relation to territorial space, even as there was cultural porosity between the countries.

Nonetheless, identification to the nation was thought, felt, and represented in myriad ways. According to Richard Helgerson (1992), a common identity stems from a common language; similarly, the construction of the nation hinges on and coincides with the construction of the figure of the writer. How then might the dynamics of rivalry and emulation between burgeoning national identities foster the emergence of a collective consciousness? Is it possible to reconcile such a plurality of texts (chronicles, poetry, drama, essays…) with unity, given that unity might be seen as inherent to the concept of nation? How can individuals identify with the nation, or, conversely, distance themselves from it? And what role do religious and political conflicts—notably the English and American revolutions—play in the affirmation and writing of the feeling of national affiliation?

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • The inclusion or exclusion of communities or individuals in texts; the relationship to foreign lands (which includes the cases of Ireland and Scotland for England, but also the specific status of the Thirteen Colonies);
  • The dialectic of identity and alterity; the tension between what is conceived of as the “centre” and what is posited as part of the “margins” or “periphery,” on the Continent, in the British Isles (“Celtic fringes” vs. “Home Counties,” political and cultural crises arising out of the two Acts of Union, etc.), and in the Thirteen Colonies; the reversibility of points of view and dialectical construction of identities;
  • The reappropriation of continental literary forms and genres; the tensions between continental, English, and/or specifically “colonial” traditions; aristocratic poetry and popular theatre;
  • The search for links with a mythical past; the nation as sacred;
  • Insularity and borders; the relationship between individuals and territory; the relation between real and imagined territories;
  • Belligerent tendencies and “political literature”; national feeling and imperialist inclination; political and polemical texts and texts of national emancipation;
  • The role of travel writing in the emergence of the nation;
  • The emergence of a nation divided between the motherland and the colonies, between the Old World and the New World.

Abstracts (300-500 words) in English or in French, along with a short biographical note, should be sent to Meriel Cordier (meriel.cordier@outlook.fr), Alix Desnain (alix.desnain@outlook.fr) andMickaël Popelard (mickael.popelard@unicaen.fr) by 31 May 2021. Notification will be sent by mid-June 2021.

(posted 8 May 2021)

Shaping freedom(s): legacies, practices and projections: 4th International Conference of Foreign Languages
School of Education, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal, 28-29 October 2021
Deadline for proposals: 17 July 2021

Convener: Foreign Language Department, ESE-IPB

“Let freedom ring” was the closing motto of Martin Luther King’s renowned speech, icon of the civil rights movement in the USA. The 1963 speech “I have a dream” echoed around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and is an unavoidable milestone of the 1960s, thus accomplishing what had been foreseen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The last century is distinguishable not only because of its two World Wars and the ColdWar, but also because of its vertiginous succession of dictatorial regimes in Europe, such as the ones in Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Also noteworthy are numerous despotic regimes in Latin America or in Asia, namely in North Korea and China.

Since the abolition of slavery (Haiti being the first country, in 1804) and of the death penalty (in the State of Michigan, in 1846) to the suffragette movement emerging in the 19th century, the world has witnessed fights for universal suffrage, for the social equality of black people, of people with disabilities and of the LGBTIQ+ community, for the adaptation of feminism and for the conquest of freedom among minority groups, refugees and migrants. The cases and examples are plenty and for this reason we would like to urge the 4th CILE to question and debate all these freedoms and their multiple manifestations, since freedom of speech, unfolding as it was, is or can be challenged by political regimes, by governing bodies and by people in its diverse contexts. Also, we aim to examine freedom of the press and individual freedom in itself.
As such, topics and themes of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following:

  • Civil rights defence movements
  • Literary censorship, cinematography and new forms of manipulation
  • Utopia, dystopia and heterotopia
  • Liberalism, pluralism and cosmopolitanism
  • Politically correct language
  • Foreign languages teaching within the promotion of humanist values
  • Translation studies within the cultural turn
  • Literature, messages and freedom of expression
  • Unlocking the lockdown and language teaching

Deadlines and other information

  • 17th July 2021: final deadline for submission of presentations, panels and roundtable proposals
  • 2nd September 2021 : authors’ notification, including those who do not wish to publish their paper
  • 15th November 2021: submission of full papers for the double-blind peer review process
  • 31st January: notification of authors for final revision of papers
  • 28th February: final version paper submission
  • The publication of the selected papers will be done in the form of online Proceedings with ISBN
  • A maximum of 2 papers per author will be accepted, either individually or in group
  • Further information through the e-mail: cile@ipb.pt
  • Webpage of the event: http://cile.ipb.pt
  • Platform for the submission of abstracts: http://conferencias.ese.ipb.pt (Click on ‘Call for Papers’: at the end of the page you will find ‘Passo um do processo de submissao’; registration is required)
  • Abstracts: title; proposal up to 250 words; 5 keywords; bionote up to 100 words.
  • We will accept both remote (online or pre-recorded) and onsite presentations.

Please see the webpage of the event http://cile.ipb.pt for further information on registration fees etc.

(posted 21 June 2021)